SNY to Feature Best Years, Worst Years, All Years

[HahnSolo]

They've got to show the ball off the top of the wall play, no?
At the Mets HOF "postseason video kiosk", little Solo and I watched that play about 5 times in a row, goosebumps every time.

[Zvon]

G-Fafif wrote: 1973 Mets Yearbook, Tuesday night at 7:00. Repeat, 1973 Mets Yearbook, Tuesday night at 7:00. Watch, record, whatever. No excuses accepted if you have access to SNY.

SNY don't reach me.
Can you let me know how much footage from the playoffs they show? It's possible I might be in it, but very unlikely because they always have seemed to avoid showing footage from the last game, when fans went wild.

Things were out of control in the stands for at least the last 2 innings if I remember right.

Can anyone say what inning they took the Reds families from the wooden built box in front of the field box seats and led them away to the Reds bullpen?
That's pretty much when things began to get out of hand.

[G-Fafif]

One more bump. Tonight at 7, 1973. No matter how grainy, it's gotta look clearer than 2010.

[G-Fafif]

Thursday night, 6:30, it's Mets Yearbook: 1967. I hear they have a rookie of note and hire a new manager toward the end.

[Edgy MD]

I'm excited about that Denehy guy.

[G-Fafif]

Reminder: 6:30 tonite -- in case you don't reflexively tune into SNY these evenings at 6:30.

[Guest themetfairy]

Wow - listening to Whitey Herzog's scouting report on Jon Matlack was pretty amazin'!

[G-Fafif]

Wow - listening to Whitey Herzog's scouting report on Jon Matlack was pretty amazin'!

Indeed. Let the MFYs keep their two-dimensional Blahm-berg (he's Jewish and he was the first DH -- got it). We got a rookie of the year and three-time All-Star.

Unspoken but definitely between the lines if one listened for it: MFYs had first draft pick in 1967 because they finished LAST in 1966.

[G-Fafif]

It's a Mets Yearbook marathon on SNY this Friday, 3 PM to 10 PM, all fourteen installments thus far produced running in chronological order. The rundown is here.

It will be a happy Black Friday after all.

[Ceetar]

time to set my tivo so i can finally see them all.

[G-Fafif]

SNY interrupts a blur of college basketball and other who-cares programmng to present Mets Yearbook: 1982 Thursday night (12/2) at 7:30 PM. This may be the first installment to which I'm anticipatorily hostile in that I seriously hated the 1982 season -- a harbinger for the venom with which I'd come to view 1992 and 2002. If they can make me gauzily nostalgic for the year of Georges Bamberger & Foster and the 15-game losing streak and the .333 ball played from June to October, then brother, they can sell me pay-per-view of Roberto Alomar's Hall of Fame induction speech.

/crossing fingers regarding 2012

[G-Fafif]

I hope y'all got to see 1982. If you didn't, you missed:

--A half-hour with Steve Lamar, who would have you pining for a long car ride with Wayne Hagin

--One brief mention of the excitement surrounding George Foster, which seems to die after exactly one game. (Though Foster does get a high five from a less partisan Philly Phanatic.)

--The Maza family, which keeps score, gets a cap and tips the usher en route to a Great Time at Shea

--Buddy Harrelson of the Future, Ron Gardenhire

--Minor league footage of Jose "Oh-kwen-doh"

--The long-term promise of Jeff Bittiger

--Craig Swan with three days' growth

--George Bamberger not looking dismayed

--"Hustlin' Mookie Wilson"

--Desperate flashbacks to the 1963 highlight film (with new, helpful Chyron graphics that identified "Casey Stengel," in case you didn't know who was talking about all them placards)

--Production music out of the yin-yang

--And, best of all, not one but TWO segments devoted to that great-looking rookie in the outfield...DiamondVision, "the scoreboard of the '80s"

I'd love to say it meant well in the spirit of the '60s highlight films wherein true highlights were hard to come by, but its hokey cheeriness and evasion of a clear narrative just underscored how fucking awful 1982 turned over the final four months.

That said, a few indisputable super fun things:

--A lengthy segment (lots of lengthy segments needed to suck up time otherwise devoted to 97 brutal losses) in which the 1962 Opening Day lineup is recalled through closeups of the Original Mets' baseball cards, artifacts you were less likely to see then than you are now on Internet bulletin boards and such.

--Sherman "Roadblock" Jones, in Starter jacket, throwing out the first pitch in the Home Opener, commemorating his role 20 years earlier as the first Home Opener starter (there seemed to be a vague Twenty Years of Mets theme informing the film when it remembered to have a theme).

--Restaurateur of the '10s Darryl Strawberry, in tuxedo shirt and bowtie (no jacket), picking up his Doubleday award, and being interviewed by Jackson, Miss. TV on how every day in every way he keeps getting better and better.

--Dave Kingman blasting his franchise-best 119th home run, and Lamar, to his or the scriptwriter's credit, referring to it as a "Sky King" shot.

--Tacked on at the end, a slice of Tom Seaver's return press conference, during which he (accurately) warned the results might be there but the effort would be and, by the way, he's happy to be a New York Met again. This was followed by a shot of players gathering around Bamberger in his second Spring Training and Lamar Haganistically reminding us Opening Day is April 5, 1983!

No Mets Yearbook isn't a worthwhile endeavor, but even with 28 years to gird myself, I sure cringed a whole lot.

[G-Fafif]

Mets Yearbook returns, Thursday night, 6:30 with...1969!

Brought to you by Borden, if I'm not mistaken.

[G-Fafif]

After this afternoon's game!

[G-Fafif]

I knew they'd edit/hatchet the highlight film to avoid showing costly postseason clips, but SNY committed heresy in its presentation of Mets Yearbook: 1969. I guess their news judgment was nothing much happened in the playoffs and World Series.

[G-Fafif]

Mets Yearbook: 1970 debuts Wednesday night, 6:30, after Mets-Rox. Seaver, Agee, Clendenon and Harrelson all had banner years. The fans had Banner Day. Yet the Miracle Mets slid into merely mundane.

But I look forward to be propagandized all over again.

[G-Fafif]

I somehow missed the premiere of Mets Yearbook: 1977 on Thursday evening, but was fortunate enough to catch a rebroadcast not long after today's game -- more fortunate than I was to experience the 1977 season in full.

Lots of Mets in leather jackets, enunciating poorly. The BS level is off the charts, as Joe Torre convinces us that he's stopped thinking of what happened on June 15 as the Tom Seaver Trade and instead views it as the Steve Henderson Trade (many excited allusions to the "new look pitching staff". Also lots of non-Shea set pieces: Joe riding horses with his family; Ed Kranepool criticizing the state of the James Monroe High School ball field while standing amid its rocks and pebbles. They get to 16-year veteran Ed early, which is never a good sign.

Inspiring story, however, regarding Jackson Todd's overcoming cancer (with a 'fro that outdoes Doug Flynn's; Flynn's pissed that he can't afford a house in New York), and a little fun with the blackout, if not the looting.

Set your DVRs for 1:30 PM Tuesday for another run. If you're of the proper vintage to recall '77, of course you want to miss it. And if you're not, attempt to discern what the fuss is all about.

[Guest themetfairy]

DVR set - thanks Greg!

[G-Fafif]

Thursday night. Nine o'clock. 1979.

You've been warned...or perhaps dared.

[Edgy MD]

Love 1979.

I mean, you'd almost have to.

[ashie62]

1979, The Mets "Plan 9 form Outer Space" episode.

[Guest themetfairy]

1979 - a Kelvin Chapman season.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, Orosco also debuted breaking camp that year --- like Chapman, it was well years before he was ready.

[Guest themetfairy]

They dedicated a lot of time in the 1979 show to celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Miracle Mets.

All things considered, that was a wise decision....

[G-Fafif]

Revisiting that season via this film, there wasn't a goddamn thing about the 1979 Mets that wasn't dirt cheap. They had second-rate celebrity softball players, they made the Old-Timers borrow the current team's uniforms, they didn't give the players' kids baseball pants and even that mule looked undernourished.

Oh, and a Chevette was parked in the visitors' bullpen all year.

[Edgy MD]

There was nothing second-rate about the celebrity of the Fonz. If anything, what was lame about that game was that the Met wives lost 10-0, despite having ringers like Joe Pignatano and (I think) Ron Swoboda playing for them.

There was some bitchy war of words over the name of the mule. The name "Krane-mule" was suggested and Ed, somehow more miffed than honored, countered with the notion that perhaps "De-Mule-et" would be more appropriate. I devoured anything Metly I could and savored it on my tongue it like manna from Heaven, but I remember thinking, "Wow, those are two really terrible puns. Not in a smirking-writy-groan of the metahumorous self-aware punner either --- just simply awful."

[G-Fafif]

Edgy DC wrote: There was nothing second-rate about the celebrity of the Fonz. If anything, what was lame about that game was that the Met wives lost 10-0, despite having ringers like Joe Pignatano and (I think) Ron Swoboda playing for them.

This wasn't the Fonz year. That was 1978. This was the year of Kevin Dobson, Robert Walden and Kent McCord. Though Carl Weathers made a nice running catch.

[Edgy MD]

Oh, then I hear you.

Though I'm a big Kent McCord fan. Huge.

[Edgy MD]

Cut from the same cloth as Rocky.

[G-Fafif]

Kent McCord's show had only been off the air four years when he was invited to romp around Shea. But that's what syndication is for.