On twitter today (@metspolice) I joked that Bert Blyleven did more the Mets than Robbie Alomar did. I was reminded of the below (via Baseball Reference). Go slow, it gets confusing…
Traded as part of a 4-team trade by the Texas Rangers to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Atlanta Braves sent Willie Montanez to the New York Mets. The Texas Rangers sent Tommy Boggs, Adrian Devine and Eddie Miller to the Atlanta Braves. The Texas Rangers sent a player to be named later and Tom Grieve to the New York Mets. ThePittsburgh Pirates sent Nelson Norman and Al Oliver to the Texas Rangers. The New York Mets sent Jon Matlack to the Texas Rangers. The New York Mets sent John Milner to thePittsburgh Pirates. The Texas Rangers sent Ken Henderson (March 15, 1978) to the New York Mets to complete the trade.
Let’s go slowly. Because the Pirates wanted to win the World Series, the Mets gave up Jon Matlack who won 17 in 1976 and would win 15 in Texas in 1978. The Mets got Willie Montanez (most of you haven’t heard of him), Ken Henderson (only Greg from Faith & Fear and I remember him) and Tom Grieve (a nobody) and they also lost John Milner.
I take it back. Alomar sucked in New York but he didn’t really cost the Mets anything meaningful. I think having Jon Matlack on the 1978 Mets would have been better than having Willie Montanez hit .247 in two years as a Met.
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Wow I think I lost everyone. This post dropped a lot of names that mean little to anyone. Greg Prince I bet you’re still here. Got a Ken Henderson article tucked away on Faith & Fear in Flushing?
Some of you (wait I thought only Greg made it this far) may have noticed the poll in the center column which asks which generation Mets fan you are. The results thus far…
- 1986 (30%, 32 Votes)
- Generation Piazza (20%, 21 Votes)
- Ya Gotta Believe (17%, 18 Votes)
- I Survived the late 70’s (15%, 16 Votes)
- Original 60’s (13%, 14 Votes)
- Wright and Reyes (5%, 5 Votes)
I was enthralled by Willie Montanez’s 96 RBI in 1978, third-most in Met history to that point. What a shame to learn years later that a player could drive in nearly a hundred runs and still not be all that good.
Surprisingly, I didn’t mind that trade. It was a blockbuster. A blockbuster denotes excitement. After 1977, the Mets required a little excitement. Tom Grieve may have been a nobody, but he sat on the Met bench for a year getting chummy with utilityman Bobby Valentine. Not many years later, Grieve was GM of Texas and hired his old buddy. Valentine earned his managerial spurs and returned to Flushing to lead us to something approximating glory.
In between, Grieve was traded for Pete Falcone, which I never got, considering Falcone was 0-9 against the Mets lifetime. Why remove the one pitcher you consistently beat from your schedule? In that sense, Falcone also did more for the Mets than Alomar.
Ken Henderson serves as a cautionary tale as regards one of your favorite recent Mets from thee years ago, and came up twice more in my ongoing parade of niche Mets: those whose Met tenures ended in April and those who exactly one home run as a Met. I call the latter group Club Hessman.
Greg you are the greatest.
I don’t have the rock solid memories of those years and when I do they are colored by a child’s mind. I remember not liking that 20 game loser Jerry Koosman. Get him out of here!
Ralph Kiner once said there was not enough mustard in the world to cover Montanez. Willie was very entertaining. 3 bat flips on his way to the plate and a skip over every base after a homerun. Sorry Herman Munster lookalike(Matlack), but I enjoyed Willie