Wednesday night was spent watching the Mannywood Los Angeles Dodgers take on the New York Mets at Citi Field. After spending over three hours watching this baseball boondoggle in Flushing, here are some thoughts on the Mets 5-4 win:

Mets starting pitcher Oliver Perez belongs on a Junior Babe Ruth mound and not a major league mound. ESPN's Rob Neyer has a great post on his blog devoted to Oliver Perez's less than stellar pitching performance. At one point in his relatively short stint on the mound, Perez had gone to three balls on nine batters. Perez was fortunate the Dodgers never got a big hit to end his night. Perez was bad, but lucky. 

Take a look at the New York Times Bats blog and a post by Michael S. Schmidt from November 5, 2008, where uber agent Scott Boras favorably compares the 27-year-old Perez to other young lefties in hardball history; such as Sandy Koufax and Randy Johnson. Either Mets general manager Omar Minaya was desperate for starting pitching or bought what Boras was selling, because the Mets are on the hook for two more years of Perez's Rudi Stein pitching performances at $12 million per year.

Rudi Stein

In the off-season, Minaya was justifiably desperate for frontline pitching, but what other team would have given Oliver Perez $36 million dollars? Let's not throw $5 million at Pedro Martinez, but let's invest a whole lot of loot in a guy who is halfway to Steve Blass/Rick Ankiel territory. Perhaps Minaya should hire former Mets catcher Mackey Sasser to warm up Oliver.

On the flip side, Dodgers starting pitcher Hideki Kuroda wasn't all that much better than Perez, but Kuroda got tagged with the loss. Baseball is a cruel mistress.

In the bottom of the first, Mannywood misplayed a ball in left field off the bat of Daniel Murphy for a double. Good to see Manny's mandated vacation did not impact his defensive prowess, but he made up for his defensive gaffe by drilling a one-run home run off of Mets closer K Rod in the top of the ninth to cut New York's lead to one.

Dodgers third baseman Casey Blake is a true professional. Baseball could use a few more guys like Casey Blake and the Mets veteran middle infielder Alex Cora.

Citi Field has one of the biggest outfields in the majors and the Mets have Gary Sheffield roaming the veldt in left. This isn't a knock on Sheffield, but it doesn't seem Omar Minaya is a proponent of a strong defense. Please, let's not send Minaya over to Russia to negotiate with Medvedev and Putin.

A couple of weeks ago, I told my girlfriend that the Mets inaugural season patches worn on the right arm reminded me of a Domino's Pizza logo. Phillies-blog.com was way ahead of Sheridan.

The Yankees don't come up with crap like this. Who were the marketing and design ignoramuses that collaborated on this fiasco? They should stand up and take a bow for being on the cutting edge of crap.

ESPN announcer Rick Sutcliffe is better to listen to when he is half-in-the-bag.

On the bright side of things, the Mets scored a run in the first inning. Entering Wednesday night's game, the Mets had not scored in 22 innings.

The Play of the Night:

Daniel Murphy's backhand flip is amazing. Dodgers 1B Mark Loretta also understands that baseball is a cruel mistress.