Baseball's "Labour Trouble": Overdraft at the Memory Bank

The Polo Grounds: A Calm Review of Baseball ^ | 16 August 2002 | Jeff Kallman

[nopardons]

Nooooooooo ... the GREAT news, was yesterday's new 30 / 30 record ! :-)

[BluesDuke]

I heard about that watching SportsCenter last night (I was down in the San Diego area for yesterday and part of today). Alfonso Soriano is one hell of a ballplayer. And to think there were those second basmen in my youth and younger adulthood whom I would have thought to make 30/30 men even once - Joe Morgan and Ryne Sandberg come to mind, Sandberg especially (he was twice a 20/20 man and once a 40/20 man).

[nopardons]

Yes, I know. Still and all, give Alfonso his due. Yesterday's 30 / 30 was a glorious sight to behold. :-)

Did you watch the Met's 40 year " Amazing " tribute, last night ? It brought tears to the eyes.

[BluesDuke]

I had to miss that, since the Mets' station isn't carried to San Diego-area cable and San Diego-area Fox wasn't showing the Dodger-Mets game. I would have loved to see it. Even now, even with the, pardon my expression, assoholism that governs the Mets' management (or should I say monkey business management)...there's just something about the Mets.

Maybe it's because my first ever major league ballpark experiences were with the Amazin' Mets in the Polo Grounds in 1962-63...Marvelous Marv Throneberry taking a curtain call for a walkoff three-run homer in his underwear from the clubhouse...Jimmy Piersall whacking his 100th career home run and shuffling around the bases backwards...watching the first-ever Met game on television (I was home sick from school that day) and seeing Don Zimmer field the Mets' first -ever defencive chance cleanly enough at third but throw the ball ten feet over first baseman Gil Hodges's head, with the first-ever run against the Mets coming shortly thereafter on a balk (pitcher Roger Craig, with a hell of a pickoff move, whipped a throw to first - and had forgotten to alert Hodges that a pickoff might be coming and, with Hodges playing back a few feet, not holding Cardinal Bill White on base, the throw went past first and Hodges, and the ump called a balk, letting Stan Musial score)...the sign that was whipped up in the Polo Grounds when the Mets finally won a game in 1962 (Break Up The Mets!)...learning how Casey Stengel instructed fill-in first baseman Jim Marshall when he batted the first time in the first-ever Mets home game (Blanchard! [Stengel confused Marshall with Yankee backup catcher/pinch hitter deluxe Johnny Blanchard, whom he resembled somewhat.]Do you see them white lines? Do you know what they are for? They are there to hit the ball on! An' those fellas in the middle are called fielders. Marshall promptly whacked a double and shortly scored the first Met run in a home game in their history, in a 4-3 home-debut loss)...Jim Hickman hitting what turned out the game-winning grand-slam in the game which broke Roger Craig's 18-game losing streak in 1963...Sandy Koufax no-hitting the Mets in 1962 (the first of Koufax's four no-nos)...the Mets ending that sorry-funny first season with a game that featured them hitting into a triple play...Marvelous Marv whacking a two-run first-inning triple only to be called out for missing first base (Forget it, Case. He didn't touch second, either, coach Cookie Lavagetto advised when Stengel came bellowing out of the dugout), followed by the next hitter up, Charley Neal, belting a home run off the upper deck facade in deep left center only to have Casey halt him two steps up the baseline, point to first base and stamp his foot, repeating the routine until Neal crossed the plate safely...Stengel coming to the mound to talk to Craig after he'd given up the second of two screaming line drive homers to Willie McCovey and saying (it was revealed later), Do you know they are tearing down this ball park after next year when we get our new one finished? Well, you keep pitching that way to that man and you'll give them a big head start on the right field seats....

Maybe I'm chronically stuck on underachieving (as opposed to just plain bonehead - see Tampa Bay Devil Rays, et.al...) baseball teams, which may explain how I could also have become a Boston Red Sox fan beginning in early 1967, or a Cleveland Indians fan in the 1980s. (I still remember the 1987 preview issue in which Sports Illustrated put Cory Snyder and Joe Carter on the cover with the headling "Believe It! Cleveland Is The Best Team In The American League" - and, when the Indians finished 1987 in the proverbial cesspool house, there was said to be a slight housecleaning at SI...) But there could be few things as fun as the 1969 Mets...

George Burns, as God, to John Denver, in Oh God! - People remember the miracles and forget why I did them. Oh, every now and then I still do one just to keep My hand in. My last miracle was the 1969 Mets. Before that? I think you'd have to go back to the Red Sea. Aahh, that was a beauty!

[nopardons]

Shared memories ! :-)

I loved the old Mets, which is WHY you missed on fantastic show, last night. They had fans select an " AMAZIN' " team. Rusty Staub ( so fat, as to be almost unrecognizable ), Hodges' wife, Staw's boys and a film clip, from him , Kooz, Tom Terrific, and on and on. The film clips were wonderful. I'm SO sorry you missed it. I had wrongly assumed that cable was carrying it. :-(

There is almost NOTHING, like the memories of the Miracle Mets winning ; except, perhaps, when the Giants won. LOL

[BluesDuke]

"So fat as to be unrecognisable?" Ah, then Trusty Rusty (as my paternal grandmother called him - she was a huge Rusty Staub fan) must still look as he did the year he retired, 1985. I remember Rusty Staub Day at Shea Stadium - the Mets themselves gave him a goofy tribute (said to have been Darryl Strawberry and Roger McDowell's idea) by stepping up from the dugout to home plate wearing outrageous rooster-cut orange wigs.

I'd have to pick my all-time Mets roster thus:

1B - Keith Hernandez, Donn Clendenon
2B - Edgardo Alfonzo, Ken Boswell
3B - Howard Johnson, Ray Knight
SS - Bud Harrelson, Rey Ordonez (classic no-hit, great field shortstops)
OF - Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, Len Dykstra, Tommie Agee, Cleon Jones
C - Mike Piazza, Jerry Grote
SP - Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Al Jackson, Al Leiter
RP - Tug McGraw, Ron Taylor, Roger McDowell, Jesse Orosco, Randy Myers

Starting Lineup:
1. Dykstra, CF
2. Wilson, LF
3. Hernandez, 1B
4. Strawberry, RF
5. Piazza, C
6. Johnson, 3B
7. Alfonzo, 2B
8. Harrelson, SS
9. Seaver, P

You guessed it. Of all the Mets' pitchers, of any era, the one I want out there for the game I must win like yesterday can only be The Franchise...

[BluesDuke]

And, if I could add to my bench, I'd put in Trusty Rusty and the man who was a first-class pinch hitter over his final four major league seasons plus the only man ever to wear a Mets uniform who spent his entire career (eighteen major league seasons, which just so happened to be the first eighteen seasons of the Mets) with the Mets: Ed Kranepool.

[nopardons]

Kranepool WAS great ; however, he was left out of the lineup. OTOH, most of your wishlist was voted onto the " AMAZIN' " team. Those included, yesterday, were Hernandez, Harrelson, Straw. Mookie, Dykstra., Piazza, Seaver, and Koosman. :-)

Rusty was even FATTER, than he was in '85.

[BluesDuke]

Steady Eddie was a decent enough player who, in retrospect, wasn't quite enough for everyday play but was (and probably should have stayed throughout) better than useful off the bench. Himself and Staub together on the bench would make a devastating lefthanded pinch-hit contingency. If Trusty Rusty is that much, er, heftier since his playing retirement, well, I'd have to wonder how much of the food in his restaurant is actually going to his paying customers...

[nopardons]

Re ypur last query ( LOL ! ) ... exactly what went through my mind, when he ran out to the field. My exact thoughts were : " Goodness, he's eating up his profits !"

[MozarkDawg]

A Jeff Kallman piece has me back in my cleats out in right field, the smell of the grass and my mitt in my nose ....

Okay, so it was softball, not baseball -- I'm a chick, that's all they'd let us play in high school. But most of the scents, smells were the same!

Thank you for yet another WONDERFUL article!!

[BluesDuke]

Okay, so it was softball, not baseball -- I'm a chick, that's all they'd let us play in high school. But most of the scents, smells were the same!

And at least in our day they didn't make us swing aluminum bats! *ecch!*....piiiiiiiiiiiing!

[MozarkDawg]

True, so true -- I got to use a real Loiusville Slugger!

Gotta admit, it was a loooonnnngggg time between "cracks" for that poor bat.

[MozarkDawg]

Pardon my dyslexia -- of course I mean Louisville.