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If a Met does it, it's fine. If an opponent does it to a Met, it's not.

Jed Lowrie is the Jonathan Tuttle of the New York Mets. Together we all made him up.

That glove/bat thing is an impediment to voting Buddy. Dwight the Great is the greatest of this batch. Booing the Pompous Twit who booed the Big Apple. Nolan's wearing 30, yet he autographed 34 magazines? Just admit it: Ryan the Met is more intriguing than Ryan the other things.

Strong contenders all, each emitting a certain charm. I'll go with Doc inviting the rest of baseball to kiss his ass.

Gagnon down, Rhame risen.

We had Tim Hamulack and Shingo Takatsu in the same month in the same bullpen. The September 2005 Mets surely led the league in Names Above Replacement.

Piazza stands as a generational complement to the Best Infield cover of a year earlier. Bought multiple copies of both to have and to share. I was never crazy about that Doc angle, though the "dream" article within was a good concept -- create not only an All-Star team of today's best players, but give them the "best" franchise identity, put them in the "best" ballpark, have them play in front of the "best" fans, clear on to have peanuts sold by the "best" vendor (an Al Lang legend). Doc was their starting pitcher. I prefer Seaver in a hat. Syndergaard with a touch of Harvey there. I hope he at least got ham.

Thor is a thing of beauty. Why does Dynamic Duo require quote marks?

From those wonderful folks who brought you Peterson for Oswalt and Oswalt for Sewald, today's transaction is Guillorme for Gagnon. An extra pitcher, no backup SS.

The story of 1-for-1 wonder Dave Liddell, New York Met, June 3, 1990. https://www.mlb.com/amp/news/mlb-ultimate-one-hit-wonders.html?__twitter_impression=truehttps://www.mlb.com/amp/news/mlb-ultimate-one-hit-wonders.html?__twitter_impression=true Plus four other guys.

Scott Sanderson, Expo and Cub hurler of yore, 62.

If they released Davis or Broxton right now, I'd accuse Greg of making them up in two years, although I have very high expectations/hopes for Davis. I can't quite get the hang of "J.D. Davis" is my mind. Sometimes he's "J.P. Davis," though really I keep wanting to call him "Wade Davis," not for the closer who helped destroy our 2015 World Series dreams but for the hard-throwing but ultimately ineffective reliever we had for a moment in 2002, though that was Kane Davis. a pitcher I'd barely thought of these past 17 years...and he's not even the most recent or resonant Davis to have played for the Mets. Also, I was deep into a Friday Night Lights rewatch when we acquired J.D. Davis, so for a while I instinctively referred to him as "J.D. McCoy," the quarterback prodigy whose a-hole father forced out Coach Taylor and brought in Wade Aikmen, which probably explains the Wade part. I'm surprised Keith hasn't yet referred to J.D. as a juvenile delinquent. Would seem to be right up his contemporary frame of reference alley. (I also linguistically conflate Yoenis Cespedes with Orlando Cepeda, though not so much lately as there hasn't been reason to type either this season.)

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=7044 time=1555017615 user_id=68] Was your father a fan of the 1960 Yankees?

My father's one modestly serious suggestion was the run bank. You only need to win by one, he reasoned, so you should be able to put aside your extra runs for another game. No, I'm not certain how that would play out, but I occasionally think about it when someone inevitably says during a blowout, "hey, save some of those for tomorrow."

MLB hasn't been the same since Emperor Trump II disbanded the Padres because the team name "sounded too Mexican." Though he was fine with it when they were rebranded as the Friars because of his love of KFC.

How dumb is it that they won't name Trout to the AL team in his de facto hometown just because he's not having that great a first half?

MLB is awarding the 2026 All-Star Game to Philadelphia -- the first for Citizens Bank Park -- in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and such, surprising only in that it is 2019 at the moment. It will also be the 50th anniversary of the Bicentennial, which should probably shock me but doesn't. (Philly hosted in 1976 and 1996 as well.)

The strangeness is always striking, especially in Spring. I thought this crew would take longer to morph into Mets, but they felt mostly acclimated by the Home Opener. The occasional anecdote about Cano mentoring a teammate, like urging Broxton to just look for a base hit when he batted with the game tied in the eighth last Saturday, helps me forget his dubious background. Then again, I always find it a little unsettling that the Mets are almost always (even during the reign of Captain Wright) looking to a newly acquired veteran for leadership, as if there was no fiber to this team before. Maybe it's a sign the writers get bored talking to the same guys that they seem to make a beeline to whoever's new. Nice https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/04/11/new-york-mets-pete-alonso-dominic-smithcurrent SI article about the friendship between Smith and Alonso that includes a dinner out with the two first basemen along with Davis and McNeil. They are referred to as the Mets' "young core," which I found jarring as it didn't include Conforto, Nimmo and Rosario, who were perhaps too established to qualify for this classification. Except for Smith, I knew either nothing or next to nothing about any of them a year ago and now I'm like, "ooh, these guys went out for steak together in Miami." Funny how quickly we care. Neil Walker's most Metsian moment to me was his greeting Itzhak Perlman before the violinist played the national anthem at Citi Field in 2016 (captured in American Masters). What a mensch, I thought, after the fact. Otherwise, he seemed to on a semester abroad from Pittsburgh.

Married love is alive and well in 1970 and in the 2019 Magazine Cover Derby. "Hey, there's nothing but Mets games listed in here!" I'd like to think TV Guide subscribers said that week. The contemporary Mets seem to lead the league in magazines that I assume are available for the taking as you leave your local lobby. Interesting how once a generation the Times seems to be charmed that the Mets exist.

Peterson down, Oswalt up.

I sort of want to get Jeurys a friend or three. He looks so lonely compared to all the couplings above him. Sutcliffe ruins Gooden's cover, just as Sutcliffe ruined Gooden's potential first Cy Young. What we are left with is an absolute clash of titans. Best fashion magazine cover ever vs. Best Infield Ever, hold the question mark. Art Shamsky and Lauren Hutton...goodness, what a world the 1969 Mets bequeathed to 1970. Heros [sic], indeed. Metsiana like this is why I've never bought into that "little brother" crap. The Mets were the big men on campus when I gained baseball awareness. Of course they get the girl. Of course they get the cover. This is what a New York newsstand looked like when the right team was the defending champion. Oh, but that Sports Illustrated treatment, sportingly illustrating what we all knew in the late summer of 1999. Those four got to everything, including the cover of the national athletics magazine of record. It was where they belonged. Don't ya want them to jump off the page and take grounders? Messrs. Olerud, Alfonzo, Ordonez and Ventura make the black roadies of yore look as stylish as anything Bazaar ever featured. Best Infield Ever? Perhaps best cover in the whole darn shootin' match (though we'll see).

Conforto, at 41, within 9 of Wright. Nimmo ties Hairston for 16th with 13. Alonso, at 4 (after 4 games), has as many as Mesoraco, Cuddyer and Andrew Brown.

BTW, J.D. Davis's 2 HR are missing from his Saturday line.

DeGrom start likely to yield zero points. That's unusual.

New York Sports, like The National and Newsweek-era Inside Sports, should have existed a lot longer than it did. This was the premiere issue (and deserves to be in one of the after-the-chronology rounds). http://i67.tinypic.com/2vj6g4p.jpghttp://i67.tinypic.com/2vj6g4p.jpg NYS and Darryl take the Strawberry cake here. Postmodern Baseball Digest looks like a bad dream; Mike needs a splash of orange and/or blue; the hat barrage is disquieting.