Replies

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!