Fertilizer

I really wanted to write a wrap-up of last night's game. Something scathing.

But, the Mets lost to a pitcher named Dickey (perhaps my relative), and started a team (with the highest payroll in the National League) that included Trot Nixon, Endy Chavez, Fernando Tatis and noted stiff in '08 Oliver Perez. This is the baseball equivalent of an NFL Europa team.

And to be fair, I don't much care for that Castillo fellow. He really plays poor baseball. Maybe it's the injuries, but it seems like he's just surly, has the ego of a great player, and doesn't really play like one.

Good thing he's gone at the end of the year – oh, wait, 2009 – no, sorry, 2010 – scratch that, he'll be off our hands come 2011.

But I guess what possesses me today are the fires stoked by The Worst Beat Reporter in Town, Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post, and his fixation on Jerry Manuel's fertilizer comment.

As a fan of metaphor, my instinct was to applaud Manuel. His point was that booing can be good for growth – makes sense – and, unfortunately, like fertilizer, it stinks. Fertilizer is not a pleasant thing - but it's ultimately essential in growth.

That was his point.

Hubbuch, though, takes a strange series of potshots on his blog today, and calls out Daily News counterpart Adam Rubin as well as bloggers.

Normally, I enjoy the curmudgeonly Post-folk. The hockey fan in me finds all of Larry Brooks' stuff, despite his incredibly dour demeanor, must-read, while the same goes for Peter Vecsey's basketball work and Phil Mushnick's writing on sports media. All these guys do is bitch and moan – just look at their pictures, for the sake of a snap judgment –







but their content is pretty good.

Hubbuch, however, seems to have taken the Post's sports journalism, which, unlike its news content, had been palatable (bordering on informative!), to a new low. Perhaps the press would be right in cracking jokes about Manuel's fertilizer comment, reminding him of it every so often, making a few feces punch lines in the press.

Instead, Hubbuch, perhaps full of sulfites, dumped a boatload of nitrates on his readership. Or, for those of you without doctorates in chemistry, a truckload of shit.

So, I'll say this again, in the wake of last night's amusing ejection, I love Jerry Manuel. I'm not sure if this AAA team will be able to play well under him – my guess is they can, and probably will – but he's said more interesting things in his week here than Willie did in his entire tenure – though his comment about Shingo Takatsu bringing the funk to Miguel Cabrera (to the tune of Parliament's "A Three-Run Double) will always warm my heart.

Hubbuch, on the other hand, should know his place – can we get him in touch with Jared Paul Stern and Ian Spiegelman? I imagine they could write some mean sports gossip together.

Some other notes:

I'm sure you all heard, but Claudio Vargas was demoted for Carlos Muniz after last night's game. That's funny – I was going to call him the Mets' worst long man since Aaron Sele.

John Maine goes tonight against Miguel Batista, 7:10 p.m. your start, as usual. If we're taking odds on this one, Maine will throw 145 pitches in 5 innings, and Batista will throw 45 in a complete game shutout.