G-Fafif

Every year I track down a few packs of cards for the hell of it. Most years I marvel at the quality and design. Then I forget what they look like, mostly, no offense to those cards. Your prime card years are your prime card years, however.

Great quiz, per usual. The hint REALLY helped.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: so many fans/collectors happen to think that the best baseball card set is the one that they first collected. Favorite card series: The first ones I ever handled (1967); the first ones I ever bought (1970); and the first two I ever completed in more or less real time (1974, 1975). And maybe the first one from which a Willie Mays tumbled (1972). But, I'm sure it's just coincidental.

Lagares 2.5 Murphy 2.0 Rice 1.5 Gee 1.0 Parnell 1.0 Burke 0.5 Wright 0.5 Tejada 0.5 Byrd 0.5

Box

Ankiel-Lagares CF platoon a powerful thing.

Ike hit the first Met HR in Marlins Park, becoming the latest visiting Met to hit a first home run in a new National League park.

Ankiel 1.0 Murphy 0.5 Tejada 0.5

Harvey 4.5 Wright 1.0 Murphy 1.0 Byrd 1.0 Parnell 1.0 Ankiel 0.5 Burke 0.5 Baxter 0.5

Zvon wrote: Not returning to bitch but give extra credit for the "possible outcome" bit. When was that last time I read the name Dave Marshall? He'd give Recker a run in the looks dept. Glad you enjoyed, Z.

Gary really buried Kingman for never hitting a big home run as a Met ("up 7-0 or down 7-0"). Hit a huge one in that very park, among others.

Love the Drake! Definitely respect him.

5) Jason Hartdke Who rescued a game blown by John Franco at the hands of...current Cubs manager Dale Sveum.

4) Ced Landrum Released in tandem with Chico Walker as fast as could be on the last day of the 1993 season, lest it seem odd one should remember Ced Landrum. Though I suppose it's odd to remember that, too.

Recker is terribly good-looking, isn't he? Assuming he doesn't play out of Collins's jealousy over his less trashy Johnny Damon vibe.

6) Kevin Roberson (though the years should be flipped)

The author of the "cynical" ballpark piece (which was actually more about Dodger Stadium), returns to Cynic Field and finds the Mets' identity barren. Tall, blue-eyed, and sabermetrically sound, Matt Harvey is everything you could ask for out of a young pitcher. He has already been on the cover of Sports Illustrated and occupies more than his fair share of column space in the New York tabloid dailies. For the most part, the success or failure of the 2013 Mets will be irrelevant as long as Harvey continues to pitch well. He, like all the other pitching prospects who floated in their own orbit around bad teams, will become the main story line at Citi Field, distracting a jaded fan base from the truly boring mediocrity around him. But Harvey's popularity and success don't mean that the Mets will stay comfortably in a holding pattern until the team around him coalesces. New York is not Minneapolis or Houston or Pittsburgh, where any reason to go to the ballpark � especially the handsome kid who throws in the mid-90s � will suffice. Something has been lost in Flushing, and it's worth wondering if the boisterous, self-deprecating, but ultimately humane crowd that used to fill Shea Stadium will ever fully move over to Citi Field. On the concourse in front of the press box, I watched a woman in her fifties watch the ballgame with her husband. They both fit the bill of longtime season-ticket holders � they had their own Mets seat cushions, weathered canvas caps, and they talked with the ushers with a warm familiarity. In the eighth inning, with both the tying and go-ahead run on base, Ike Davis, whose .532 OPS has pushed the boundaries of the old baseball clich� "mightily struggling," walked to the plate. He, of course, struck out. The woman turned back to the usher and, perhaps to the row of reporters sitting behind her, yelled, "I can't take this shit anymore. I'm trying, but I can't. What is this team? What are they?" Some interesting thoughts, but a lot of well-trod material that even a non-Mets intensive reader would have heard to near death by now.

2) Billy Connors

3) Ed Lynch

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Hojo. I mean, I believe it happened, but can't remember it. HoJo was both an ex-Met and ex-Rockie when I saw him, in my more concentrated beverage days, as a then-current Cub at Coors Field; I was a guest of the brewer who held (and holds) the naming rights. My PR handlers -- not enormous baseball fans but caught up in early Rockies fever, which was actually pretty invigorating to be around in the summer of 1995 -- vaguely recalled HoJo in Colorado the year before, and my hyper-recognition of him as the solitary Cub I went out of my way to applaud led them to the overstatement that "this guy knows more about the Rockies than we do!" If I did, it was by default.

seawolf17 wrote: There's always someone in these threads, usually from the mid-90s, who I'm surprised by too. Don't remember Magadan as a Cub either. Or Randy Myers, for that matter. Myers posted seasons of 53 and 38 saves with the Cubs in his three years there, the latter in service to a Cubs team that made a late if doomed push for the first N.L. Wild Card. Magadan, on the other hand, I wouldn't have remembered North Siding it without the nudge provided here. Mags, wherever he batted in any given order, really wandered the earth post-Mets.

I'm so glad we'll have this time together Just to take a pitch that's called strike three...

Son of a buck, that's my duck. My first look at him in 44 years. I still like his chances over the bear. Stick with BML: part man, part time machine.

POW! They'll be Mharvved!

Edgy MD wrote: I was thinking of the Brazell Game, the game that sank the 2004 Cubs, which special help from our newest bestest buddy LaTroy Hawkins. Limiting these KTE/THR precedents to @ Wrigley. When the Cubs come to town in June, there'll be Sheaness very soon.