Magazine Cover Derby Round 1.23

[Benjamin Grimm]

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



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



Frank Thomas

Great Moments In Sports, September 1963.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/19630900_GMIS.jpg>





We're Everybody's No. 1 Target!

Score, November 1970.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/19701100_SCORE.jpg>





Doctor K: Baseball's Hottest Pitcher

Time, April 7, 1986.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/19860407_TIME.jpg>





Edgardo Alfonzo: Majors' Most Under-Rated Player

Baseball Digest, March 2001.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/20010300_BD.jpg>





Darryl Strawberry: Don't Give Up On Me!

Recovery Today, December 2017.

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/magazines/20171200_RECOVERY.jpg>

[Guest 41Forever]

The Doc cover is a classic!



But I'm intrigued by the teasers on the Score cover. Every single one of them seems to have a negative connotation. It's like someone decided there wasn't a niche for the pissed off sports fan. Sports talk radio before there was such a thing! About 45 years ahead of toxic Twitter.

[MFS62]

Fonzie's deserved compliment.

(But how you can be most underrated? If you're the most, then you've been rated.)

Later

[A Boy Named Seo]

Great Moments in Sports (Great Moments in Sports???) is a cool shot, but looks really color-treated and ends up looking kinda yellow. I wonder if that's how the actual cover looked or if that's just the internet image.



Anyway, went with puffy hair Doc and TIME.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I went with SCORE because I get off on tabloids. Comes off like a Pro Wrestling magazine

[Edgy MD]

Holy crap! The Mets were right about being everybody's target! Look at Jerry Grote and Ken Boswell about to get their heads blown off!



https://metsrostercentral.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/score.jpg>

[whippoorwill]

I wanted to vote for three of them

[kcmets]

I'll have to dig out that Deacon Jones article to read lol...



Added another vote to the Doc K landslide.

[Lefty Specialist]

"Booze and Butts were Destroying my Career!" lol

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

"And by butts I don't smoking! I mean, I liked men's asses and in 1970 that was career suicide! LOL!"

[G-Fafif]

Doc on the cover of Time directly after 1985 is as impossible to touch as Doc on the mound during 1985.



Runner-up love to Fonzie for making a magazine cover for being underrated (or "under-rated") well after it was established he was underrated. Edgardo was his generation's Joe Rudi, oxymoronically becoming widely appreciated for not being widely appreciated. Sadly, Fonzie peaked prior to this splash of publicity.



"Recovery Today" could refer to the magazine recovering a photo from a Google search, but it works well for them.



Nice to see Tom again. This round has my three favorite Mets of all-time competing (Doc and Fonzie are 2 and 3 by me). I do wonder how much appetite there still was for the potboiler approach to sports journalism.



Frank Thomas was indeed a slugger in full color. Doesn't look like he's slugging that pitch, though.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Because the Polo Grounds Mets were the first thing America thought of when the topic of "the greatest moments in sports" came up. True to form, with a national magazine cover on the line, Frank Thomas, hitting star of those bumbling but lovable Mets mishits a squibber that probably needed at least four and a half bounces just to get past the pitcher's mound. Classic.

[Edgy MD]

I'm still trying to find out which star pitcher ruined his career with alcohol and asses. My bet is on future Met Dean Chance. He roomed with Bo Belinsky with the Angels. If that story wasn't clouded in a haze of smoke and tuchuses then I don't know what.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Edgy MD wrote: I'm still trying to find out which star pitcher ruined his career with alcohol and asses. My bet is on future Met Dean Chance. He roomed with Bo Belinsky with the Angels. If that story wasn't clouded in a haze of smoke and tuchuses then I don't know what.

How 'bout Denny McClain?

[Zvon]

I love the Thomas cover for it's photo. The view, the color, the swing. Without the ball dribbling to third it might have gotten my vote.



https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/o01Fp5CSYMX7jX2JiPdxDnRI4nvUrsXoxCu-NeLGlFRhdvE8ItS7ymYp2utu9-xzU1SUTk98PIYL1WM2x3fMgXZqmlZiXXHsia4A6cn-KX-YG2mS71PdGimzAvoSGtNx9WoijnjzD7CxZLj0FN2AiSxMjAbt1DwPBwT2ds6FvuJO8DVhElGK1AEcw_MlAlPR6WmzTOFDkEwNFl6n1mpsJSwzIzfq4u0WJQPnrs6lORQypkwX70BYLkhOk-43ZAXqHMciv5BIGKMWoQCS_XLCICUlK5vo-OPknim-dnmrlpiU5xDnDXSbJCNlIANsTV0e7JZvMxEkPVoKrRNgaEpI6eVk2Ir40dQKudh1bJ19X1RubF-B1fBSC3eNqh8oON-OJgpJ-CDg5Q4lCAVvR6oE-3__uxfBYvSjXzhoAg6PNo1pvGcm2R_KX8fuFiWMikf0DMclO-NTb71gCe6HzxgcXq43rqsTKIjQJjPieJ60uUt6-0mkvH29uxZiRHJK5fFjkl49tq0WWoVn43TY5AHtciIfdlodrfEqJ2NtTxjwbqwXC4I8ogEen-iTgAc8Ti7K_TidY0rrAiW2hFxVJoctqDP0D4X8UoC9zLMRUOtBgKn3-QKNoiD0NABiAVPxNVaVXpA_iiuf-gk7mcibNwKCV4sE4WYG2KI9=w308-h400-no>



Nah, that Doc cover rules.

[Frayed Knot]

Yeah I was going to say that Frank might have been involved in some great moments in sports, but that swing wasn't one of them.

[Edgy MD]

Agreed about Frank. Even without seeing the trajectory of the ball, he seems way off-balance.



As for McLain, he certainly is at the top of any list of self-destructive pitchers of that era. But he was a top pitcher as recently as 1969. I guess by November 1970, after his first shit season, he might be ready to make his confession. It just seemed kinda soon, so I thought of a guy who was a little further removed from top form.

[whippoorwill]

That was one of the covers I wanted to vote for.



Can't turn away Darryl in recovery though.



Fonzie was my third choice, because I really liked him plus his last name is almost the same as my daughters

[Edgy MD]

It says something, I guess, that the Mets were willing to let Straw fly the colors in a studio shot for Recovery Today.

[Frayed Knot]

IIRC, McClain's biggest self-proclaimed vice was something like a 24 can/day Pepsi jones.

Not that that's quite the same as butts and booze (which he could have had in addition to being the leading member of the Pepsi Generation) but he sure packed on the

pounds over time and that certainly doesn't help a career.

[Benjamin Grimm]

http://leaptoad.com/mets/covers/images/magazines/1.23w.png>



Rankings so far:

1. Casey of the Mets (Sports Illustrated)

2. Mets in the Stretch (Life)

3. Dr. K: Baseball's Hottest Pitcher (Time)

4. Best Infield Ever? (Sports Illustrated)

5. Dwight the Great (Sports Illustrated)

6. The Movin' Mets (Sports Illustrated)

7. Late Innings (The New Yorker)

8. Pennant Pressure (Sports Illustrated)

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

10. You Can Go Home Again (Sports Illustrated)

11. Doctor K (Sports Illustrated)

12. Tom & Nancy Seaver (McCall's)

13. Casey Stengel (New York Sunday News Magazine)

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

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

16. Iwo Jima (Jock Magazine)

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

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

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

20. Mona Lisa (The New Yorker)

21. Mr. Long Ball (Sports Illustrated)

22. The Straw Man! (New York Sports)

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

[Edgy MD]

There were several superlatives in this batch:



The Mets are everybody's #1 TARGET.



Gooden is baseball's HOTTEST PITCHER.



Alfonzo is MLB's MOST UNDERRATED PLAYER.



If Frank Thomas could have been baseball's LOSINGEST SLUGGER and Darryl MLB's MOST RELAPSED ADDICT, this group would have really stood out.