Beirut.

       Today is Babe Ruth's 123rd birthday which had he lived past 1948 would make him the oldest person to ever live. This makes a bit of poetic sense because Ruth set records that don't make much sense even today.

I make fun of the Yankees at any opportunity but let's face facts, Babe Ruth is the greatest there ever was and the best there ever will be.  In fact, his numbers are so screwy people often just forget about him when arguing who the best player of all time is because he is such a conversation killer.  It's as if there is Babe Ruth and then everyone else. 

I remember in college, and this is 25 years ago before there was internet based smartphones to answer every argument immediately, one of my roommates was kind of ignorant of Ruth's overwhelming numbers.  When I said he once hit .390 and was in the top ten in career batting average, he laughed and said "there's no way that fat tub hit .390!" and right then and there we had to march to the library where I pulled out the Baseball Encyclopedia and gave him a humbling education.  And while there are some hitters who have approached his greatness, there is one thing that is one of the all time trump cards in history.

This last page here is one of my favorite pages in my collection.  For all his mythical qualities, the one thing that always slips through the cracks is that Ruth was well on his way to being a hall of fame pitcher when he decided that he was better at that hitting thing.  By the age of 24 his career marks were 89-46 with a 2.19 ERA. Even at the end of the deadball era, those are Walter Johnson/Christy Mathewson type numbers over 6ish years.  One can only wonder what the end result would have been if he had pitched in the majors for 22+ years instead.  If anyone ever points out the exploits of Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, or Barry Bonds and tries to make them out to somehow be better than Ruth, just ask them if they ever won 94 games as a pitcher as well.  It is a joy to watch the life in their eyes die because there's just no counter move to that argument.

“How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

We were all lucky to get 53 years of Babe Ruth since he lived as hard as he played.  I think one can easily say he lived 123+ years in that time.   Happy Birthday ya big lug.

One Star.

       Well, it's the All-Star break again and Tuesday means the big game is ready to be played.  One of the many good things about this baseball season is getting rid of Bud Selig, who a lot of people hate for the wrong reasons.  The A-number-one reason to hate that dude was the 2002 All Star Game, when he just threw up his hands and let the game end in a tie.  Any one of 20 other ideas could have come to him (off the top of my head - let position players pitch, let a pitcher reenter the game, have the coaches toss an impromptu home run derby - winner take all) but instead he did nothing. What a jackass.  Instead, remember, This Time It Counts™! 

That little rant aside, this year only one Mets player made the game and it is a different sort of pick, Daniel Murphy:

Murphy is a scrappy player who makes the most of his limited talents.  He will never be a "star" per se, but he plays his butt off every day.  And he can definitely hit.  Now he gets to have the little All Star banner over his name on his Baseball Reference page forever.

Sadly, Daniel Murphy is destined to join such glorious Mets solo All Stars as John Stearns, Lee Mazzilli, Pat Zachry and Joel Youngblood in the annals of history.  And how the hell did Armando Benitez ever make an All Star Team?  Yikes.

This year the game is being played in Target Field in Minnesota and last year it was played in Citifield.

How much did that mean to me?  I didn't write a single word about it last year.  In fact, the last time I mentioned the All Star Game prominently was two years ago and it was a less than glowing recommendation.  I did make this page of cards from last years Topps Update because it had the ASG logo on it, which was very Mets-centric.

I didn't go to any of the Mets Fan Fest events last year and I regret that because I did go to the one from the Yankee Stadium game in 2008 and it was a lot of fun.  I even held the fastest thrown ball at the booth with the radar gun for like 20 minutes.  I got there early and 69 MPH was enough to give me 5 more minutes of fame than I deserve. 

I also picked up these four Fan Fest exclusive Mets Manu-Patch cards.  Three of the four obviously make me very happy, though my hatred for Jose Reyes has diminished since he went to Toronto because now he is on a team whose job it is is to keep the Yankees out of the playoffs.