Benjamin Grimm

He's still Mets property if he's not claimed. They'd be able to put him in the minors and off the 40-man roster. I don't know if another team that claims him would have to put him on their 40. If so, then that might be a deterrent.

Ceetar wrote: (next time? Perhaps ~2019 when Beltran's eligible?) Well, there's Glavine in 2014...

I think the point is that if steroid suspicions are keeping Bagwell out, then the same might happen to Piazza.

That's why 12-year-olds don't get to vote for the Hall of Fame! Now they just need to take sportswriters out of the mix too.

Kevin Burkhardt mentioned on Mets Hot Stove last week that the current plan is for Harvey to start the season in Binghamton.

I know what you mean.

He didn't get traded to the Mets.

Isn't "Ersatz" the mouse who was always throwing bricks at Krazy Kat?

I don't know about that. I suspect he's good enough to be a backup shortstop on a last-place team.

sharpie wrote: If they're letting Ronny Paulino go they need to fill the Ronny slot somewhere. Maybe they can reactivate Ron Darling and slot him into their rotation.

I have to admit, I haven't been following this money story all that closely, but... Didn't the $70 million figure come from something that Sandy Alderson said? And didn't he also say that the $70 million figure represented more than one year?

Yeah! That was my favorite paragraph.

Our favorite mascot gets a nice write-up in The New York Times today: Mr. Met Keeps His Head Up By RICHARD SANDOMIR You know Mr. Met. Enormous baseball for a head and four fingers on each hand. An eternal smile and black eyebrows set at optimistic angles. Blue Mets cap perched on his head like a yarmulke. Mr. Met, the red-stitched �bermensch born without a first name, has experienced so much as the giant head of the Mets: good years, but many bad ones, World Series celebrations and late-season collapses. Jose Reyes but Vince Coleman. Tom Seaver but Aaron Heilman. Gil Hodges but Art Howe. Imagine, then, Mr. Met as Sisyphus, muscling his head up the steep hill of tough Mets history. That�s his life and his plight. And in that, he is in 2012, perhaps more perfectly than ever, a symbol of the club. The Mets have stunk on the field. The club�s owners have been accused of benefiting unjustly from one of history�s great frauds. The franchise�s finances � with a world of debt, a slashed payroll, ever-shrinking attendance � are imperiled. Even its new $1 billion stadium has been deemed a flawed structure that hurt the team it was built to showcase. Mr. Met, then, can be seen as the one blameless figure in Flushing. Mr. Met doesn�t give up five runs in four innings. He doesn�t lose fly balls in the sun. He hasn�t lost his home run stroke. He didn�t throw in his finances with Bernard L. Madoff. He didn�t design Citi Field. He is, in his way, harmlessly pure. And as a result, arguably more popular than ever. �As a performer, as I was, you�re a reflection of your fan base,� said Dave Raymond, the first Phillie Phanatic, who now develops mascots for professional and college teams. �Fans love Mr. Met because he�s very protective of them. Even when he�s used to poke fun at the Mets, you smile.� So, perhaps not surprisingly, Mr. Met has been asked to pitch in to address the club�s issues off the field. The owners, who have spent the last five months seeking 10 or so minority investors to raise desperately needed cash, put together a list of perks that would be available to those willing to pony up $20 million. Access to Mr. Met at Citi Field was one of them. Mr. Met, then, might be more than a symbol. Maybe he will be the club�s savior. �Just the fact that something like that could be included in the perks suggests significant value is there that goes beyond money and speaks to what he represents,� said Howie Rose, one of the Mets� radio voices. But a former Mr. Met counseled some reason as he assessed the mascot�s importance to investors. �Heavy as his head is, I don�t think it�ll tip the scales,� said A. J. Mass, who danced, hugged the kiddies and sweated through his costume (a spherical ecosystem that he says is 40 degrees hotter than outside) from 1994 to �97. Maybe. But Mr. Met�s appeal has followed him outside his two home ballparks. He has been in �SportsCenter� ads on ESPN, and he has starred in commercials over the last few years for Xerox (he illegibly writes a brochure with his fat digits); Citi (he cheers on bored workers from outside the glass wall of a conference room); Pepsi Max (he applauds the delivery of the soda along with Hall of Famers in a �Field of Dreams� parody), and Sony PlayStation (he picks up his Mets uniform at a dry cleaner). Mr. Met�s Internet archive includes: a video of him at Punit and Pooja�s 2007 wedding; a mock movie trailer (�In a world where sports rule/One mascot defied the ballparks/And dared to entertain�), and a minicartoon in which he lays waste to Citi Field. Conan O�Brien has used Mr. Met as a comic foil, once depicting the Phanatic in bed with Mrs. Met and another time showing the Phanatic finishing off a suicidal Mr. Met. A news report on the Web site Funny or Die detailed how Mr. Met leapt to his death from a four-story building in Flushing and left behind a legible suicide note. The Mets maintain a �no comment� position about Mr. Met, apparently to maintain an aura about his life. They refused last week to discuss the precise size of his head or what it is made of; how many people have played him; or details of his endorsement work. A spokesman for Mr. Met declined to comment other than to say, �Mr. Met never speaks.� Jay Horwitz, the team�s vice president for public relations, seemed willing to publicly settle one matter. �I am not Mr. Met,� he said. Mr. Met, history will show, was actually the Mets� second mascot. Homer the beagle was the first. Trained by Rudd Weatherwax, who put multiple Lassies through their paces, Homer rooted on the Mets in 1962, their first season. Manager Casey Stengel hated him and refused to let the beagle sit on the Mets� bench. Homer was supposed to celebrate a Mets home run by running the bases at the Polo Grounds. According to Roger Angell�s book �Game Time,� Homer performed well in rehearsals, but in his first real test he touched first base and second, then took a detour and raced to center field. He had to be wrangled by �three fielders, two ushers and the handler,� according to the book. Homer was fired. Mr. Met, the human version, arrived at Shea Stadium in 1964, after being depicted in caricature form on Mets publications the season before. Dan Reilly, a member of the team�s ticket staff, was the first Mr. Met; he wore the unventilated papier-m�ch� head for the first time between games of a May doubleheader. �I shook hands, posed for pictures, signed autographs,� Reilly told a blog called the Amazing Shea Stadium Autograph Project. �After that, I got cocky and started dancing. It was an instant hit. Back then, the fans might not have recognized the players, but they recognized Mr. Met.� Reilly served as Mr. Met through 1967 and worked for the Mets for six more years; in 2007 he published his memoir, �The Original Mr. Met Remembers: When the Miracle Began.� The Mets� stubborn omert� regarding Mr. Met preserves the mystery surrounding his strange hiatus for at least 15 years beginning in the 1970s. A search of public records shows no rationale for his benching. �There was a deep, deep void without him,� Rose said. But in 1979, during a last-place season for the Mets that attracted only 788,905 fans, a new mascot appeared at Shea: Mettle the mule, whose job was to stride up and down the foul lines before games. Mr. Met languished in mascot limbo until 1994, when he returned as part of the theme park developed by Nickelodeon and the Mets beyond the outfield walls of Shea Stadium. After auditioning, Mass became the reincarnated Mr. Met, wearing a giant polyurethane-and-felt head equipped with louvers and a tongue that shot out. The lugubrious puppet head was replaced by a more appropriate mascot noggin in 1996 that allowed Mass to interact better with fans. �My take on his personality was that Mr. Met liked music, he liked to dance, even though I don�t dance at all,� he said. �In the suit, he�s happy, optimistic and a dancer.� He recalled that Mr. Met was such an allure to young fans �that they�d go sprinting down the ramps to hug me if they saw me at the loge level.� The personalities of the Mets� owners then, Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon, became clear to him. �Doubleday would bring his grandkids and say to me, �Come here, come here,� and he wanted me to play with his grandkids,� said Mass, now a writer about fantasy sports for ESPN.com. �If Wilpon was coming toward me, he�d talk to me like an employee. Very serious. �Now, Mr. Met, how are you?� � Mass said that 20 minutes inside the Mr. Met head physically taxed him; on a hot day he lost 15 or 20 pounds off his 140-pound frame. He dressed and relaxed in the Jets� locker room. He had grown up a Mets fan in Flushing and walked to work. By the seventh-inning stretch, he could leave. �But I�m a fan and stayed till the end,� he said. �Why would Mr. Met not be visible in a close game?� Mass, the author of �How Fantasy Sports Explains the World,� is now writing his own Mr. Met memoir. As a Met longer than virtually anyone else but Ralph Kiner, Mr. Met is seemingly too big to bench again � and he remains a bright spot for his employers in difficult times. He was inducted into the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2007 and was voted the No. 1 sports mascot of 2009 in a survey by Forbes magazine. �I am in awe of him,� Rose said. �He�s the anti-Bobby Bonilla. You can�t take the smile off his face.�

Billy Murphy (1966) Gary Gentry (1969 - 1972) Jerry Hinsley (1964, 1967) Jerry May (1973) Rodney McCray (1992)

metirish wrote: not to sound all snotty here as teams sign guys like this all the time but.........is there not minor league players in the system just as bad as these two? Who will they be taking spots from? They're probably just for Buffalo/Binghamton depth. Wemberly may compete with that other guy they signed the other day for the backup shortstop spot in Flushing. The more guys you have to compete for a position the more likely you'll find someone who can do the job.

Re: Corey Wimberley The Mets have had five players whose first name and last name both ended with the letter Y. Three of them played for the Mets in the 1960's. Two of them played in the 1970's. And one played for them in the 1990's. (I know that adds up to six; one of the 60's players stuck around into the 70's.) How many can you come up with?

The card was inspired by this thread, started by CF: Joe Torre, Fucking Shitbag

I think the Wilpons should own the Dodgers. Can Bud make that happen?

Mets have never had a player whose last name started with a Q.

Edgy DC wrote: Yabbut, forever. I can't promise that... Make a note to yourself to post something in this thread every three months or so, and that should keep it safe.

I'm guessing that the most discreet way to book a hooker would not involve using Twitter.

Or maybe Jason Bay will!

By reviving it, you've made sure of that. Only threads that have been inactive for at least a few months get archived.

Gwreck wrote: The best outcome here results in the Wilpons selling the team as quickly as possible. Yes, and the best way we can contribute to that outcome (in a small way) is by staying away from Citi Field as much as possible.

Edgy DC wrote: Ben Grimm is already getting shakey on his promise. Well, I never made any kind of promise. I know that if I go once instead of twice, or nonce instead of once, it's not going to make any real difference. I want the Mets attendance to be zero. If I go to one game with my kids, they can still potentially draw a total of 3 for the 2012 season, and I'd be quite happy with that.