I was sitting in the recliner bouncing between The Office, Thursday Night Football and Mets Yearbook 1982 and Junior blurts out of nowhere, “I hate Don Zimmer.”
What?
How does he even know who Don Zimmer is?
Kids, (and I think that might be every reader except Greg Prince from Faith and Fear) if you think the recent run of Mets teams has been awful you have no idea.
If you want to really grasp the nadir of this franchise you need to watch Mets Yearbook 1982.
Mets Yearbook 1982 is fascinating. They didn’t even try to hype the team or players. Here’s the quick summary. They beat Steve Carlton in the road opener. They beat the Phillies again in the home opener. Neil Allen had two saves.
That was it for season highlights. Imagine 5 years so bad that by the end they couldn’t even be bothered to talk about the season.
So how did they kill time? By telling us it was the 20th anniversary of 1962 and telling us about the starting lineup from 1962.
“Why do you hate Don Zimmer?”
“Because he stole David Wright’s face.”
“His face?”
“Base!”
Oh. It bothers Junior that Don Zimmer played third in 1962. Hilarious.
Back to Mets Yearbook 1982. They filled time by showing 62 and 69 and talking about Tom Seaver. I was going to make fun of that but then I realized they did the same thing I do here on the blog. When I have nothing to talk about I dust off the last championship and Tom Seaver.
Mets Yearbook 1982 mentioned a whole boatload of prospects. Kids, you haven’t heard of any of them except for Ron Darling and Darryl Strawberry. I have heard of them. I paid money to watch these “prospects” in 1983, but believe me you have never heard of them.
Other random notes: the blue uniforms look nice to me. There’s a shot of Shea in its in-between phase: the squares are gone but the blue siding wasn’t up yet (and the neon players would come later). It looks like Generic Stadium.
The film also spends a lot of time hyping Diamond Vision. Being someone who attended games in 1982 – yeah Diamond Vision was very cool.
Yearbook 82 wraps with the news that Tom Seaver would be returning home in 1983. I know where I was on April 5, 1983 and it is my favorite Mets memory of them all. Fortunately Tom would forever be a Met because only an idiot would let him go a second time.
Anybody out there live through any of this or are all you guys and gals 25?
shannon, i suffered threw those ‘lean’ years as well…besides working at shea for the parks dept. i also attended many games when the attendance was in the 5k range. the one game i wanted to be at (the return of seaver) i had the flu..you could not believe how devastated i was. i was there for every crappy no win game and the one game i would have given my left arm to be at i could not attend.
I was alive, but only turned 6 in September ’82, so I don’t remember any of this. I didn’t go to my first ballgame until August ’83 (and it was at Refurbished Old Yankee Stadium), my first Mets game until ’86, and didn’t learn about Tom Seaver until I did a book report on him in fifth grade that September. I still have a distinct memory of the network showing him in the dugout at Shea during the World Series but saying he was hurt and wouldn’t pitch. And then I remember the attempted comeback the next spring, the start in the exhibition game at Tidewater, and the subsequent retirement.
I was alive for 1982, but I don’t remember it at all.
I do remember 1991-94 very well… we won’t be seeing any Mets Yearbook shows for them.
On next viewing, keep an eye on the backs of the Mets’ uniforms. You will see a disparity between the player’s name lettering. Some of them are of the wide variety employed as a rule from 1979 to 1981. Others are thinner, as would become standard from 1983 on. 1982’s decision seemed to be “let’s use as many of the old ones as we can before they fall off.”
Which may have been how George Bamberger managed his roster.
I’m not a hundred percent sure use of the skyline shoulder patch was consistent either, but that’s from my memory of Back in the Day, not last night.
DiamondVision: the “scoreboard of the ’80s!” It got TWO segments. Geez.