Category: mets

The Mets act is af if they won the 1955 World Series.

Say Hey, Giants Fans Show Their Wistful Side
By RICHARD SANDOMIR

The members of the New York Baseball Giants Nostalgia Society know this: Their team’s history is just as rich as that of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Their Giants won more pennants and World Series titles than the Dodgers did.

They had Christy Mathewson, John J. McGraw and Willie Mays.
Yet these 60 or 70 Ottophiles, nearly all men — and mostly of a certain demographic that saw those Giants play — cannot stir a revolution.

They cannot alter this irrefutable fact: They long ago lost the nostalgia battle to Pee Wee and the Duke, as well as to Jackie Robinson’s civil rights breakthrough, and to the deep connection between the Dodgers and their borough and the Dodgers’ 1955 World Series victory.

For half a century, the Dodgers have bathed in waves of wistfulness denied the Giants, who have no match for the Boys of Summer sobriquet created by Roger Kahn in his elegiac 1971 memoir.
“Very few are standing up for Buck Ewing and Amos Rusie,” said the historian John Thorn, referring to a couple of antique Giants Hall of Famers.

Consider this outrage: The Mets used Ebbets Field, particularly its rotunda (named for Robinson), as an architectural model for their new Citi Field. No recognition has yet been accorded the quirky home of the Giants.

“They didn’t incorporate any of the Polo Grounds in the design,” Steven Rappaport, a member of the society, who grew up among Dodgers fans in Flatbush, said during the nostalgia society’s meeting last Thursday.

July 28, 1999
Sports of The Times; 2021? Mets Miss Chance For 1988
By DAVE ANDERSON

THE voice on Shea Stadium’s public-address system had a spooky alien squeakiness.
”Join us as we play baseball in the year 2021,” the voice announced. ”Your favorite team, the Mercury Mets, will do intergalactic battle with the Pirates of planet Pittsburgh.”

For the occasion, the Mets wore black Mercury Mets shirts with silver lettering on the front, silver numbers and names (vertically) on the back and black caps with the Mercury symbol.
All this was part of Major League Baseball’s silly surrender to the Century 21 realtors’ promotion that the Yankees, thankfully, declined to join along with the Dodgers, the Cubs and four other clubs.

It was known as ”Turn the Clock Ahead Night” to 2021, but the Mercury Mets were hoping to turn the clock back to 1988: the last time their New York ancestors finished in first place.
If the Mercury Mets had won and the Braves had lost in Atlanta, the Mets would have hopped into first place in the National League East by one-half game. But the Mercury Mets lost, 5-1, and the Braves won. So much for those silver-and-black shirts. You could almost hear the 36,337 fans grumbling, ”They never shoulda changed the uniform.”

Burn them. Better yet, put them on a spaceship to Mercury.

“He’s still a nice player, but let’s not get crazy,” Randolph said. “I hope he stays this way all year long. But he came in here as our fourth outfielder, and when your backup guys come in and really do a job for you, you love that kind of thing.”

Sorry Angel. Even if you hit .400 with 73 HRs you are destined to ride the bench.