Joker's Wild

This is it for the Mets. With 17 to play. Or, as Reigning Swami Stewart K likes to say, 17 TO PRAY, we take a painful look back at Yesterday’s Backpages. This is best experienced by slowly scrolling down, letting the full impact of each heartbreaking defeat hit you one at a time. A warning to those with heart conditions or young children at home: Graphic images of Jorge Sosa and Tom Glavine follow.

There’s no greater tribute to America — and 9/11 — than this moment at Shea. Gratz, Piatz. Skip ahead to 1:42 to see it. Brings a tear to a glass eye. Have a tissue handy.

First of all, as the late Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo once said, welcome aboard. TomorrowsBackpage.com is a site dedicated to a game many of us already play: Guessing the Backpages of the NY Post, Daily News and Newsday before they come out. With the Mets Vs. Nats clearly being the biggest story of the night, this is a great chance to dabble in the dark art of Backpageology.

How do you play? Simple. Log on to this site tonight after the game or in the morning before 10 am. Then submit your guess using the entry form in the sidebar or email Backpageman@tomorrowsbackpage.com. Winners will be announced on this site. (For those guessing in the morning, you must swear that you have not sneaked a peek at the Backpages. Cheaters will be required to work for one week without pay at Doug Henry’s World of Used Fords in Yuma, Arizona.)

Again, Welcome Aboard. Hope you’ll get in the game. And, while you’re here, please bookmark this site.

Earlier this summer, the bottom-feeders at the Post called for Billy Wagner’s head. Wish granted. Bill has been killed. TomorrowsBackpage.com looks back at the man Met fans hate to hate. A note of appreciation: Despite all the blown saves, Billy always took the time to Send It Up after a victory. A hollow gesture that was always appreciated on these pages. Good luck, Sandman*!

*The other Sandman. Mariano is the real Sandman. Or is Trevor Hoffman the real Sandman? Either way, the asterisk should suffice.

As the world’s pre-eminent Backpageology site, it came as no surprise when the Big Players in the online game came courting. Backpageman was ready, with Boras-style binder in hand.

SNY.tv came first and hard. As much as I like the station and the analysis of Silvio Mazzilli, sending the “Loudmouths” Adam Schein and Chris Carlin to my house is a trauma my daughter will not soon forget. Sorry, SNY.


Next came, ESPN, who sent Steve “Skill Sets” Phillips. I brought up his A-Rod negotiation and the infamous 24+1 equation.

Larry David once said he hated when people were too happy about anything. He just didn’t get it. Thus the title “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Well, if you’re feeling too good, too happy, too pleased with the world, Backpageman has just what you need. A tall drink of Mushnick the Miserable. Take it away, you miserable bastard…

“Michael Kay must be under orders from YES to regard all of us as fools. When Jason Giambi ended the game against Boston with a single, Kay became so hysterical he’d either just been Tasered or he’d have had those who didn’t know any better to regard the moment as “The One-Out Bases Loaded Single Heard ‘Round The World.”

“On SNY and Channel 11, Gary Cohen has become so unnaturally hysterical over Met home runs that he, too, has become transparent. Thus, his response last Monday to a Carlos Delgado homer that made it 7-1, , was no less hysterical than his call, four days later, of Carlos Beltran’s two-out, ninth-inning grand slam that changed the game to 5-2. Surely, Cohen knows that all home runs don’t hold the same significance. Doesn’t he know that we know, too? Why leave discriminating fans insulted by providing the same, indiscriminate call?”

More misery here.

It seems that the great Tom E. of the Bronx, the King of All Swamis, has taken his guessing prowess to a bigger stage, The New Yorker. His caption is a finalist in the New Yorker Cartoon Contest.

Last week during the Democratic Convention, Joe Biden, the senator of Scranton, Pennsylvania and perhaps the world’s only satisfied Amtrak customer, said this:

Backpageman doesn’t like to get political on these pages. But, every now and again, he can’t sit idly by. This was on the front page of the Post today, and is a grave slander against hockey players everywhere. If he was a fencer or the star of the steeplechase team, you think they would make an issue of it? Or, if he didn’t have such a glove-droppingly sublime mullet, would he have warranted a picture? Yet another example of the mainstream media’s bias… against hockey!