Author: Shannon Shark @metspolice

The other day the Orioles trotted out a player named Montanez and it made me nostalgic for good ol’ Willie Montanez.

Willie was another of the non-stars of The Torre Years (Flushing version).

At age 29 Willie was an all-star for Atlanta, so the Mets traded away John Milner and Jon Matlack in a multi-team deal to get him.

Now Mets fans, what happens when the Mets bring in someone else’s All-Star?

That’s right, they would come to Shea and suck.

Montanez handed in .256 with 17 homers and 96 RBI in 1978 – not bad, add some steroids and 17 is 30 modern day homers….but in 79 the suckiness crept in and he hit .234 before being shipped off to Texas for Ed Lynch and Mike Jorgensen.

I’m a little young to know why the Mets gave up on Matlack who won 15, 14, 13, 16, 17 and 7 games before being sent off as a 28 year old lefthander.  He seems to me like the kind of guy you’d want around.  Maybe some old-timer out there can hit comments and educate me.  (And don’t tell me that uniform doesn’t look 100 times better than what they wear now

Willie Montanez, wherever you are, I lift my Rheingold to you.

www.metspolice.com

An insightful post from The Mets Police message boards from Thomas.

To say that *nobody* cares about this thing is not quite true. As a baseball fan from the UK, I find that the first thing people say when you bring up the sport is ‘oh, that’s an American thing. Why would you care about that?’ It’s as if you are betraying cricket or something!

Matt Smith writes for the Baseball GB Blog and summarizes quite well why the WBC is important internationally:
http://www.baseballgb.co.uk/?p=1825
What is good for baseball around the world will in the long run be good for MLB (since all players of any quality gravitate to the States.)

Take the two players signed by the Pirates last year from India:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090220&content_id=3854160&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
With over a billion people, promoting baseball in India could see more new talent make its way to the majors. I think the WBC is integral to that effort, especially now that baseball is no longer an Olympic sport.

I agree that it could be held at a better time than during spring training, but that still wouldn’t resolve the problems of franchise fans worrying about the potential injuries their players could sustain playing for their country. Nevertheless, I think the benefits of the WBC outway the disadvantages.


I’m not against some sort of international play, but pulling folks out of spring training doesn’t make sense to me.

There’s probably some solution that uses the champions from the Japan series, and some sort of nationalization from the teams that play in the Caribbean Series – I just don’t know how you get “Derek Jeter” to show up some place in January.


It just doesn’t seem right to me to play it here at the start of a season.  Maybe November would make more sense.  I’d be up for some Seibu Lions vs Phillies action.

www.metspolice.com