Was I right or Was I Right?

What’s up, Willie here. I’m currently en route back to New York after a solid series win against the Marlins. We reached cruising altitude a while ago, and I’m looking out from my window seat. Both Jerry Manuel and I enjoy watching the sunset from the plane, and there were only two window seats left when we boarded (one on the east side of the plane and the other one the west). Clearly, only one of us would be able to get what we wanted. So, as I believe all grown men should settle things, we played rock, paper scissors, best of three. Good news is, I’m on a rock, paper, scissors tear. Earlier this week I beat Rick Peterson for the first time, and then today I defeat Jerry 2-0. Bad news is I still didn’t see the sunset because I fell asleep. To think I went through all the trouble of getting a seat on the east side of the plane just to fall asleep.

Anyway, speaking of falling asleep on the plane…I wrote a couple days ago about an instance of bad team chemistry, and unfortunately there was another one a few minutes ago. Endy Chavez had a long weekend and, trying to emulate my style, took a sexy siesta as soon as the fasten seatbelt sign went off. Now David Wright saw this, and decided to draw rainbows on Endy’s face to get back at him for the “back spasm” situation I wrote about earlier. Who would have thought David has a set of rainbow markers?

Anyway, a couple words about today’s game. What did I tell you about El Duque?!! Talk about instantaneous impact. Sure he only threw five innings, but I had my 2 and 2/3 innings specialist, Health Bell, to take care of the later portion of the game. I can’t say how impressed I am with the winning ways El Duque brings to this ball club. Notice how none of the Marlin infielders wanted to play defense? That’s because in his first two at bats, he used the throw the bat at the ball with two strikes trick. It scared the hell out of them. And then, when he didn’t execute it perfectly the second time, he confused them to no end by turning around and walking back to the dugout before the third strike crossed the plate.

One final note about El Duque. All the success he had today almost didn’t happen. It took me literally fifteen times to explain to him that even though I am his coach, Joe Girardi isn’t his catcher anymore, and he can’t go tell him how he’s going to pitch the Marlin batters. I wonder if the fact that the first fourteen explanations were in English had anything to do with this.

So I rested Xavier Nady again today. You may say, “Again? He played yesterday.” And so you are correct, and I must admit a mistake on my part. Yesterday I gave Nady, LoDuca, Delgado and Floyd the day off. Problem is that I replaced all of them in the lineup except for Nady. The result: my “right fielder” went 0-5. Today to my credit I remembered to put Endy in there. Speaking of Endy, I must remember to cancel the mission “back spasms: Barry Bonds” now that 715 is in the books. Okay Met fans, that’s all for now. Bring on those D-Backs!