Benjamin Grimm

Those stats, by the way, are through Saturday's game. I haven't pasted Sunday's box score yet.

Actually, you can do it yourself (at least for the hits) but copying and pasting into a spreadsheet from this page and this page.

Edgy DC wrote: Can you sort out net hits and homeruns at Shea? Not at the moment, but yes, I could.

Actually, even if you counted the games at the Polo Grounds, the Mets would still have a winning home record. At the old ballpark they were 56 and 105. Add that to the Shea games and you get 1782 and 1716. Unless I'm overlooking something, the only other place the Mets ever played an official home game is in the Tokyo Dome, where they lost their home game and won their away game.

The Mets are 1,726 and 1,611 and 5 at Shea Stadium. Mets record by ballpark

Sixty more home wins, between now and the end of the 2008 season, and the Mets clinch an all-time winning record at Shea Stadium. Should be easy enough to do. If they don't do it, we're talking about a miserable few years coming up.

Johnny Dickshot wrote: ...a lot of it -- like fans who were so jazzed they tried to outdo one another with witty slogans on signs -- is truly unique and ought to be celebrated. I do agree with that. But my sense is that a revival would fizzle. And maybe a big part of the reason that I think that is because I don't expect the Mets to handle it properly.

cooby wrote: "What the Heck Happened to Schneck" Last I heard, he was a school teacher in Allentown, Pa.

From the Picnic Thread. Yancy Street Gang wrote: As I've been thinking about it while looking at those old schedules in the yearbooks, I think Banner Day is a concept whose time has passed. I suspect that if it was revived it would flop. Some things may be better left in the past. ="Edgy DC"]You may be right. I'd like to see that argument spelled out, though. Well, here's why I get that sense: When I was first aware of Banner Day, it was a big deal. They even televised the parade between the games of the doubleheader, with Lindsey, Ralph, and Bob doing commentary. It was appointment TV for Mets fans. It continued as a doubleheader tradition well into the 80's, but it got less and less attention from the media. Whether the lack of media attention was a reaction to declining fan interest, or the cause of it, I can't say. But the coverage did slacken, and I think the general interest did too. As I saw in the yearbooks, and posted in that other thread, by 1989, with the demise of scheduled doubleheaders, the Banner Day festivities ended up preceding a singleheader. Well into the 1990's, the start time for these games was around 3 p.m. That meant that the Mets were effectively delaying the start of the game for two hours to accomodate the parade. In 1996, however, the Banner Day game started at 1:40. Why did the Mets allow less time for the festivities? My guess is that after a few years they finally realized that there wasn't the level of participation that there used to be. In 1997 they didn't bother scheduling it at all. And I don't recall anybody noticing. I don't recall myself noticing. And weren't we all surprised to see that there was still a Banner Day on the books as late as 1996? When a tradition fades away with little notice, I suspect that any revival would be a disappointment.

I think that's a diss on cooby's aunt.

cooby wrote: She looks like my one aunt Hottie.

Johnny Dickshot wrote: I always found Joan Payson a little creepy. When you get to be my age you'll see her as a hottie.

I hear you, cooby. I'm looking forward to a time when I have enough posts to get rid of the graphics above my own head.

I'd sign up too, but it's too much effort.

My daughter also says that she gets wisdom beamed into her head from God in heaven. The latest bit of wisdom was that clams do in fact give milk. But Bret's point isn't as crappy as Elster suggests. If silence was viewed as derogatory, and it's not hard to imagine a culture where that could be the case, silent fans would be criticized by the same people who criticize booers. Of course, they'd be harder to notice; it's easy to drown out the sounds of silence.

I absolutely agree that they shouldn't whine about being booed. It doesn't help their cause at all, and they should understand that, fair or not, it's part of the package. I also agree that it's unrealistic to expect only Yay and never Boo. You can't have yin without yang. But booing a guy when he steps up to the plate sends a different message than booing him when he pops up with a runner on third. The latter says, "We don't like that you didn't get the job done" and the former says, "We don't like YOU!"

On August 4, 1996, it was no longer called "Banner Day." It became, instead, the "Tropicana Pre-Game Banner Parade and Contest." The game that day was a 1:40 p.m. start against St. Louis. It seems they were allocating less time for the festivities. I'm surprised that there was still a Banner Day as late as 1996. I would have guessed it had ended long before then. Maybe the interest was diminishing. Traditions don't always get cut off abruptly; sometimes they fade away. There was no Banner Day scheduled in 1997. Instead, in August we saw the debut of the International Week celebrations.

Sunday, August 29, 1993, a 3:10 p.m. game against Colorado. I can't find my 1994 yearbook. No Banner Day was scheduled for 1995, but there were a few dates on the calendar labled simply, "Promotion." I guess that since the strike lasted through the winter they probably had a hard time getting everything scheduled in time for the yearbooks to go to press.

Sunday, August 4, 1991: a 3:10 p.m. single game against the Cubs.

Sunday, August 6, 1989: Banner Day scheduled prior to a 3:05 p.m. single game against Montreal.

I think I recall that the last Banner Day or two were not scheduled to coincide with doubleheaders. Sort of as a pre-game event. I'll have to look at old yearbooks to see if I can confirm that.

Should be able to, yes. But what if he can't? Doesn't it then become counterproductive to your interests in having a successful player on a successful team?

It hasn't been the BEST signing ever, but it hasn't been the disaster it first appeared to be. He didn't do as well as we would have liked back in 2003, but the later years of his deal are looking better than I thought they'd be.

Wow. This is like trying to follow all of the nutty plot twists on 24!

I read that the July 8th double-header is going to be a classic, two games for the price of one, double-header. Perfect for Banner Day. It's a great idea. When was the last scheduled Banner Day? Someone wrote to me to ask this a few months ago, and I leafed through a couple of yearbooks and I seem to remember seeing one scheduled as late as 1988.