Author: Shannon Shark @metspolice

As I have said before, all hail Kevin Keirst.

Kierst is in his second spring as the Mets’ clubhouse and equipment manager. He and others have rearranged and redecorated the clubhouse here, created more room, added furniture and changed the art. A Met-amorphosis, you might say. In hopes of emphasizing the club’s past and connecting the Mets of Terry Collins to those of Stengel, Westrum, Hodges, et al, he has added links to the days of the Polo Grounds, Shea and George Thomas Seaver, George Basil Theodore and George Heard Stone. And — “tah-dah!” — he has eliminated most of the black for the indoor motif.

via Marty Noble: Mets reaching out to past with hope for the future | mets.com: News.

In case you missed it, this was released a few hours before the passing of Gary Carter

image courtesy of Mets Blog

The Times asks…

Some in the Mets organization also admit that the team wants to be fair to other members of the 1986 Championship team, including Hernandez, who played longer in New York, and Darryl Strawberry, who still owns the franchise records for home runs and runs batted in.

Perhaps it is time to revisit the issue. Carter’s statistics on the Mets may not leap off the page, but he was the glue that held the team’s pitching staff together

via Should the Mets Retire Carter’s Number? – NYTimes.com.

Look, there were about 20 years to retire the number.  If it was the right thing to do then they should have done it and the man could have been there and enjoyed the day.  Doing it now is just the Mets being reactionary Mets.

Let 8 sit next to 24 in the unused pile, and if some day the right player comes along then give it to him (or her).

More to say about this one I finish off my eBook Send The Beer Guy coming soon (although I need to re-write the Carter chapter.)

I had planned to congratulate the great Faith and Fear on their anniversary, but it was not a time for celebration this weekend after the passing of Gary Carter.

As a new week begins, some sage advice from Greg Prince:

Don’t boycott what you love. My tenth-grade social studies teacher learned I was a Mets fan. I’m a Mets fan, too, he told me, but I hope they lose every game they play this year. HUH? I gasped. The year was 1979, the depths of de Roulet, and he wanted the team sold ASAP. I got it but I couldn’t quite go with so draconian a solution. (The Mets were kind enough to forge a middle ground, losing merely 99 times and only then going on the market.) In that vein, I get the notion that an inoccupation of Citi Field theoretically speeds along certain transactions that may seem necessary in light of where the franchise has undeniably gone awry…but why wholly deprive yourself in the interim? Don’t want to overly support the Mets? You can curb your habit, I suppose. Yet you’re not sitting there rubbing your hands together over news of the veritable swallows returning to Port St. Capistrano only to turn your nose up if someone asks you to go to a game in 2012. I never try to spend anybody else’s money, but I’d advise investing in at least one game this season. Why? Because when the season ends, there won’t be any more for another six months.

via Seven Years, Eight Wishes « Faith and Fear in Flushing.