{"id":66,"date":"2007-04-09T11:29:29","date_gmt":"2007-04-09T16:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/velcroblog.com\/?p=66"},"modified":"2007-04-09T14:37:08","modified_gmt":"2007-04-09T19:37:08","slug":"first-place-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"First Place For Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m so glad I went to all three games this weekend, and not just the miserable home opener. The other two were a blast: my throat&#8217;s all sore from screaming, I&#8217;m sunburned, and I somehow pulled a muscle in my shoulder, I think from throwing up my arms after Andruw made that catch on Sunday. There&#8217;s nothing like being worn out after watching them take a series from the Mets, but I&#8217;ll be happy to watch the series against the Nationals from my couch after suffering through that weather.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m surprised that only 24,000-ish people showed up to the Easter game &#8212; the crowd did look pretty sparse, but we were sitting behind the dugout, and everyone in our section was really into it. There were a few Met fans &#8212; one, notably, was wearing a dorky ass white golf cap, and some drunk Braves fans behind us (possibly the same ones who were behind us on Saturday) mistook it for a beret and started calling the guy &#8220;Pierre,&#8221; which was excellent. Anyway, it was a good crowd, with everybody on their feet for Wicky at the end. <\/p>\n<p>Davies reminded me a lot of Chuckie on Sunday. He made his mistakes, got the hell over it, and moved on. And he was getting a lot of fly ball outs &#8212; the drunk guys joked at one point that everyone but Davies and Andruw could leave the field. I wonder how much of a difference having Heap catch him made? I know Pena was catching for him for most of spring training, and I like Pena, but I don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s anywhere near as good with the pitchers as Heap, and I get the feeling that Chuckie&#8217;s game strategy is just whatever Heap tells him, so it was interesting to see Davies doing a bit of a Chuckie imitation when Heap caught him (he even gave up Chuckie&#8217;s usual two home runs in early innings). Either way, it was nice to see Davies get over his mistakes and go on to have a great game. Mental blocks always seemed to be a problem for him, and it really looked like he conquered himself on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>How great was Heap going into McCanDoNoWrong mode there at the end? And Heap getting on base has lately brought out the best in Frenchy, who put together a very mature, smart at-bat to score the winning run. Now if only their elders could start hitting, but Chipper seems to be coming around, and I&#8217;m sure Andruw will, hopefully sooner rather than later. The Nationals are coming up, so maybe their pitiable pitching staff will kick-start him.<\/p>\n<p>While we face the Nationals at home, the Mets are hosting the Phillies, who have been playing like the Nationals and could very well get swept again. It&#8217;s extremely early, but I&#8217;m excited, and I can&#8217;t believe we already have to suffer through another off day. <\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah, and Hampton&#8217;s injured again, or something, whatever. I&#8217;ve gone back to forgetting that he&#8217;s on our team, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m so glad I went to all three games this weekend, and not just the miserable home opener. The other two were a blast: my throat&#8217;s all sore from screaming, I&#8217;m sunburned, and I somehow pulled a muscle in my shoulder, I think from throwing up my arms after Andruw made that catch on Sunday. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,27,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/velcroblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}