Magazine Cover Derby Round 1.22

[Benjamin Grimm]

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Vote for the cover that you like the best. Voting will run for seven days.



The $1,000,000 Contract Seaver Wants

Countrywide Sports, April 1970.

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Dwight Gooden and the Mets: Wait Til This Year

Sport Magazine, April 1986.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/19860400_SPORT.jpg>





NY (Heart) Baseball

The Sporting News, October 30, 2000.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/20001030_TSN.jpg>





Casey Stengel

New York Sunday News Magazine, April 11, 1962.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/19620411_SUNDAYNEWS.jpg>





Dwight Gooden N.Y. Mets "Dr. K"

Baseball Hobby News, August 1991.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/19910800_BHN.jpg>

[whippoorwill]

Why five this time?

[Benjamin Grimm]

=whippoorwill post_id=7983 time=1556026196 user_id=79]
Why five this time?

[Lefty Specialist]

Countrywide Sports rabble-rousing again.



Casey looking like he's just been told, "sorry, we're out of onion bagels".



Yankeeness automatically disqualifies any cover.



1986 Doc for the win (in my book anyway)

[G-Fafif]

The Daily News Sunday magazine is something I forgot existed. For years I had a cover from 1979 on my bedroom wall, exclaiming that "If this team has a future, its name is MAZZILLI," which I'd be tickled to see pop up in this competition. I notice the date Grimm listed in April 11, the first game the Mets played, while the date on the cover is April 8. It's an understandable Mets fan muscle memory switch.



I'm also now remembering that Newsday had a Sunday magazine called LI and they in 1979 had the tenth anniversary of the 1969 Mets on their cover, using various '70s baseball cards and generally taking a tone of despair in describing the plunge the franchise had taken over the previous decade. I had saved that for years, too. If I had known a Cover Derby was coming, I would have held on to it many years longer.



Doc's looking good, NY indeed HEARTs baseball and Seaver deserves what he can get, but I'm in a Sunday supplement state of mind.

[A Boy Named Seo]

I had that copy of Baseball Hobby News and I'm disappointed to report that my baseball card portfolio never quite matched my 1991 ambition. PS - anyone wanna buy some 87 Topps cards???



I voted for the clean and uncluttered Casey cover.

[G-Fafif]

Perhaps the St. Pete eagle eyes can confirm whether Casey is indeed standing upon the Sadecki Spot.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

"Wail Till This Year" is a prescient SPORT headline. Hard to read in the pic but says it all.



No Mets team had ever been as a prohibitive favorite as the 86 club and they totally lived up to the hype until things got hairy in October.

[Edgy MD]

That green masthead on SPORT is funny. It clashes badly with Gooden's blue sleeve, and by 1986, that was the sort of thing layout artists cared about.



That said, the cover gets my vote.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I would guess they went with green to convey spring had arrived and to pick up on the (ivy?) background. I guess he's in Wrigley

[G-Fafif]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: "Wail Till This Year" is a prescient SPORT headline. Hard to read in the pic but says it all. No Mets team had ever been as a prohibitive favorite as the 86 club and they totally lived up to the hype until things got hairy in October.

The gamut of preseason publications -- The Sporting News Yearbook, Street & Smith's, Bill Mazeroski, Sports Illustrated, Inside Pitch -- along with your local newspapers -- were all on this bandwagon, which made the anticipation nearly as delicious as what was to follow (and the 2-3 start such a shock to the system).



Living up to the hype is an underrated core competency of the '86 club. The Mets haven't approached many seasons as the consensus choice to win their division let alone a championship. To my recollection, only the '88 club followed the same trajectory (if not all the way to its logical conclusion). Both the 2006 and 2015 teams were considered promising and likely to improve, but neither was framed as a lock. We know nobody saw 1969 coming. The 1973 team was projected to contend but wasn't any kind of widely heralded favorite. The 1999 and 2000 Mets were a Wild Card possibility among Wild Card possibilities. 2016 had a "World Series or Bust" aura that proved misapplied. And the years when the Mets were seen as ready to lap the field...well, you don't see them in the preceding sentences.



Making good on the dare to be great will never not be incredibly impressive in Met annals, even if it somehow happens again.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Daily News Sunday magazine is something I forgot existed. For years I had a cover from 1979 on my bedroom wall, exclaiming that "If this team has a future, its name is MAZZILLI," which I'd be tickled to see pop up in this competition.

I've spent about half an hour last week trying to score an internet image of this Daily News Magazine for the derby, without any luck. I have this mag in my collection. It's somewhere.

[Benjamin Grimm]

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/images/magazines/1.22w.png>



Rankings so far:

1. Casey of the Mets (Sports Illustrated)

2. Mets in the Stretch (Life)

3. Best Infield Ever? (Sports Illustrated)

4. Dwight the Great (Sports Illustrated)

5. The Movin' Mets (Sports Illustrated)

6. Late Innings (The New Yorker)

7. Pennant Pressure (Sports Illustrated)

8. Jay Hook of the N.Y. Mets (SarcoScope)

9. You Can Go Home Again (Sports Illustrated)

10. Doctor K (Sports Illustrated)

11. Tom & Nancy Seaver (McCall's)

12. Casey Stengel (New York Sunday News Magazine)

13. The Straw That Stirs The Mets (Sports Illustrated)

14. Darryl Strawberry: The Mets' Super Sophomore is the Apple of New York's Eye (The Sporting News)

15. Iwo Jima (Jock Magazine)

16. Darryl Strawberry: No Big Apple Hype (Inside Sports)

17. Tom Seaver & The Art Of Pitching (Sport Magazine)

18. Big Gun: Dave Kingman (The Sporting News)

19. Mona Lisa (The New Yorker)

20. Mr. Long Ball (Sports Illustrated)

21. The Straw Man! (New York Sports)

22. The Baseball Battle for New York (Sports Illustrated)