Mets Geek wrote a cool piece about 1977 which may get you through a slow Mets day.
www.metspolice.com
Cool Mets Fan Article (link)
I stumbled across this yesterday. Excerpts below. Worth a click to the entire thing.
6. I’ll name some names and you tell me what comes to mind. It can be a thought, a memory, or whatever you want.
Ed Kranepool= Steady Eddie. Was a Met forever. Best pinch-hitter of all time in my book. Trivia: What pinch-hitter holds the highest average for one season? Ed Kranepool, close to .490 as I remember.
Jerry Koosman= Koosman? You kiddin’? So far in this series you’ve passed by Tony Gwynn, Yastrzemski, Schmidt, the greats that we’ve all wanted to talk about. You throwin’ me a bone, or did you drop the ball, ’cause the Koos is in my top 5 Mets easy. If there’s no Koosman, there might not be a miracle. Seaver lost Game 1, Koosman won the first and last game for the Mets in the ’69 series. He also (if memory serves) staved off elimination against the A’s in ’73 with a win in Game 6. He never stopped tryin’. Had his best year, 21 or 22 wins, as part of those cellar-dwellers I spoke of. Best #2 starter the Mets ever had. Loved the Koos.
Ron Hodges= Jerry Grote got old, Duffy Dyer didnt pan out, and Hodges was our capable backstop for 3 or 4 years. I got less to say about him than his bat had to say.
Lee Mazzilli= Fan favorite, great utility player and another in a long line of great Met pinch-hitters. Believe it or not, I’d like to see this guy get another shot, a real shot at managing the Mets.
Doug Sisk= Where’s he at these days? He’d have fit right into last year’s bullpen: devastating sinker that was hardly ever seen near the strike zone.
Mackey Sasser= He was the Duffy Dyer to Gary Carter. As Dyer was supposed to be the next Grote, Sasser was supposed to be the next Carter. Same result, basically. The one thing that sticks out about Sasser was the hiccup in his throw back to the mound. It looked like he was pump-faking the pitcher. Pretty funny.
Bobby Jones= What happened to him? He was pretty good. Not a flame-thrower, but a good curve that was so slow it was like an offspeed pitch. Almost no-hit the Giants in the Playoffs in 2000. Damn Jeff Kent! Guy was good for win totals in the teens every year, and for the life of me I can’t remember what happened to him.
Butch Huskey= Mid-90’s role player for 2 or 3 years. Played everywhere but pitcher and catcher, I think. I guess he was there just waiting until the Mets got a real 3rd baseman.
Edgardo Alfonzo= Think he’s still playin’ minor league ball in the area? I dont know. This one leaves all Met fans scratching their heads. He was so good for about 2 years and then just got so bad so fast it made our heads spin. Kinda like Andruw Jones, he just lost it.
www.metspolice.com
Moving the Babe (Times Link)
Construction workers at the old Yankee Stadium begin the delicate process of moving the historic monuments to the Yankees’ new home.
Cool pics of Monument Park being dismantled.
www.metspolice.com
Sorry America, NYC Doesn’t Care About Bowl Games
ESPN keeps trying to tell me how it cool it is that they are showing 8 billion bowl games yesterday and today. I remember from my childhood that there’s probably games on the networks today. I guess. I don’t actually know. You know why?
I live in New York and we don’t care about college football.
Nope, sorry. We don’t. We don’t take anything away from you. Enjoy the games. We get it, you have nothing else to do. Around here we have a zillion sports options, and let me rank them for you.
Top Tier:
1. Yankees
2. Mets
3. “The Football Giants” (there hasn’t been a baseball team called Giants around these parts in 50 years but they still have to be referred to as the Football Giants.)
4. Jets
That’s it. The Yankees can sneeze and get the back page so they are #1. Baseball is still king in this town so they are #2. NFL comes next, and the Football Giants are the defending champions and always the team of the rich people so they are third. The Jets are their loser cousins that work a blue collar job, still it’s the NFL so they live.
Now there’s a gap.
5. Knicks. The problem is that the Knicks suck. When the Knicks are good suddenly everyone is a Knicks fan. Right now the NBA is about as popular as NASCAR in New York.
6. Rangers. If the NBA is NASCAR then the NHL is Arena Football, as in skip a season and see if anyone cares. Sure if the Rangers make the Cup Finals suddenly all the Messier jerseys will come out of storage, but it’s hard to find a hockey fan around here.
Third-tier.
7 (tie). Argue this one any way you want. Nets/Devils/Islanders. The Nets are in the NBA but said they were leaving NJ to go to Brooklyn, except they never do so they have no fans. The Devils had a ten year run of tremendous success, won three cups, lost a fourth in the finals, have the greatest goaltender of all time and yet nobody cares. The Islanders were really cool 25 years ago and haven’t done a thing since, so the fanbase dwindles year after year.
Still, all that more popular than college football around here.
Out of Town Teams:
10. Dolphins. There are a lot of Marino jerseys in these waters. The fans of fins are all hopped up this week, so they are noticeable.
11. Cowboys. There’s a bunch of 40 year olds who got into football in 1977. Then there’s a second wave of college kids who know about Troy Aikman.
Also-Rans:
12. (tie) You pick which has more fans. When St. John’s basketball is good that becomes trendy. It isn’t and hasn’t been for a while. Manhattan basketball sometimes pops up. The Metrostars/Red Bulls – I guess someone is going to those games but I’ve only met one guy who does who you can read about here.
15. The Poker freaks. ESPN has ruined the Friday night poker game for everyone forever by televising this WSOP nonsense. Try to get the fellas to play “deuces wild” for more than one hand before the Texas Hold ‘Em silliness begins. Still, way more popular than college football.
Now that we are 16 teams deep, college football makes the list:
Right around now, when the Yankees aren’t signing anyone, and the Rangers are off, and Manhattan isn’t playing, a New Yorker will pay attention to College Football. Sure we’ll tune in for the BCS game, we also tune in for tke Kentucky Derby and the World Cup finals. It’s something to stare at.
Sure Rutgers think’s they are a big deal – they got all uppity when they were like 7 & 0 a few years back. Nobody cares there papajohnsbowl winners. There’s some old dudes who follow Army/Navy. There’s some Irish guys who think Notre Dame has something to do with them, but only when ND is good.
Oh yeah then we get to NASCAR.
So America enjoy your national holiday of watching games New York doesn’t care about. We’ll be scouring the wires to see if Lowe signs with the Mets or if the Yankees sign Manny.
www.metspolice.com
MLB Network Debuts Today
The MLB Network springs to life Thursday evening, a lavish $54 million network venture, direct from Secaucus, N.J.
www.metspolice.com
