From 2007, here is a rather lengthy and terrific excerpt from a lengthy (in a good way) and terrific (in a Seaver way) Faith & Fear post about Mel Ott.
Mel Ott hit 511 home runs.
Repeat: Mel Ott hit 511 home runs. Long before anybody had ever heard of the clear or the cream, long before anybody expanded and depleted pitching staffs, long before television became a way of life. Mel Ott hit 511 home runs back when hitting 511 home runs was an almost unmatched feat and without anybody setting a VCR to record a single one of them. But he hit ‘em. He hit ‘em and hit a load of ‘em right around here.
And yet, have you, especially if you’re younger than 50, ever heard of Mel Ott beyond the most cursory of statistical mentions? Do you know who this man was and what he accomplished and where he accomplished it?
I’m guessing no.
I’m not blaming you. You can only seek out so much baseball. The rest is to be absorbed by osmosis, and for osmosis to occur, the baseball’s got to be out there somewhere. Mel Ott’s substantial slice of it isn’t anymore. Mel Ott has been lost to the mists of time. Mel Ott may be the greatest ballplayer to play in the greatest city in the world to have all but vanished from public consciousness.
It’s tough to remain an active immortal when your team has left you behind. That, of course, is what the New York Giants did to Mel Ott the second they became the San Francisco Giants. They left behind John McGraw and Christy Mathewson and Carl Hubbell and Bill Terry and hundreds of others, too. A few have managed to have the pilot lights on legends relit in recent years. Ott, though, has fallen through the cracks and pretty much straight down the memory hole, he and every one of his 511 home runs.
Go read the entire thing. Learn. Feel. See what it’s like to read a Mets related blog from someone with the ability to form a sentence without crutching on complaining about cap colors.
Greg, hope you don’t mind the length of the excerpt…based upon our emails and the whole offseason thing I figured it would be cool.
In case anyone ever wants to link to my crap, go ahead and grab all you wish…all I ask for is a link.
