How to Get Tossed From Yankee Stadium and Into the East RIver

Just kidding, Mo.

I was listening to the postgame press conference following Mariano Rivera's final game at Yankee Stadium. It was a very serious affair, which began with manager Joe Girardi at the podium. 

However, the questions that beat writers asked went from probing to ass-kissing to rhetorical to moronic, so when I heard someone ask Joe something like, "How did Mariano improve your life?," I tried to think of the absolute worst, Stuttering-John-like questions I could ask at one of these things.

• "Joe, which will endure longer: Mariano's reputation as one of the greatest closers ever, or Mariano's reputation as a notoriously horrible tipper?"
• "Joe, Mariano's got 652 regular season saves, but it's been said that more than 300 of those were actually achieved by his little-known twin brother, Manolo, who would don the Yankee uniform from time to time. Your thoughts?"
• "Joe, everyone likes to talk about all those saves and his low ERA, but honestly, with a career batting average of .000 (3 for 4, with one walk), is he really Hall of Fame material?"
• "Joe,  Mariano's legacy will be 'World's Greatest Closer,' both to the fans who come to Yankee Stadium as well as the Bronx prostitutes who hang outside the Stadium. Any idea why that is?"
• "Joe, can we stop all the Mariano Rivera nonsense and talk about Alex Rodriguez now?"

A Quick Note on the Passing of Gary Carter

Here's my one-and-a-half cents regarding Gary Carter, who died today.

Back in the early 1980s, my brother and I and another pair of brothers who lived a couple of doors down supplemented our baseball card collection with a baseball sticker collection. Baseball sticker books contained two pages for each team, and something like five spots per page where you were to pasted the stickers for the appropriate players. The best player on the team arrived in a thicker, foil sticker.

We spent what little money we had on these stickers — I cringe when I see that Pokemon cards cost like four bucks a pack today — and, unlike the baseball cards of the time, the stickers have absolutely no value as an investment.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH GARY CARTER?
On each team's set of pages, there was a bit of information about the team, including the name and address of its home stadium.

During that sticker-collecting summer, I shared with my friends an idea: Let's write to our favorite ballplayers, using the addresses for the stadiums, and ask for their autographs.

So that's what we did one afternoon, huddled around our friends' picnic table, writing letters. "You can't just come out and say, 'I want an autograph.' That would be rude," I strategized. So we wrote our letters like this:

I Hope This Father/Son Activity Will CATCH ON

When he turns 7, I'll show him
how to hook up with cougars.

This weekend I experienced a father/son milestone: having a catch for the first time.

That's not to say Son and I haven't thrown things at each other in the past, but Saturday was the first time we had an official grab-the-glove, go-to-the-park, toss-the-ball-around event.

I wasn't the kind of dad-to-be who already picked out a glove and bat even before the kid was born, though watching some of Son's fellow 6-year-olds throw and hit like they're already ready to be scouted, I wonder whether I should have been reading up on how to adjust the kid's in utero pitching mechanics.

We went to this cozy, newly renovated park that contained a small playground area and a full-size little league field, with fresh grass and lines and everything. Son, who is on a little league team, wanted to take some practice swings, but

• We had only one ball
• He doesn't hit pitched balls very well yet

These two factors would create a situation with this formula...