Softball players?

"Let's go Milly, let's go. (clap, clap) Let's go Milly, let's go. (clap clap)."

As everyone knows now, the Nats were chanting this in their dugout while Lastings Milledge was batting against the Metsies on Monday. Is this bushleague? I don't think so. With stone-cold killer, Elijah Dukes leading the chants, the Nats were laughing it up, having fun with eachother, and didn't say a word about a Mets player. Is it unprofessional? Slightly. If they had been using the old Dover Baseball chant of "Up the river, down the lake, pitcher's got a bellyache!", or the softball-esque SUNY Oneonta baseball chant of "He hangs it, you bang it!", then yes, that is bushleague because they're talking about their competition. But the Nats were just trying to enjoy the game by cheering for their own players. Is that the way I play the game? No, team chants are fucking cheesy. My college coach would have had us running poles for three weeks if we did anything like that. But still, I don't think what the Nats did was the disgrace it has been made out to be.

*"Team Mets-Thing" 'took the train to the game' last night(Tuesday). We picked a good night to go.

---Maine pitched great, my man Church hit dots all over the field, and Wagner closed it.

---We were able to find Sam Adams, Brooklyn Brewery, and Corona Extra, so we could avoid drinking yesterday's toilet water that is dispenced into the Budweiser and Miller bottles.

---Team Mets-Thing is a fan of the Mezzanine seats, which give you a good overhead view of the game without being two miles away from the action.

---It was strange to think that this is it for Shea Stadium too. Yeah, the place isn't much, but it's the stadium of my team. My home stadium. There are lots of memories here. And surprizingly for a team like the Mets, which hasn't had a ton of winning baseball throughout their history, there have been many historic baseball moments here too, including one of the top 5 World Series moments of all time.

*Then I saw the Mets' transactions for the day. Sosa.... gone! Yes! Hopefully he doesn't choose to go to AAA and he just leaves the organization. Frankly, I'm shocked that Minaya is showing some balls here. It's about time he started telling his players that they need to perform. Figueroa is gone too, but he might remain in AAA.

*I watched the tape of the game this morning, because that's what I do, I'm that guy. And John Maine has once again changed his approach. Last night, he was using his fastball away to all batters. Then to RHs, he was throwing his changeup inside. It's a 'backwards' strategy according to the standard MLB pitching coach, but it's a strategy I love. And, it seemed to work for Maine. All those pulled foul balls I saw last night, all turned out to be on inside changeups. The Nats could do nothing with the pitch, but pull the sinking change foul. Then he went back to his outside fastball for the out. Maine only threw one slider, which used to be his strikeout pitch, the entire game.