G-Fafif

Valdespin 2.0 Tejada 1.5 Harvey 1.5 Wright 0.5 Baxter 0.5 Hawkins 0.5 Parnell 0.5 Duda 0.5 Rice 0.5 Byrd 0.5 Buck 0.5 Turner 0.5 Atchison 0.5

When I came home from Shea after seeing my first Mets win in a very long time in 1981, I buzzed around the house all night because, ohmigod, I saw the Mets win. I was 18. It didn't take much. I was the same way last night. It hadn't been long since I'd seen the Mets win at Citi Field -- it had been three days. And it wasn't the first time I'd seen the Mets win on a walkoff hit or home run or even grand slam (I was at the Kevin McReynolds game that was referenced in the aftermath of last night). But boy, something about last night...Jordany; Mattingly's overarranging of the infield; the effort to tie it; Harvey not getting stuck with a loss...I'm still buzzing. Thirty-two years later, baseball makes time incidental.

Will be toasting each K with the proper cocKtail. Special batting advice provided by personal batting coach. National Anthem to be performed by appropriate guest artist.

Ed Burns: Not a fan of "freak" dimensions. The Mets display a replica of the Eddie Grant memorial in their museum, which is the most incredibly out of character item in the joint (but most appreciated here). There are many theories to what happened to the original, but nobody's ever come up with a definitive resting places. As for the rest of the memorials from Electric Avenue, I honestly have no idea.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Is this an old account? I vaguely remember reading this many years ago. I wouldn't swear it hadn't run somewhere else before, though I did a quick search and didn't find anything (otherwise I'd just link it to that place). He apparently wrote it a couple of years ago because there's a second half to the story, which I held for a rainy day, that focuses on what happened to the Pirate who scored the final run and it somehow leads to somebody having a recent conversation with Virgil Trucks, who was 92 in the telling, which would make it 2009 or 2010. "Many years ago," on the other hand...it's quite possible Ray Smith has found others to whom to tell his story but from what I know of Mr. Barr (from NYG circles), he sought this out on his own. The author was friends with Bobby Thomson, as many old NYG fans were (Bobby opened his home and his heart without much of a nudge required) and offered to share other stories. Send at will, I told him.

Murphy 1.5 Carson 1.0 Wright 0.5 Lagares 0.5 Tejada 0.5 Atchison 0.5 Familia 0.5

Someone who reached out to me via my activity in New York Giants torchbearing sent me a great story he wrote about the (then) kid who stole home after the last game the Giants played at the Polo Grounds (before it was known that someday there'd be Mets there). You can read the whole thing here, as part of a broader theme, but this part in particular is gold. It's the 15-year-old (now 70 or 71) recounting how he made off with home -- they could take his team, but he wasn't going to let them to take the plate with them. �I ran to home plate. �There was a bunch of people standing around doing nothing. �I took out my Boy Scout knife � that�s the truth � and started digging. �Someone stepped on my hand closing the knife and giving me a big cut. �I dug and dug and finally home plate was loose. �The plate had five coarse-threaded metal inserts. �While I was digging and tugging everyone stood around watching � no one helped. �Then when I got it out they tried to grab it from me and all hell broke loose. �One older kid grabbed it from me and I jumped on his back and when he tried to punch me I took it back. �I then took off running as fast as I could. �A photographer spotted me and asked me to pose for a picture with home plate as others tried to take it from me. That picture appeared on the front page of the now-defunct New York Mirror on September 30, 1957, entitled the �Last Steal�. �After the picture was taken, I was home free and left by the centerfield exit with my prized possession. �I�d had the crap beat out of me. My glasses were broken and long gone, my finger was bleeding, my shirt was ripped and I realized I had been in quite a fight to keep home plate. �The next challenge was getting it back to Linden. �I must have looked a little strange, a disheveled fifteen-year-old hanging onto what looked like a home plate. �I couldn�t see without my glasses so I had to ask strangers to tell me when the subway stop arrived for the bus terminal. �But I made it home with my treasured possession.� And by the way, the kid still has it.

TransMonk wrote: Didn't Saturday retire recently? Yup. His last action of note was lining up as Peyton Manning's center in the Pro Bowl for one play despite wearing a Packers uniform because he was meant to go out that way...or something like that, as I happened to flip by the Pro Bowl at exactly that moment and didn't stay tuned.

Four rugged innings at Coors Field yet a six-run lead...and Terry the leader of men took him out to preserve him for a start that would never come despite a weather forecast that could have told him as much. And thus Collins & Warthen's Laff-In was cancelled.

Until he proves he's healthy, hell yes I'd trade Marcum for Saturday. Strength up the middle is key.

Rubin all over Nimmo's start. Nimmo, the Mets' first-round pick (13th overall) in 2011, took a South Atlantic League-leading .424 batting average back home with him. "It's baseball, so we're going to go through cold streaks and hot streaks," Nimmo said. "This is a hot streak right now. I'm going to go through a period where I'm not doing very well. We're just going to try to keep this going as long as possible, just be consistent. But, yeah, there's a reason people don't hit .400 in baseball." Said Savannah manager Luis Rojas: "You could see his talent is just kicking in as he's seeing higher-level competition. He's going to get better and better. Each time he keeps moving up the ladder and sees better competition, he's going to be up right there with it." Nimmo signed for $2.1 million on Aug. 15, 2011 -- just before the midnight deadline. Holding out until the final moment, which yielded Nimmo about $500,000 over slot for the pick, did deprive him of a couple of months of playing in the Gulf Coast League at the end of that season. That experience might have been particularly valuable to Nimmo, since he hails from Wyoming and primarily had been playing American Legion ball as an amateur. Minus that experience, Nimmo had a relatively steep learning curve with Brooklyn last year -- although he continually improved as the New York-Penn League season went on and he got more acclimated. He finished with a .248 average, six homers and 40 RBIs in 266 at-bats. "It could have been something, but that's not how the cards played out," Nimmo said about the decision to wait until the final moment to sign. "I'm pretty happy with where we are right now. I think I'm just going to continue to need more reps and face more pitchers. Really, it was just a huge jump from high school to the New York-Penn League. All of a sudden now you're facing the best out of college. It just took me a little bit to adjust and see it every day." How did the 20-year-old Nimmo improve as last season went on? "The game kind of slowed down," he said. "The more you see something, the more repetitions you get, the easier it becomes. And that made it more like back when I was playing Legion ball. I was able to react to things and think things ahead instead of just being a step behind the whole time. At the beginning of the year I was feeling my way around, still trying to get my feet wet on how this routine works. June was the first time I had ever really played a night game in pro ball. I didn't know how that routine worked. "We didn't show up six hours before the game in Legion ball. We'd show up an hour, two hours before. I maybe hit in the cage and then went out and played. Now, it's your job and you're playing against high-level competition every day. You have to get ready mentally and physically. It's just a little different way of getting ready."

Officially revising that cliche about someone with a frozen expression of fear on his face to "like a 1967 Jim Hickman caught in the headlights." Jae was a Met Seo long ago that sight of his name made me think Search Engine Optimization, whereas a while back, I'd be clearing out FAFIF's Spam filter and wonder why there was so much in there about Jae Seo. Yeoman job displaying all these cards. Rises above the level of gruntwork.

Gee 2.5 Buck 1.5 Baxter 1.0 Hawkins 1.0 Rice 1.0 Lyon 1.0 Parnell 1.0 Murphy 0.5 Tejada 0.5

Cowgill 2.0 Turner 1.5 Murphy 1.5 Tejada 1.0 Buck 1.0 Lyon 0.5 Hawkins 0.5

Agee and Gallagher were Tribe property first.

Harvey 4.0 Davis 2.0 Duda 2.0 Murphy 0.5 Buck 0.5 Wright 0.5 Valdespin 0.5

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Atchison definitely looks more like a coach than a player. Perhaps Johan thought the same thing and sought coachly advise from Good Ol' Atch. Scott, not wanting to be unhelpful, told him, "Sure, get your throwing in, sounds good to me," and pop went the anterior capsule again.

Fun fact: Both Duke Snider in 1963 and Scott Atchison in 2013 were told by a couple of smart-mouthed batboys that "Old Timers Day's not for another month, Grandpa."

Baltimore, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Seattle and, of course, Washington and New York (N) all lost franchises and received replacements. Only Montreal awaits proper reparation. (Well, them and Brooklyn, sort of.) Interesting point. Imagine there's still a dozen or so who demand a replacement for the Boston Braves. And maybe one or two who want the Athletics back in Philadelphia. Inconsistent of me, but I strangely doubt anybody gives a crap about the St. Louis Browns. What a half-hearted swing by Kevin Collins here. Cardinals and Phillies have, to some extent, absorbed the Brown and Athletic legacies in terms of displaying some of their artifacts and such. The Jimmy Fund, so associated with the Red Sox, was originally the Braves' cause. Nats-Senators (both versions) and Brewers-Braves links are maintained historically. I'll resist reopening the worm can vis-a-vis Mets and their N.Y. N.L. forebears, but I view that sort of thing as right and proper. Collins to Topps Photographer: "Sure, I'll be included in The Miracle Has Landed someday, but now that I'm stuck on this 110-loss furshlugginernaut for the duration of 1969, it's like the Miracle's landed on me. So yeah, take my picture if you want. Whatever."

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Nobody caught the error of the wrong Pepe in my original post. I honestly searched for Mangual but completely accepted, in the course of scouring, that Frias had reason for being there. Sometimes we're not as Pepe as we'd like to be.

Too bad, in a way, that the Marlins got their stadium. It would be only right to rip them out of Loria's hands and give a franchise back from which he basically stole his. Baltimore, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Seattle and, of course, Washington and New York (N) all lost franchises and received replacements. Only Montreal awaits proper reparation. (Well, them and Brooklyn, sort of.)

Warren Cromartie, ready to bring the Expos home.

Did Wayne Garrett ever show that much red in his Mets days? Looks like he fled to Canada to avoid the draft. The '76 Olympic patch -- foreshadowing that which will help to kill Montreal baseball generations up the road -- still in use during '77 Spring Training, apparently. No jerseys for every occasion in those days.

Thread title of the millennium.

Wright 2.0 Murphy 1.5 Valdespin 1.0