Fill in the Blanco

Let's hope the most exciting news of the rest of the year isn't that the Mets just signed a catcher whose most similar players stat-wise include Charlie O'Brien and Kelly Stinnett.

I was in favor of pursuing Jose (not Bengie) Molina, so I actually like the signing of Henry Blanco, for the purposes of walk-off prevention.

There are few better than Blanco on the defensive end, and throwing out would be basestealers is his strength. In his career, Blanco has thrown out 43 percent of those attempting to steal on him, and for those who fear he's getting old, he threw out 18 of 45 (40 percent) for the Padres in 2009.

And after reading a little bit on Wikipedia and MLB.com, I'm feeling a little (albeit not much) better about the prospect of Blanco batting late in a close game.

Turns out Blanco has a walk-off hit that is viewed as a big deal. In the final game of the 2006 Carribean World Series, Blanco's popup hit the head of Dominican shortstop Erick Aybar and caromed away, allowing Alex Gonzalez to score the championship-winning run.

True Metcos know...Blanco has two career major league walk-off hits. He also had a 16th-inning walk-off sacrifice fly (he reached when the ball was dropped) for the Brewers against the Astros on May 16, 2000.

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The best Mets ejections I know

When you think of the Mets and famous ejections, I'm guessing you first think of the famous Bobby Valentine mustache game, when after Valentine got tossed, he returned to the dugout in disguise. You know it. You love it. I remember being amused when I asked Bobby V about it while we were working on Baseball Tonight, how he simply said "It worked. We won the game." (true) But the Bobby V mustache game of June 9, 1999 is one of many, many memorable Mets ejection stories. And now thanks to Retrosheet and the magic of Newspapers.com , we have a convenient means for being able to share them. Ever since Retrosheet's David Smith recently announced that the Retrosheet ejection database was posted online , I've been a kid in a candy store. I've organized the data and done some lookups of media coverage around the games that interested me post. Those newspaper accounts fill in a lot of blanks. Without further ado (and with more work to do), here are some of my findings ...

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Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

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