Over the weekend I reran the post about Kiner’s odd Mets cap. Steve may have the answer.
To end all this mystery, I have just gone to my incredible resource…almost every Met Yearbook since 1969. The 1972 Yearbook explains everything. There is a 2 page spread “Planting The Seeds…the cultivation of major league championships is sown on the obscure, but vital and constantly tilled fields of the Player Development Program. Among the Projects: The Florida Instructional League, 1971.” EVERYBODY is wearing the hat Kiner has. Some players are wearing home jerseys, some road. Jerry Grote is giving catching tips…he is wearing number 43. So numbers are not indicative of anything. Whitey Herzog is in full catcher’s gear. Almost every prospect was a future dud, except maybe Ken Singleton and Mike Jorgensen.
One picture fully explains the Kiner picture above…it is captioned “Special batting instructor Ralph Kiner and Connors, Singleton, Wayne Garrett (an established MLB player by then, wearing #45) and Jorgensen watch video replay machine.” (The machine looks state of the art for that time…something akin to an old B&W tv monitor)…Jorgensen is wearing a home jersey, #28…Kiner is wearing a road jersey, number obscured.
Here is the pic that solves the mystery…link courtesy of Paul Lukas of Uni Watch (that is his third great mention here today already)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3152/2845327010_7f91d6dfc0_o.jpg
That picture is also my ideal for what the Met uniforms should look like today…no black anywhere…varsity font on road numbers…names on back would be ok with me…the following would be a blue alt (the 1982 road alt):
http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/820/413/jones_display_image.jpg?1301433153
I like the Blue, indeed.
It’s a great shade of blue…and I like the orange lettering and orange/blue/orange striping as opposed to the 1983-84 road alt:
http://bapple2286.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/straw-83tt.jpg
That one had gray lettering and orange/gray/orange stripes. They would probably make it now in a button down and they might want to make the stripes really thin piping instead of the thicker knit. BTW, the Mets have never worn any blue top at home during a game…only on the road. The only colors they have worn at home has been white and black…how sad.
i shook hands with terry collins out side the mets club house at AT&T park with my mets black jersey on friday nite.
me-nice game terry
terry-nice jersey.
The old yearbooks could solve any mystery–and in fact did so on a couple of occasions for the Mets by the Numbers book. The current yearbooks are the size of the phone book, cost as much as dinner, and contain precious little information of value. The media guides, though, have only gotten better, save for a few mistakes.
the video monitor was a sony reel to reel tape recorder named by the mets called “video logic”. it was featured in a t,v,guide magazine article in 1971.
cleon jones took advantage of the wor-tv control room inside shea stadium as far back as 1966.
he would ask the production staff to roll back the video tapes of his at bats to study.