I was looking through some Mets trivia today and found a few interesting questions that I thought I could post and see how many people know their trivia without looking up the answers.  The difficulty ranges depending on your knowledge.   Post your guesses and I'll post the answers in a few days.

1) Who started at third base for the New York Mets on Opening Day in 1962?

                a. Don Zimmer

                b. Rod Kanehl

                c. Ed Charles

                d. Elio Chacon

2) How many years did John Franco spend with the New York Mets?

               a. 13

               b. 12

               c. 15

               d. 16

3) Which 20-year-old first baseman made his debut for the New York Mets during the 1974 season?

              a. Greg Brock

              b. Rudy Pemberton

              c. Lou Brock

              d. Brock Pemberton

4) How many regular season games did the 1986 Mets win?

             a. 105

             b. 108

             c. 100

             d. 98

5) The ground ball hit by Mookie Wilson and botched by Bill Buckner is now among the most replayed images in all of baseball. Who scored the winning run that put the Mets into the decisive game 7?

             a. Ray Knight

             b. Tim Teufel

             c. Gary Carter

             d. David Wright

6) On September 21, 2001, ten days after the terrorist attacks of September 11 .  The Mets played the Atlanta

Braves at Shea.  Down 2-1 Mike Piazza hit a two-run home-run bringing the Mets to victory.  Who did he hit the home-run off of?

           a. John Rocker

           b. Tom Glavine

           c. Steve Karsay

           d. Mike Remlinger

7) Who was the 1994 opening day starting pitcher?

          a. Al Leiter

          b. Bobby Jones

          c. Dwight Gooden

          d. Mike Hampton

     After tonight’s game Mets fans are left scratching their heads thinking, "what else can happen?"  As the game progressed tonight, yet another Mets player goes down with an injury during a head first slide.  If you had Ramon Martinez in your NYM injured player fantasy league, you are a winner.  I understand that sliding head first is always a risk, but for some reason the Mets have dumb luck with this kind of thing.  There's no getting around it, the Mets are prone to freak accidents and injuries.  We can look to the Ryan Church catastrophe of last year with his concussions or perhaps the Beltran/Cameron collision that pretty much disfigured Cameron's face.  Over the past few years the Mets were never great when dealing with adversity.  This year, I have seen signs of them turning the corner and fighting off their problems.  Some may disagree but there is a little evidence.  The team went 19-9 in the month of May.  Plus when you think about it they did all this without Delgado for the whole month.  They were without Reyes, Cora, and Church for the last two weeks and even Pagan has gone down in the past week.  Their MVP of the year so far, Carlos Beltran, has a nasty virus and he's been out the past few games.  Also, not to mention no Ollie, and JJ has been dreadful in the pen.  Looking at what they do put on the field, it's for the most part a JV squad.  They are getting little to no offensive production at first base, their shortstops if it wasn't for the injuries wouldn't even be on the roster, and they have a twenty year old, Fernando Martinez, starting everyday.  Even Jeremy Reed whose getting a lot of playing time is a bench player at best.  And for all of this the Mets are 28-23, two back of the Phillies.  Imagine if they didn't have all these injuries where they would be.  You look at the "core," Wright, Reyes, Beltran, and Delgado.  Reyes and Delgado have been injured and other than that road trip two weeks ago, Wright has been mediocre.  Beltran has been the only one out of the four to bring his game everyday.  It's only a matter of time before the Mets are really clicking on all cylinders.  Reyes and Cora are expected back at the end of the week and hopefully Beltran's virus won't keep him out for any length of time.  With just those three back that is a huge improvement.  So yes, they have dropped the first two to the Pirates, but let's not panic just yet.  So far the JV has shown they can play with the Varsity, for now. 

     After looking as if the wheels could fall right off in LA, the Mets bounced back in Boston.  If the Mets somehow make the playoffs they could look back to the Boston series in late May as a potential season breaking series.  The Mets gained enormous confidence from that series.  They did something they couldn't do all of last year, come from behind and win.  After taking two of three in Boston it was time to beat up on some bad teams and really get a step up from the rest of the NL East.  Two weeks playing some of the weaker teams in the league, Washington, Florida, and Pittsburgh.  After sweeping the Nationals the Mets came out, fought, and won another close game.  The Mets have already won fourteen games by two runs or fewer.  In contrast to last year, that number is astounding and it is only the end of May. 

     Pelfrey, who was examined for migraines on Wednesday, came out tonight and looked sharp.  He has really stepped up this year after starting the season on a shaky note.  He dropped his ERA tonight to 3.88 and tied his season high with strikeouts (6).  Pelfrey is showing excellent command of his pitches, something he hasn't always been able to do in his career.  Not only was Pelfrey excellent, let’s not forget Gary Sheffield and the importance of him this year.  Sheff has come into this organization and despite much criticism and speculation early; he has taught this team how to win.  He has taught them how to be motivated and how to fight.  I will be honest, I thought it was a bad idea to bring him in and I doubted the move.  But I was wrong, along with many others.  It seems like every night he does something clutch to help this team win.  Tonight was no different as he ripped a base hit through the gap on the left side of the infield in the 11th inning.  After Sanches threw over to first at least three times during David Wright's at bat, the forty year old stole second and on a wild pitch went to third, setting up the eventual game-winning hit by Omir Santos.  To be fair, in a tie game in extra innings, Uggla needs to knock that ball down and prevent Sheffield from taking the extra base.  But never the less, he didn't and the Mets ended up scratching and clawing to their twenty seventh win of the season staying a half game up on the Phillies for first place. 

     Tomorrow Brian Schneider comes off the DL.  The big question is who gets moved?  The three possible options are: Santos gets sent down to Triple-A, the Mets makes a move with Castro, or they carry three catchers on their roster.  What will they do?  Both Santos and Castro have played very well in Schneider’s absence and it will be interesting to see what the Mets do.  We will all find out soon enough