G-Fafif

Keith casually mentioned Old Timers Day — something Steve Cohen said he'd revive — is on deck to return in 2022, with 50 or so alumni invited. The Mets haven't yet announced it, but Sandy acknowledged planning is underway.

SNY plans to “go live” at 1:30 ET for Keith coverage, presumably regarding 17 being retired, though an hour of Keith feeding Hadji, doing the crossword and tending to household chores might also be interesting.

Keith, I believe, would request the ever popular blank cap.

I was just doing some research that brought me into contact with Eli Marrero and was impressed when I noticed that in a mere 25 games as a Met, he logged time at six different positions, including the unlikely quinella (no guarantee I'm using that word correctly) of catcher, third base and all three outfield slots. That's a lot of versatility compressed into a short span.

Jon Lester, who lost Game One of the 2015 NLCS to Matt Harvey (but also won some games), retires. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33048654/jon-lester-announces-retirement-16-seasons-three-world-series-titleshttps://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33048654/jon-lester-announces-retirement-16-seasons-three-world-series-titles

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Were it up to me I'd have retired 86 and be done with it Never let it be said Jake Hager doesn't leave an impression.

Well deserved.

The 1969 uniforms the Mets wore that 1999 afternoon were crazy baggy.

The Tarpons were long a Reds affiliate, someone who went to college in Tampa feels compelled to note. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_Tarpons_%281957%E2%80%931988%29https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_Tarpons_(1957–1988) Several players who became Mets on June 15, 1977, wore the T in their professional youth, as did some guys named Bench, Rose and Concepcion.

https://twitter.com/byronkerr/status/1480621651045801984

Residents of Tampa are Tampans. Try not to chortle.

A little Tom T. Hall vibe… [media=youtube]jk64JluO4CI[/media] I love little baby ducks, old pick-up trucks Slow movin' trains and rain I love little country streams, sleep without dreams Sunday school in May and hay And I love you too I love leaves in the wind, pictures of my friends Birds of the world and squirrels I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy pups Bourbon in a glass and grass And I love you too I love honest open smiles, kisses from a child Tomatoes on the vine and onions I love winners when they cry, losers when they try Music when it's good and life And I love you too …to Buck Showalter, via Mike Lupica, who asked him what he missed during the years he was not managing. 1.) “There will be some things on this list about Spring Training, and some of them might sound corny to people. But not to me. I missed the start of Spring Training. I even missed that first smell of cut grass in the morning. Man, I love Spring Training mornings.” 2.) “And I missed those first 10 spring games or so. That's when everything is positive, and present, and last year is a distant memory. No cuts or demotions coming anytime soon. Everything still new. I'm telling you, those first 10 games or so in the spring are special.” 3.) “I always looked forward to the first team meeting. I'll look forward to it this year especially. You ask anybody who's ever been around me on that particular day. I'm unapproachable for at least a couple of hours before I first address the team. I'm gathering my thoughts, because it's important to get the message right.” 4.) “This one's kind of funny, but I always used to look forward to the Spring Training talent show for first-year guys.” He laughed then. “I swear, one year in Baltimore T.J. McFarland might have started making the club with his impression of Mike Ditka.” 5.) “Man, I missed a crisp, really well-run drill happening right in front of you in Spring Training. It's one of the moments when you see that guys are starting to get stuff, and understand that drills like this are important.” 6.) “Something else I missed? That first pot of black coffee on a Spring Training morning, and then taking a cup outside with you for a minute and feeling the sun on your face.” 7.) “I missed a locker room coming to life, in the spring or the regular season. ... I'm the first one there, already in my office when the first players start to show up. But I like to come out and watch the room come to life. Seeing guys start to prepare. Seeing what starts to happen in the training room and the weight room and even with the coaches. Seeing the dynamic of a team begin to form.” 8.) “I missed being a part of a team more than anything. I'm not saying I wasn't a part of a team in television. But a baseball team is different. Special. I missed having a common theme that starts out in the spring and plays out across the long season. I love working with a general manager and helping put the pieces together, not just with the team, but with the coaching staff.” 9.) “I even found myself missing the give-and-take with the media. Understanding what they need. Hoping that both sides understand it's not some kind of contest either side is trying to win. If you're going to manage in the big leagues, and especially in New York, where little things can turn into big things, you better understand it's something you need to be good at.” 10.) “I miss the murmur, once you get to the field, of a crowd starting to file in. I don't know if I'd call it a din, exactly. But I missed that sound.” 11.) “I miss the looks you see being exchanged between coaches and players when something gets executed, in a drill or in a game, and they catch each other's eyes and it's like, ‘Yeah, I got it.' The best emotions are spoken without a word sometimes.” 12.) “Those first two minutes after a win. Missed those a lot. That's all you get sometimes after the last handshake, a couple of minutes. Then you're on your way back inside, back to your office, and you already feel like it's the next day.” 13.) “Minor League reports belong on this list, too. Reading them and seeing how people are doing and giving you a sense of an organization as a whole. This prospect got three hits. This kid made a great play, and it's there in the reports. It's another part of the routine of wholeness.” 14.) “Late nights. Long plane rides. At some point my light might be the only one on in my part of the cabin. I don't sleep on planes too well. ... Working on the next team, the next city, the next game. Turning the page. Moving on to the next series, the next set of challenges. Closing the door on the series you just played.” 15.) “Man, I missed day games. There's a certain crispness to day games, with that baseball sun back on your face.” 16.) “The workout before Opening Day was always real special. We've all made it. We've made it to the season. It might be a calm before the storm, but no game that day. Everybody smiling. Everything ahead of us. All's right with the world.” 17.) “The day before the playoffs start is even better. I remember the first time Mr. Steinbrenner complimented me was before Game 1 in '95, before we played the Mariners. He patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Nice going, kid.'” 18.) “More than anything, I missed the whole process of being part of putting a winning team together. A winning culture. Being a part of something like what's happening right now, in real time, with the Mets.” He paused then. “Is this enough?” he said. “More than enough,” I said. “Damn, this is a great game,” Buck Showalter said. https://www.mlb.com/news/buck-showalter-favorite-things-about-baseballhttps://www.mlb.com/news/buck-showalter-favorite-things-about-baseball

Four Original Mets — Craig Anderson, Jay Hook, Joe Christopher, Frank Thomas — get together over Zoom. And that crazy season gave the men who played it a lifetime of memories, as well as something nobody else can say: “We get to be called ‘Original Mets,'” said Anderson, who is now 83. Added outfielder Joe Christopher, 86: “It was one of the honors of my life to be an Original Met.” The Mets are celebrating 60 years of baseball in 2022 — they're already using a 60th Anniversary logo on the club's Twitter account. The Mets are reviving their Old Timers Day and, pandemic-permitting, hope to have members of the 1962 team appear at Citi Field. Hook, Anderson, Christopher and slugger Frank Thomas will be guests on an upcoming episode of The Amazin' Alumni Podcast, hosted by Jay Horwitz, the club's VP of Alumni Media Relations. Oddly enough, that woeful season started with optimism. Thomas and Hook had scanned the roster, which included notable names such as Gil Hodges and Richie Ashburn, with hope. Thomas, who is now 92, thought the club could hit. He was at least right about himself — he hit 34 homers and drove in 94 runs and Ashburn, who batted .306. “And, of course, Casey,” the 85-year-old Hook added. “That was a big deal.” […] “I learned a lot from Casey about salesmanship, taking care of your customers, that I used for years after that,” said Hook, who went on to a long career in business. “After every game, he'd call those writers into his office, get them a Coke or a beer and tell them stories. “He knew the way to get to the fans was through the sportswriters. And he did a wonderful job bringing fans along. We were the worst team in baseball, yet they really supported us.” “They never quit on us,” Anderson added. “I've never forgotten that. They were so happy to be there, they weren't as worried about our wins and losses as they would be today.” […] Christopher, Thomas, Anderson and Hook all say they still get fan mail. “I get anywhere from 20-30 letters per week from New York fans,” Thomas said. “I've been out of baseball for 55 years. Beautiful letters. It's a treat for me.” https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-original-mets-remember-1962-20220108-o3dhoadn7bdghjagcg5mp5zkx4-story.htmlhttps://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-original-mets-remember-1962-20220108-o3dhoadn7bdghjagcg5mp5zkx4-story.html

Ellis Valentine not nostalgic for his Shea stay. The tension that ended the 1980 season was still there in 1981 and when Valentine got off to a slow start, the Expos traded him to the Mets on May 29, a day short of a year since he was he hit by the pitch. Montreal got a closer in Jeff Reardon and throw-in Dan Norman, who had come to New York from Cincinnati in the Tom Seaver deal four years earlier. Valentine was hitting .211 with 15 RBIs at the time of the trade. “The team [Montreal] had gotten to a point where we could manufacture runs at any given time,” Valentine said. “We could drive in runs; steal some bases and we could score some. The problem was we couldn't hold it and that's why they traded me for Jeff Reardon. And he shined. The table was set, he just had to keep the ball in the ballpark. But they had to get rid of me and Jeff went to New York because they had Neil Allen at the time. “I don't think Montreal would have ever traded me if didn't get hit. I put up numbers for Montreal for years and defensive numbers for years. I would drive in 70 and look at defensive play, I probably saved that many runs, too. Those numbers you never see. They would not have traded, they had no reason to. But they feared I would leave or never regain my playing ability so they had to get something from me as soon as they could. Unbeknownst to them, I never would have left Montreal. I would take pay cuts to stay there, that's how much I loved it.” Valentine, who was on the disabled list with a pulled hamstring at the time of the trade, did not love New York and New York came to not love Valentine. His miserable season continued after the trade, where he hit .207 with five homers and 21 RBIs in 48 games during the strike-shortened season. “My year and a half in New York was a struggle,” Valentine said. “I had just gotten off the injury in Montreal, it was pretty severe and I was still trying to come back. I had the same symptoms and [concussion] protocols that football players exhibit. That happened in 1980 so we're talking '81, '82 and '83. I had lost all peripheral vision in those years. That's why it was so hard to hang in there on curves from right-handed pitchers. “What I had before getting hit I didn't have anymore. Righty to righty was like looking down a tunnel. There was a gap there when certain curves and other pitches were thrown and I couldn't see it so I would freeze first instead of reacting. By the time I was able to react my career had changed and I had no real control over that. It took a while for me to regain that and manage it.” New York manager George Bamberger didn't seem to know what he could have had in Valentine and wound up platooning him with Joel Youngblood, another right-handed hitter who was largely a journeyman backup throughout his career, in right. Valentine hit .288 with eight homers and 48 RBIs in 111 games in 1982. Youngblood was traded to Montreal that August. “They were platooning me with Joel Youngblood against lefties,” Valentine said. “When I left Montreal, I was a starter. When I came to New York, I wasn't starting anymore. I was trying to come back from that injury and the next thing you know I'm real frustrated with the team and they are doing things. I had a rough time there. It was finally over and I moved on but I had hoped for better things in New York but they never gave me the opportunity.” https://ballnine.com/2022/01/07/valentines-days/https://ballnine.com/2022/01/07/valentines-days/

Chris Mazza reups with the Rays, minor league style. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/01/rays-re-sign-chris-mazza.htmlhttps://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/01/rays-re-sign-chris-mazza.html

The Times takes notice of the loss of a Mets legend. Daniel Joseph Reilly was born on Jan. 28, 1938, in Richmond Hill, Queens, to Anna and Robert Reilly. After graduating from high school, he attended broadcasting school, served in the Marines in Guam and became a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines. After about a decade with the Mets, he worked in promotions for the New York (now Brooklyn) Nets and Colonie Hill Golf Club (now the Wind Watch Golf & Country Club), in Hauppauge, on Long Island; as a bartender; and as a public address announcer for New York Waterways. On one of his routes he offered his Mr. Met memories to fans traveling from ports in New Jersey and Manhattan to the World's Fair Marina, from which they walked to Shea Stadium. He married Gloria Westerweller on the afternoon of Oct. 11, 1969, the day of Game 1 of the World Series between the Mets and the Baltimore Orioles. It was a road game, which prevented his closest friends on the Mets, the outfielder Ron Swoboda and the pitcher Tug McGraw, from attending; the arrangements had been made long before the Mets were expected to be postseason contenders. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/sports/baseball/dan-reilly-dead.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/sports/baseball/dan-reilly-dead.html

Scott had been pulled over at 4:17 a.m. on Aug. 31 in White Plains, just down the block from the courthouse he occupied Thursday. He had been on his way home from Mets owner Steve Cohen's fundraiser earlier that night in Greenwich, Conn. On body-camera footage shown during the trial, Scott acknowledged to officers that he'd been drinking roughly two hours earlier at The Blind Pig of Westchester, a restaurant down the block from where he was stopped. Officer Frank Confalone conducted a standardized field sobriety test on Scott, consisting of three tests: The horizontal gaze nystagmus (checking for jerking of the eyeballs, which increases when someone is intoxicated), the walk-and-turn and the one-legged stand. Confalone determined that Scott failed each of the three tests, and he thus arrested him on suspicion of DWI. At the police station, Scott twice declined a chemical breathalyzer test; he had not been offered one at the scene as the officers there did not have the necessary equipment with them for a test. https://theathletic.com/3054894/2022/01/06/former-mets-executive-zack-scott-found-not-guilty-of-dwi-what-happened-at-the-trial-and-his-reaction-to-the-verdict/https://theathletic.com/3054894/2022/01/06/former-mets-executive-zack-scott-found-not-guilty-of-dwi-what-happened-at-the-trial-and-his-reaction-to-the-verdict/

Not guilty.

The former Cub is a Doosan Bear. While a Met, he pitched as if bound for Korea.

https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/giants/why-alyssa-nakkens-theme-second-giants-year-setting-more-directionAlyssa Nakken?

If hired, the spectral Durocher would join Casey Stengel as the only person to wear the uniforms of each New York-city based major league team.

THE 'DOR TO CONTENTION IS NOW AJAR

“The role of Rich Becker, listed in your Playbill as being played by Craig Paquette, will now be portrayed by Wayne Kirby,” was the vibe as April became May eventually became Lenny Harris.

I'm in the minority bloc on this one. Every time I look at the FRANTASTIC headline, I ask myself, “Who's Fran?”

Kirby was a Met in 1998.