I was working on my upcoming e-book Send The Beer Guy and doing some research on Seaver’s return on April 5, 1983 which I wrote about in the book. I knew Mike Howard was the Opening Day RFer and started wondering what else he did for the Mets that year. Greg Prince from Faith and Fear of course had the answer…
Q: Who was in the Opening Day lineup for the Mets in 1983, drove in the winning run and never played for the Mets again?A: Mike Howard.Yes, good old…that guy. Howard, starting right fielder a month and a day before Darryl Strawberry came up, went 1-for-3, stroking a run-scoring single in the home seventh in support of Doug Sisk Tom having exited after six. Mike not only never played for the Mets again, he didn’t bat in that game again. He was sent out to Tidewater, replaced in the lineup by Danny Heep, on the roster by Mark Bradley and in the annals of Metsdom by no one. Nobody else owned a piece of Opening Day the way Mike Howard did and was less rewarded for it.
