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The ability to use actual team logos seemed like a breakthrough, but now it seems less exciting than discovering the new year's Topps color-coding (i.e. Mets red, Phillies orange, Cardinals dark blue, Expos green, Pirates light blue, Cubs pink in 1972).

In crafting the Top 56, I went with the concept that seasons are better when your team a) clinches something; wins more than it loses. Think how happy you were at the moment last outs were secured the twenty times the Mets ran toward each other to embrace and douse one another. The goal is to get to those moments. On a more basic level, winning simply beats losing over ~162 games. On a more personal level, I maintain a different order of preference: 1999 and 1985 at the very top, with 1986, 1997, 1980, 1975 and 1970 filling the next tier of full-season experience, and special places reserved for the stretch drives and postseasons of 1969 and 1973. A lot of honorable mentions as well.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: 1984 was a lot of fun, but the fun ended rather early that year. I know I could look it up, but I'll go on memory here. Didn't the Cubs sweep a four-game series at Shea around August 1, which allowed them to open up a pretty comfortable gap in the standings? At least in 1985, the excitement lasted into early-October regular season games. I still remember watching Darryl Strawberry's home run in St. Louis. I was sleeping over at my grandmother's house because my home was still without power from Hurricane Gloria. Mets won a Friday night game at Shea, Doc starting to become Doc; Sisk started being Sisk that Saturday in a close game that got away by a lot; and then a doubleheader sweep on Sunday at the hands of the Cubs. A little over a week later, there was a four-game sweep at Wrigley in the wrong direction. Mets scuffled to stay viable for the rest of August, but it definitely slipped through Mets hands over the course of those two series, sort of the opposite of what happened when the Mets swept the two series from the Nats in 2015. Before there was time for wounds to fester, Gary Carter was acquired, so 1984 looks nothing but golden in retrospect. Would have been nice to have held off the Cubs, though.

Keith's been Keith forever. I long ago opted to take the Keith with the Keith and ignore the Keith of the Keith that wasn't the Keith I relished. If events had gone (much) differently two years ago, his new year's plans might have taken him elsewhere. His politics lean conservative. He likes Carly Fiorina. “She is smart,” he says. “I think she can play with the boys. Margaret Thatcheresque.”

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Can you imagine how we'd be feeling now, if everything since then turned out the same, except that Gary Carter struck out in the tenth inning of Game Six? 1. 1987 (133-29; NL East Champs, World Champs) Where the dynasty began in earnest, when the Mets shook off the embarrassment of their six-game loss to the Red Sox and decided to take baseball and life more seriously. Hall of Famer Doc Gooden admitted a cocaine problem in November of '86, licked it in the offseason, and made 1985 look like practice for '87. More rigorous physical training kept all the pitchers sound of mind and body. Ray Knight and Kevin Mitchell co-captained not just a second consecutive division title but a rampage through the postseason never before seen in major league annals. There've been multiple trophies since, but none quite as meaningful.

Marty Noble, always the most insightful of beat writers, wrote a story during the summer of '86 asking the players if they found the current season a tad less pulsating than the one before. I clearly recall Darling and Santana nodding yes. It reflected my thinking at the time. I surely wasn't bored by being 20 games up in August, but the level of engagement differed from 1985. In the aftermath of it all, I found myself wishing the '86 postseason could have been grafted onto the '85 season, though I don't know that even at that youthful stage of my life my heart could have withstood that much delirious tension over seven months. I also remember a simmering sidebar to the '86 romp, that the current players were politely ready to stop hearing about '69, and that even the '69ers were ready to have company. That also synced with where my head was. My entree to the Mets was '69, just as it was getting extraordinary. I grew up absorbing every morsel of the backstory and reveling in what it all meant. Without it, we'd have had next to nothing to fall back on. But I was tired of falling back on it. For my birthday or perhaps Chanukah in 1985, I received a vintage plaque celebrating the Mets as 1969 World Champions, and as much as I loved it, I thought, "It's time for a new one." I might not have so strongly felt that way even two years earlier, but '84 and '85 really primed the pump. We were so on the verge from every angle, and '86 delivered on every possible count, save for prevailing in an excruciating pennant race (postseason made up for that) and harbinger of world championships to come (there's no accounting for future).

If I can have only one between '69 and '86, I'd happily take either.

Your New Year's Rockin' Eve countdown of every Mets season, here.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: And the Wikipedia people used the same alternative spelling of "without". Midwestern variation, I believe.

Now I know it's true. I just read it on Wikipedia.

From Daniel Okrent's 9 Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game, first published in 1985, later updated, exploring ye olde national pastime through the prism of an ostensibly random June 1982 game, Orioles at Brewers: Long baseball seasons demanded humor, and Uecker provided it. With the players, he was always charming; at other times, though, he could be brutally cold, as he was to his radio-booth partner from the year before, Lorn Brown. When Brown was doing the play-by-play, Uecker would turn off his mike, making himself inaccessible to a desperate Brown, a decent, earnest, and rather unimaginative man who couldn't easily make it through an inning without the help of a partner. Brown was stolid, plodding, hung up on statistics. He was also painfully ill at ease among ball players, and Uecker disdained him for it. Brown debuted for the Mets the same year another ex-Brewer employee, George Bamberger, came over. Lasted almost as long, too. I wonder if Cashen had to take them as a package.

The 1966 Mets elevated themselves into ninth place, the first time they escaped the cellar. Thank you, Al, for your part in at last putting somebody behind us.

Nymr83 wrote: Lance Johnson and some pitcher I dont remember who got traded for Turk Wendell, Brian McCrae, and the worst pitcher in Mets' history (before 2017 Matt Harvey), Mel Rojas Sounds like a job for Mark Clark.

2009 Friend: Angel Berroa, he of the Angel Berroa Rotunda.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Wow, Darren Bragg must be extraordinarily sneaky if he was able to slip under your radar! I'm still thinking he might have been a plant. And am not convinced he wasn't Glenn Braggs. The other Mets who appeared to me at the ballpark from out of the blue/orange were Tom Wilson and Keith Miller, the latter on a road trip to Montreal, so I hadn't been on top of transactions. I saw 25 playing 2B and deduced it was him from my Inside Pitch readership but didn't know he'd been called up. OTOH, "6 C" on the scoreboard in June of 2004 -- during the Indians' only Interleague visit to Shea -- still feels like an unsolved mystery. I had literally never heard of him before his name was announced.

Darren Bragg was that rare Met whose existence as a Met became known to me when I took my seat, looked up at the scoreboard, saw his number and asked, "Who's that?" The 1993 Met/MFY was Frank Tanana, sent to the dark place as they groped in mid-September to catch the Blue Jays. The MFYs failed, Tanana retired and we got Kenny Greer for one magical inning.

If we're gonna relitigate the 2015 Mets, it's worth breaking them down into their streakiness. 2-3 (just like '86, it was noted ad infinitum) 11-0 (encompassing the 10-0 homestand that reset expectations) 23-27 (pitching carrying the hitting-AWOL day, featuring the coming of Thor) 0-7 (the obvious and absolute nadir) 16-13 (the arrivals of Johnson, Uribe and Conforto in response to the Zero Brigade lineup) 31-11 (the Cespedes-powered explosion) 6-6 (clinching period) 1-5 (division clinched, regulars rested) It's impossible to subtract any fraction of a season (I can think of a couple of Septembers when that option would have been awesome), but without the miserable June losing streak in which they scored nine runs in seven consecutive losses, the 2015 Mets are a 90-65 outfit, the point being those Mets hung in remarkably well versus a flawed Nationals outfit before the cavalry arrived, never fully collapsing under the weight of their own offensive ineptitude. Overall, a pretty good if incomplete and injury-riddled team that, once reinforced, played extraordinary ball, most notably against their primary rival.

In the current and godawful Off Broadway musical Bulldozer: The Ballad of Robert Moses, a radio report sets the scene for our production by noting traffic on the Grand Central is backed up to Shea Stadium, "but how about those Mets?"

MFS62 wrote: First Curt Gowdy, now Dick Enberg. If things DO happen in threes, please not Vin Scully. Curt Gowdy died in 2006.

If Omar's first act is bringing Eddie back to Citi Field, reinstating Minaya was a great move. He always did have an eye for Met prospects.

Dick Enberg, winner of the Ford C. Frick Award in 2015, has died of an apparent heart attack at 82. Called games for the Angels and Padres in addition to his time at NBC. Days after accepting his honor at Cooperstown, he was behind the mic for San Diego in that remarkable July 30 game (which we could laugh about by the following week once we had Cespedes and first place), as Justin Upton went deep off Jeurys Familia. Can you believe this?! Oh my! Upton delivers a three-run shot! And it's not just the rain that's falling at Citi Field. How about the hearts of Mets fans? Terrible ending, great reaction. And a spectacular broadcasting career.

When you can't keep Ed Kranepool in the fold, you're having a very bad week. Wally Matthews visited with the Met of Mets for the Times and finds the man who's played more games than anybody ever as a Met is Kranepool non grata to the owners. How can a player who is truly Mets royalty, who was playing for Casey Stengel when he was just 17 years old, end up on the outs with the franchise? According to Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ longtime spokesman, the trouble stems from a remark that Kranepool made perhaps five or six years ago to Jeff Wilpon, the Mets’ chief operating officer and the son of Fred Wilpon, the team’s principal owner. The remark, Horwitz said, came during an annual team dinner and apparently occurred during the period when the Mets, under serious financial pressure because of their involvement in the Bernard Madoff fraud scheme, were looking to recruit investors to buy a minority stake in the club. As Horwitz tells it, “Ed approached Jeff in front of a lot of people and said, ‘I hear you are selling shares in your team.”’ And then, according to Horwitz, Kranepool added: “I don’t want shares. I want to buy the whole team so I can run it better than you and your father.”’ Asked about that remark, Kranepool remembered the exchange somewhat differently. Kranepool’s name had emerged around that time in connection with a group that was expressing interest in buying the Mets outright. That effort didn’t go anywhere, but Kranepool said Wilpon had made a disparaging remark to him about it. “One thing led to another, and we had some words,’’ Kranepool said. The result has been disruption in a relationship that began when Kranepool, as a teenager out of James Monroe High School in the Bronx, briefly made it to the Mets in 1962, the team’s inaugural season. After that, he found a niche for himself, a 6-foot 3, left-handed hitter who never had more than 16 home runs in a season and who finished with a career average of .261. In all, Kranepool played under eight managers, from Casey Stengel, whom he loved, to Joe Torre, whom he did not. He played alongside some Mets who are forever identified with the franchise’s most inept moments (think Choo-Choo Coleman and Marvelous Marv Throneberry) and with others (think Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Tug McGraw and Cleon Jones) who were among the best to wear the team’s uniform. Kranepool saw it all, earned the nickname Steady Eddie and was eventually inducted into the Mets’ Hall of Fame. And in the years after Citi Field opened in 2009, he was paid by the team to socialize with fans in the luxury suites. Then came the confrontation with Jeff Wilpon. And as Kranepool awaits the transplant, he said, the only member of the Mets who is checking on him is Horwitz. “Jay Horwitz is a sweetheart,” Kranepool said. “He’s been a true friend and a gentleman. He’s called me a couple of times. But he’s the only one who has. Not that I need them to do anything for me, but Fred or somebody could have called to say, ‘How you feeling?’” “I did a lot for that ball club,’’ Kranepool added. “Don’t treat me like an outsider.’’ Neither Fred Wilpon nor Jeff Wilpon responded to an interview request, but Jeff Wilpon issued a statement through Horwitz. “Our thoughts and prayers will continue to be with Ed as he battles through health issues,” it said. These days, Kranepool walks with the help of a cane decorated with Mets logos... As the article explores (and has been public knowledge), Ed has bigger problems than being snubbed by overly defensive owners, but geez. From what I've observed, he's never been a big practitioner of tact, but he's Eddie Bleeping Kranepool, which means something in the realm of Metsiana. Unless he's literally urinating in the punch bowl, you indulge his outburst, you be the bigger man, you pat him on the back and you say, in so many words, all right, Ed, we'll see you next homestand. And tomorrow you get his number from Jay and you give him a call. Honestly, the shall we say questionable running of the club I can handle as part of the game and business and all that. This is the stuff that stings most.

Allen Watson

Don't pin 2003's mess on Wright. He didn't come up until 2004.

A couple of '95 Cubs: Steve Trachsel and Todd Zeile.