SNY to Feature Best Years, Worst Years, All Years

[Edgy MD]

Pehaps already at work shooting his new show, Gallactica 1980.

[G-Fafif]

SNY to Feature Ralph Kiner! Thursday at 7:00 PM, they celebrate his half-century in the Mets booth. Per Neil Best in Newsday:

Among those interviewed are Tom Seaver, Keith Hernandez, Tim McCarver and Kiner, who has a sense of humor about himself and surely won�t mind SNY including some of his famous malapropisms. Kiner also recalls his first (and only) date with Elizabeth Taylor, who soon was gone, goodbye.

I can't decide what would have been stranger had somebody told it to me in 1986: That there was an announcer working, even in a limited capacity, who had begun his gig in 1937 (making it fifty seasons for that hypothetical guy) or that Ralph Kiner will still be doing Mets games in 2011.

[G-Fafif]

SNY filling post-postgame time with 1978 film. If Eddie is bitter that Jose/David breaks his hit record, it won't match his resentment at Bobby V taking the bubble-blowing crown.

[G-Fafif]

And John Stearns just identified Craig Swan as "probably the best pitcher on our staff."

Suck on it, Zachry.

[G-Fafif]

6:30 tonight, debut of Mets Yearbook: 1981. Don't know if it will be presented in two halves.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Not a Yearbook, but good for what ails ya: Matt Franco Game, right now!

[G-Fafif]

Friday Mets Yearbook marathon: Nine Hours, Eighteen Yearbooks, starting at 1:30, encompassing all so far produced, save for 1965 and 1978.

[Edgy MD]

Good day to get sick.

[G-Fafif]

"Brand new ownership with innovative ideas," Steve Albert promises toward end of 1979 highlight film. If only he'd said, "...about investments!"

[G-Fafif]

Thursday night Mets Classic (7:30): Bay sinks Rivera and the MFYs from the golden year of 2011.

It's something.

[Ceetar]

G-Fafif wrote: Thursday night Mets Classic (7:30): Bay sinks Rivera and the MFYs from the golden year of 2011. It's something.

watching this one now. It sucks. 1-6 homestand, Wright-Davis collision, injuries..bleh

Just show me Dickey pitching, Beltran and Reyes being awesome, transition to Duda/young guys being awesome and Reyes more..

bleh. I imagine they're planning to do one every year.

[G-Fafif]

Mets Yearbook: 2011, to be rerun tonight at 6 and Wednesday at 2:30 PM, is a well-meaning attempt to capture a fraction of the spirit of the old highlight films. It's missing the spectacular cheesiness that marked basically all of them from the early '60s to the early '80s, but the team being featured can certainly hold its own against the 1963 and 1982 editions (rim shot!).

Undermining the Guys!-narrated production is its surfeit of journalistic integrity, not pretending, for example, that Reyes and Beltran never existed while banging the drum for Jackson Todd...I mean Zack Wheeler. Plenty of Reyes and Beltran, actually...to the point, really, where I was getting bummed out all over again that there'll be none in 2012.

It occurs to me what was missing (besides the sense of fun the filter of hindsight attaches to stuff like this) was the ol' "it's always a great time at the ballgame!" factor. Every one of those darn films told us how great Helmet Day, Dairylea Day, Whatever Day (and, of course, Banner Day) was. The Mets didn't do enough of these in 2011 but they did their share of giveaways. They had fans in the stands wearing wacky getups...or at least colorful team apparel. SNY didn't overly propagandize the 77-85 Mets but it feels like the script went through the Department of Whimsy before it could get to a screen near you.

Record it, save it for a few years and watch it again when 2011 holds the same impossible nostalgic appeal that 1978 does now.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I just watched Mets Yearbook for the first time ever. It was the 1965 edition.

A few observations:

Shea Stadium as I first knew it, green and park-like. No loudspeakers, no garishness.
The Astrodome with grass!
The Cincinnati Reds with the players' names on the back of the uniform, just above the belt and below the uniform number.
Yogi Berra presenting a cow with a Mets jersey.
The centerfield fence at Williamsport had the following message painted on it in big white letters: ATTEND THE CHURCH OF YOUR CHOICE EVERY SUNDAY. (In other words, we don't care what religion you are, but it better be Christian!)
Ron Swoboda and Tug McGraw visit the set of Bonanza and schmooze with Lorne Green and Michael Landon.
Ron Swoboda has the nickname of "Robust Ron."
A weird-looking Shea Stadium cake presented to an absent Casey Stengel after his broken hip.
Lindsey Nelson tells us that someday a superstar will come along and lead the Mets to a World Series, and it might be me!

[G-Fafif]

A new Mets Yearbook arrives from 1985, Wednesday at 7:00 PM, reairing Thursday at 1:30 PM.

Prediction: SNY will/did not pay for the rights to use Scandal, Blues Brothers, Nils Lofgren, Buffalo Springfield or Springsteen, all of which made "No Surrender" so awesome and, yes, cheesy in its day. But McCarver narrates and the Mets still don't surrender.

[Edgy MD]

I'm not sure what we're talking about. Is this "No Surrender" by Springsteen?

[G-Fafif]

"No Surrender" was the name of the 1985 film, and used said song as its theme.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

What is this Adam Schein, and why does he say such stupid, loud things?

[G-Fafif]

Good thing Roe v. Wade has never been overturned because SNY performed an abortion on the 1985 highlight film.

[G-Fafif]

This one's so big that even the New York Times noticed...Mets Yearbook: 1962, Thursday night at 8:00 and again at 10:00. Not a year in review, but the preview that was filmed during the very first Spring Training. WOW! one assumes (since Snigh his less likely to cutting to ribbons earlier films than the later versions).

To Mets fans who bleed Orange and Blue, the video, which will be broadcast for the first time on SNY Thursday at 8 p.m., is a precious time capsule. Filmed before the Mets had played an exhibition game, the Mets were still undefeated and fans could dream that George Weiss, the team�s stuffy president, had a plan to produce a contender. To sports fans, the show, which is called �1962 Yearbook,� is a wonderful example of how sports was covered a half-century ago, complete with fawning announcers, eager players and a lack of whiz-bang technology that predominates on sports networks these days.

Same night at 7 PM and 9 PM, SNY airs thir 50 Greatest Mets show.

[Ceetar]

I enjoyed that one. '62.

[Guest themetfairy]

I LOVE the clip of the guy in catching gear wearing #43 who not only misses catching the fly ball, but then falls to the ground after the failed attempt. It was a sign of the season to come, and friggin' hysterical!

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Best part of that show I saw were the accents of the writers interviewing Weiss.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Best part of that show I saw were the accents of the writers interviewing Weiss.

and then being nearly beaned by an errant throw/hit

[batmagadanleadoff]

Link below to the list of SNY's 50 greatest Mets, which first aired yesterday.

http://metspolice.com/2012/05/18/review-sny-50-greatest-mets-includes-the-list/

[Edgy MD]

John Franco is the guy everybody seems to hate because every seems to like or something.

[metirish]

Christ

49. Bobby Bonilla. As I said in the walk-up to this special, if you played more than two seasons you�re probably on the list. Luckilly Bobby�s part of the special was shorter than it took you to read this sentence.

I caught a snippet of this and the narrator is the guy that did all those VH1 shows?

[G-Fafif]

Every adult was old in 1962, yet nobody noticed because Casey was so wonderfully lavishly ancient. He's about a dozen years younger in this film than my dad is now and he's waaaaaaay older.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I can't tell you how glad I am to (A) have been too young to live through the stupid fucking Kingman years (even if it means my missing the Steve Henderson game) and ( the SNY guys actually stuck him somewhere near where his performance-- rather than his being a Freakshow attraction during a down period-- should slot him. Fuck Kingman. FUCK Kingman. Kingman Should Be Fucked.

Also... all due respect to the Kid, but there's no way-- NO WAY-- he tops Alfonzo, Mookie, Darling, Cleon, Grote, HoJo, or Leiter (or Matlack, or Sid, or Tug). He was a hell of a guy, and a hell of a get, but if you wipe the '86 sheen from your eyes and look at him, he's barely a top-20 Met-performance guy.

Also also... I love Keith, but come on.

[Edgy MD]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Fuck Kingman. FUCK Kingman. Kingman Should Be Fucked.

You, off the bus.

[G-Fafif]

I can't tell you how glad I am to (A) have been too young to live through the stupid fucking Kingman years (even if it means my missing the Steve Henderson game) and ( the SNY guys actually stuck him somewhere near where his performance-- rather than his being a Freakshow attraction during a down period-- should slot him. Fuck Kingman. FUCK Kingman. Kingman Should Be Fucked. Also... all due respect to the Kid, but there's no way-- NO WAY-- he tops Alfonzo, Mookie, Darling, Cleon, Grote, HoJo, or Leiter (or Matlack, or Sid, or Tug). He was a hell of a guy, and a hell of a get, but if you wipe the '86 sheen from your eyes and look at him, he's barely a top-20 Met-performance guy. Also also... I love Keith, but come on.

The Kingman Years (which weren't really the Kingman Years, or at least not the darkest period, as his trade was an almost incidental signpost that things were getting much worse): Ya hadta be there. The post-Kingman years (after Kingman II, that is) were that much better because we'd lived through them. I wouldn't recommend them, but if they happened to you, they're charming with a heaping helping of hindsight.

(And if you didn't live through Kingman, why such harsh fuckage?)

The countdown and Carter: I'm wary of getting riled up by these things because unless you're going to apply nothing but strict statistical formulas (which is a spreadsheet, not a show), then it's all touch and feel. The Mets experience is mostly touch and feel as is. And at the risk of truthiness, giving Carter the benefit of the touch and feel doubt feels more right than wrong. What you did, when you did it, the circumstances surrounding what you did and the mark what you did left says a lot to me in crafting historical perspective. Carter gets points for all of that, even if his performance began sliding in year three of his contract and crashed by year five. That '86 sheen is justifiably powerful stuff.

When Carter was inducted in the Mets HOF in 2001, the Post ran his all-time ranking on various Mets offensive lists. Hey, I thought, he's not particularly high on any of them. And it didn't stop me for one second from thinking his induction was richly deserved as is his "Mount Rushmore of that era" Met status, as Howie put it in the show.

And Keith too.