G-Fafif

Full consideration of Old Timers Day 1977 here.

Ed Charles was the only Old Timer to rate two escorts. No, you do not hang a slider to the Glider.

According to Murph, we can thank the late Loren Matthews, director of promotions, for putting this day together. A month after Tom Seaver was traded and three days after New York City was blacked out, he produced one of the sunniest days in Mets history. I love that the theme of the day has nothing to do with anything, exactly. It's baseball, we'll find World Series participants, it'll be great. Done.

Bill Wambsganss. Bill Wambsganss. Bill Wambsganss. He did, after all, record three outs.

The Mets came into this world a 58-year-old man when that was old enough for true codgerdom. They were born to dwell on the past every bit as much as they were to peer into future. The beauty part, aside from any thousand individual aspects of this, is how non-denominational this OTD is. They rounded up as many Mets as one possibly could given the theme "great World Series moments" but there are loads of everybody else for no other reason than the Mets had been in only two World Series. MFYs from the '40s. Two Boston Braves from 1948. Moe Drabowsky. Roy Campanella. Denny Somers and Tom Burgess who never got near a World Series. 86-year-old Bill Wambsganss. Freddie Lindstrom, spry as hell. Carl Erskine the Brooklyn Dodgers in a Mets uniform and LA cap. Monte Irvin, who today turns 96. And the moment that gave Terry Cashman's career a second wind. Plus Mel Allen just chillin' in the field boxes and a moment of silence for everybody who ever died and Stan Lomax in the booth and Bill Shea and Chub Feeney having a grand time chatting it up over Lindsey Nelson's shoulder for 45 minutes. And the national anthem presented without additional fanfare because Jane Jarvis is all the fanfare you need. And something about Joe Torre managing in the World Series real soon. And Ralph Kiner dressed as a vintage Pirate but Hal Smith and Bill Mazeroski dressed as Pirates from like two years earlier and the current Pirates dressed the way they dressed in 1977, which was so bizarre, even then, and a bunch of Mets wearing last year's NL centennial caps and Tom Gorman with his 1976 umpiring shirt and nobody mentioning he was behind the plate for the first game in Shea history and those Diamond Club hostesses and the Sea Cliff fire engine and Ed Charles's gag with the screen at third base and... Oh my goodness.

The greatest thing that has ever existed has been found. [youtube:2ndyqyjg]Rq3Sxaw-bYU[/youtube:2ndyqyjg] The 1977 New York Mets Old Timers Day ceremonies and game, as aired on Channel 9. All of it. Willie. Mickey. The Duke. Everybody. It is glorious.

Cram. Enjoy this Jerry relevant article AFTER the puzzle has been solved: http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2011/02/09/whats-the-story-jerrys/

The Subway (assuming that's what it was called).

No Butterball but a detailed report on the "rabbit food," to which Ralph alluded in the "Meet The Mets" special SNY has aired as Mets Yearbook: 1962.

I'm aware of Mets in recent years sending nice packages of stuff on the house and off the record, so I actually found their response a little surprising. I'm guessing whoever fielded the request (quite possibly at the intern level) asked somebody who was like "we don't do that, I think," and it went down from there. A picture of Mr. Met in the mail, and done.

Try this? http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/02/20/89852941.html?pageNumber=55&_suid=142436591878908042045710608363

It's a freebie today via one of the Times' twitter feeds.

I realize the "fan pack" guy is inevitably a Rorschach test (or Les Rohr-shach test) and that we will read it into his experiences whatever we choose to fit our usual stances (Mets suck as always, the dad was trying to do something nice for his kid; Mets can do no wrong ever, the dad is a phony and a creep), but how about some love for those Cleveland Indians employees who passed a birthday card around the office for everybody to sign? Trying to picture Madge from accounting fretting that Ted from shipping already wrote "Dear Mason, Happy Birthday and Go Tribe!" because, darn it, that's what she was going to write. Makes a fella wanna look past Chief Wahoo.

Guys, the Mets work out for the very first time on this date in 1962, and the Times is on it! Robert Lipsyte reports on Joe Ginsberg taking advice from Rogers Hornsby and so forth, here.

Edgy MD wrote: Watching old OC episodes is like an orgy of incidental art. I want to start a blog where I try to identify all Oscar's b/w photos � the prizefighter, the racehorse, the (apparent) Mets team photo. Which year is that from? Which year are his banners from? Wes Westrum's head shot is very prominent. Perhaps Oscar is more plagued by self-doubt than he lets on to Crazy Rhoda Zimmerman.

Kevin Kobel's working on a sinker. Doug Flynn's swinging a lighter bat. Willie Montanez's showing off his new suit. Neil Allen's getting confused. Spring Training's eternal minutiae, here.

Proper assignment of Mr. Escuela's complaints belongs as in many thread as applicable. Tom Seaver: “Always take up two parking places.” Yogi Berra: “Berry, berry bad card player.” Ed Kranepool: “Borrow Chico’s soap and never give it back.” "I can't forgive him for that," lamented Spring Training invitee Nelson Briles when the furor over Chico's tell-all, Bad Stuff 'Bout The Mets, reached Butterball Field in 1979. I surely hope Nellie made his peace with the social leper Escuela before Briles died in 2005.

Let's assign Mr. Escuela's complaints properly: Tom Seaver: “Always take up two parking places.” Yogi Berra: “Berry, berry bad card player.” Ed Kranepool: “Borrow Chico’s soap and never give it back.”

The "we won't play much but we sure want to be around" preview, with the non-stars Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Matt den Dekker and Eric Campbell... http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/nieuwenhuis-campbell-and-den-dekker-competing-to-be-mets-spare-of-parts-1.9932472

Game Of My Life, an M. Garry production.

Campbell already suffering under the yoke of Guy I Forget Is Still There designation.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I was offered authorship of this book but turned it down and gave it to the guy who eventually wrote it. If they got to me was likely turned down by several others including fafif. That is true. Also true is the author (who I know casually and has kept in intermittent touch throughout the project) seems to have thrown himself into the book so it will live up to Mets fan standards for reading -- as opposed to Mets fan standards for baseball. Anyway, I look forward to its release and hope you'll consider it for YOUR Mets Bookshelf.

Leave it to Anthony Recker to have a kid and still look beautiful. Zack Wheeler says Mets can be Royals, except sooner.

Hurth had previously run the Southern League, so it's obvious why he clashed with Weiss: He never could cotton to those damn Yankees!

Pac-10 basketball?