The Mets Police

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  Remember, two beers not eight.

No the Mets are not wearing this today, it’s just a $48 fashion cap that maybe could have been interesting had someone put an NY on the front.

 

This is something I do every year, and is usually one of the most controversial posts of the year because I always accidentally leave someone out and people with hit me with things like “didn’t you know Player X’s grandmother was Irish” etc.

The rules? Be Irish, have Irish Ancestry….or be “close enough” that we can include you (you’ll see what I mean soon enough).  No birth certificates will be checked.

I don’t think we have any new players on the All-Irish Team this season, but let’s keep an eye on Tanner Murphy and Matt O’Neill down at AAA.

With that, let’s send it down to the field as Bob Murphy introduces the team.

And it is a Happy St. Patrick’s Day from William A. Shea Stadium (and a big thanks to Bill Shea for giving us the gift of baseball).  Tim McCarver is up in the TV booth.

Our manager and coaches.  Please welcome back our old friend Terry Collins, along side bench coach Regis Philibin.

Introducing the pitchers:

Our starters: Nolan Ryan, Tim Leary, Terry Leach, Jim McAndrew, and David Cone. (Half-Irish Matt Harvey has a photo shoot and is unable to join us today.).  

The bullpen:  Sean Patrick Gilmartin,  Colin McHugh, Tim Burke, Greg McMichael, Chuck McElroy, Tug McGraw, P.J. Conlon & Roger McDowell. Sam McWilliams joins the AAA All Irish Team in case we need to bring someone up mid-season, and Sean Reid-Foley has a shot at making the squad.

Behind the plate: James McCann. Mike Fitzgerald, Todd Hundley, Duffy Dyer and of course Charlie O’Brien

Third base: Daniel Murphy gets moved over to cover.  Murph is a good guy always willing to switch positions to help the team.

Shortstop: Roy McMillan

Second base: Jeff McNeil has taken over for past incumbent Doug Flynn

First base: he is part-Irish on his mother’s side, The Captain, Keith Hernandez

In left: Kevin McReynolds

In Center: Brian McRae

And the Right Fielder: Dave Gallagher

We have room for five players in the bench: Super-sub Joe McEwing, Justin Turner (with that hair I am assuming he is Irish), Jeff McKnight, Doug Flynn, WBC Team Israel’s star Tyler Patrick Kelly (son of Patrick Kelly),  and Tom O’Malley is depth at  AAA All Irish Team.

Pete Flynn will take care of the grounds, so let’s play ball!

Every year I miss somebody, let me know who.

LGM

Well friends, once again Mets Police was right.  The Mets should not allow their players to play in the stupid WBC that nobody watches because that’s a place where players get injured.

Hey, at least his World Baseball Classic team advanced!!!!!!!

Does the trumpet guy still get into Citi Field for free?

In an annual tradition, there’s nothing like a Mostly Rerun Post that is also Uni Watch Click Bait.  Come on Paul, you know you wanna link…..

As always, we begin with the Green Murph.

The one above is not mine, but actually Nick’s.  Nick is not messing around. He also has the Kid 8 patch on his 28 who emailed me a few jersey pics.

Nick really brought his A game. Here is a 1985 version via Mitchell & Ness. If you don’t know who 18 was on the 1985 Mets then you are in the middle of the wrong post for your level of nerdiness.

This next one Nick says is late 1980’s, but MBTN shows Mark Carreon wearing 45 in 1990 – regardless, Lukas is gonna lose his mind when he sees the font.

The next one Nick says is early 1990’s. Hubie Brooks? D.J. Dozier?

Next, Nick shares his 2006 Joe Smith.

And finally Nick has this 2008 style. I think I boycotted these or wasn’t in jersey-mania mode yet. You know who #5 is right?

This next one wasn’t an on-field one, but it’s back from when the Mets did Player’s Choice jerseys (those were cool fun) and this is one of my favorite possessions which I got for $30 in the team shop the year Murph was out and you Ike Hypers thought we’d never see Murph again.

You can see the cool front here…

 

Here are some Mets caps from over the years.    I find the third one “racist” (for this post lets just use the word to mean perpetuating a stereotype, and we can parse language some other day).

People get mad at me for calling out this cap.  (It’s cool to be racist as long as its Mr. Met being racist or something.)   I would like to point out that the Mets have not broken this out in a few years.  Bravo Inclusive Mets.

The first one cap is boring and the middle one an abomination.

 

Again, good job by the Mets moving away from that ill-advised stunt cap.

This was the boring 2016 cap.  Looks like this is a league wide template and everyone gets white on green. Zzzz. At least it doesn’t have a stereotype.

 

For 2017, this cap

And for 2018 which is not as nice as last year’s.

 

Here’s my not-inexpensive Green Reds Seaver.  I don’t think I have worn it, maybe once, because I am afraid to get it dirty.

 

 

Here’s a screen grab I took in 2015.  There is that yucky racist Mr. O’Met.  Again, for those of you who get mad why don’t you imagine what that cap would look like on say Cinco De Mayo or Chinese New Year and tell me it’s still cool.

Fortunately this cap seems to have disappeared as people become more aware of the issues.  In general, I didn’t find too many offensive stereotype driven products this year.  Good job everyone!

 

This is my old Original Irish Night cap I have from way back at Shea whenever they did Original Irish Night.

And here’s probably the best of the Irish caps.  The Irish hybrid.  And yeah that’s Regis Philbin!

And now the non-rerun part.

This is the 2019 cap.

And the 2020 and 2021 cap.

and in exciting “new content” it’s the 2022 and 2023 caps.

The best of the set is the “Regis Philbin” combo.  The Mets should do this.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and remember don’t embarrass my Irish ancestors by acting like a buffoon.

Let’s take a look at Monday night’s ratings. You will notice there have NOT been articles or press releases about how many people are watching, so I will do the work/

The Team USA game, which started at 10pm as Baseball continues to grow the game – drew 762,000 people.  Wrestling’s 10pm hour drew a million five.  The 10pm NBA game drew 1.8M.  GUTFELD at 11pm drew 1.7M

The 7pm game, the kind of game you might lose a closer in (but not THAT game, I am talking Monday here), drew….wait for it….394,000

Well, let’s take a look at Tuesday – Team USA had the day off, but there was a game on at 10pm which drew, wait for it, 395,000 people.  The 7pm game drew 377,000 people.  The NIT game at 7pm drew 569,000.  Fixer to Fabulous at 9pm drew 1.1 million.  Maybe MLB should just have players fix up homes?