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Ceetar wrote: just Howie I think. That'll do nicely. Josh wear a Stars jersey?

I certainly hope at least one Met represented the orange and blue. I'd settle for the reviled orange and blue (which I got a kick out of despite its unassailable ridiculousness).

Hidden in plain sight: Ex-Jay Frank Francisco.

Doug Linton, a bit player on the 1993 Jays, not in the postseason, was presented a World Series ring before one of the first games of the '94 season when he was a new Met. Gord Ash flew down for a little home plate ceremony, which struck me as one of the classiest things I'd ever heard of. His rookie teammate, just finding his way alongside a young Carlos Delgado in 1993: Shawn Green. I find it hard to believe Green and Delgado were once young ballplayers.

A significant chunk of your 1981 Toronto Blue Jays pitching staff was a supergroup comprised of New York Met washouts: Jackson Todd 2-7 Mark Bomback 5-5 Juan Berengeuer 2-9 Roy Lee Jackson 1-2, 7 saves Dale Murray 1-0 Nino Espinosa 0-0 This fascinated me in 1981. It fascinates me now. The infusion of discarded Mets helped the Jays not at all. They finished seventh in the first half of 1981 and sixth in the second half of that strike-asunder year.

I can't tell you how glad I am to (A) have been too young to live through the stupid fucking Kingman years (even if it means my missing the Steve Henderson game) and ( the SNY guys actually stuck him somewhere near where his performance-- rather than his being a Freakshow attraction during a down period-- should slot him. Fuck Kingman. FUCK Kingman. Kingman Should Be Fucked. Also... all due respect to the Kid, but there's no way-- NO WAY-- he tops Alfonzo, Mookie, Darling, Cleon, Grote, HoJo, or Leiter (or Matlack, or Sid, or Tug). He was a hell of a guy, and a hell of a get, but if you wipe the '86 sheen from your eyes and look at him, he's barely a top-20 Met-performance guy. Also also... I love Keith, but come on. The Kingman Years (which weren't really the Kingman Years, or at least not the darkest period, as his trade was an almost incidental signpost that things were getting much worse): Ya hadta be there. The post-Kingman years (after Kingman II, that is) were that much better because we'd lived through them. I wouldn't recommend them, but if they happened to you, they're charming with a heaping helping of hindsight. (And if you didn't live through Kingman, why such harsh fuckage?) The countdown and Carter: I'm wary of getting riled up by these things because unless you're going to apply nothing but strict statistical formulas (which is a spreadsheet, not a show), then it's all touch and feel. The Mets experience is mostly touch and feel as is. And at the risk of truthiness, giving Carter the benefit of the touch and feel doubt feels more right than wrong. What you did, when you did it, the circumstances surrounding what you did and the mark what you did left says a lot to me in crafting historical perspective. Carter gets points for all of that, even if his performance began sliding in year three of his contract and crashed by year five. That '86 sheen is justifiably powerful stuff. When Carter was inducted in the Mets HOF in 2001, the Post ran his all-time ranking on various Mets offensive lists. Hey, I thought, he's not particularly high on any of them. And it didn't stop me for one second from thinking his induction was richly deserved as is his "Mount Rushmore of that era" Met status, as Howie put it in the show. And Keith too.

Andres Torres - CF Justin Turner - 1B David Wright - 3B Lucas Duda - DH Daniel Murphy - 2B Scott Hairston - LF Kirk Nieuwenhuis - RF Rob Johnson - C Ronny Cedeno - SS Jonathon Niese - LHP Don't know what that designation next to Duda's name denotes. Must be some Canadian thing.

Besides being one hit from second-most in Mets history, David goes to Toronto tied with Mike Piazza for most RBI in interleague games, with 80. Sometimes it's fun to read the game notes.

I still love this accidental thread title in a Jamaican accent. Red Stripe should adopt it as their tag line.

Mike Baxter is good at pinch-hitting because he was a teenage Mets fan in Bayside on July 10, 1999, and witnessed Matt Franco receiving adulation for taking down the Great Rivera. "I wanna be like that someday," the kid affirmed. Then his dad told him all about the exploits of Kranepool and Staub and Boisclair, and it only reinforced his determination to someday come off the Mets bench and do great things from the left side. That's my theory, anyway.

Every adult was old in 1962, yet nobody noticed because Casey was so wonderfully lavishly ancient. He's about a dozen years younger in this film than my dad is now and he's waaaaaaay older.

The Canadian team in the American League gets a visit from a most Metropolitan bunch. Niese vs. Romero.

Wright 3.5 Johnson 1.5 Cedeno 1.5 Murphy 1.0 Parnell 0.5 Rauch 0.5 Turner 0.5 Baxter 0.5 Dickey 0.5

Rob Johnson and the rally-igniting Mets guarantee they'll have to declare their at least partial share of a 38-game Wild Card as they go through customs.

METS ALL-TIME HIT LEADERS Through Games of 5/17/2012 1. Ed Kranepool 1,418 2. Jose Reyes 1,300 3. DAVID WRIGHT 1,299 Hello, Jose? This is David. I'm comin' to getcha, even I have to go to Canada to do it.

BTW, this thread title is hilarious when you hear it in your head in a vaguely disgusted Jamaican accent.

Mets hosting 8,000 school kids with the promise of "being treated to a pre-game meteorology lesson by PIX11 weather experts Mr. G and Linda Church, who will engage them in an interactive program about weather patterns and phenomena and take students behind the scenes at the PIX11 weather center. Mr. Met and the Pepsi MAX Party Patrol will also be on hand to entertain students and shoot t-shirts into the crowd. At the conclusion of program, the students will stay at the ballpark to watch the game." May it rain base hits on Mat Latos. Andres Torres � CF Kirk Nieuwenhuis � LF David Wright � 3B Lucas Duda � RF Daniel Murphy � 2B Ike Davis � 1B Ronny Cedeno � SS Mike Nickeas � C R.A. Dickey � RHP

Who gets what, according to Brian Costa in WSJ: MLB, not the Mets. While announcing that Citi Field will host the 2013 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that the event will have an economic impact of $191.5 million on the city. But despite the sellout crowds expected for three days of festivities, there will be virtually no direct financial benefit for the Mets. All revenues associated with the All-Star Game, Home Run Derby and Futures Game will go to MLB. That includes ticket sales, parking, concessions and merchandise. What the Mets get in exchange for hosting the game is essentially a marketing tool. They can use the game to help 2013 ticket sales by offering full and partial season-ticket holders a chance to buy tickets for the events. They can also use it as a showcase for Citi Field. And they can tout the additional exposure it will give their sponsors. But that's about it. "Every dollar generated from the event goes to MLB," said Dave Howard, the Mets' executive vice president of business operations. "The benefit is the opportunities that you present to your season-ticket holders, plan holders, customers and sponsors to be associated with it." An MLB spokesman said that is generally accurate and declined to comment further. Howard said all full-season ticket holders and luxury suite holders will have a chance to buy at least one strip of tickets per seat for all three days of events. The team is also planning to make additional tickets available to full- and partial-plan holders who commit early for 2013. For teams whose attendance is already robust, the All-Star Game might not make much of a difference in ticket sales. When asked what the financial benefit of hosting the 2008 All-Star Game was for the Yankees, a person involved in putting on the event said, "None." But for a team like the Mets, who are trying to reverse a three-year attendance decline, it can't hurt. They averaged 30,161 fans at Citi Field in 2011, according to Stats LLC, nearly a 7% drop from 2010 and down 22.5% from 2009. Through Tuesday, the Mets were drawing an average of 27,846 fans per game in 2012. Arizona Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall, whose team hosted the All-Star Game in 2011, said the game helped them sell tickets last year despite a last-place finish in 2010. Hall said the Diamondbacks' season ticket base went from just over 10,000 in 2010 to around 13,000 last year. "This was coming off a really bad season," Hall said. "The renewal rate was really high." Hall said the national exposure from the game also helped lure fans from out of town toward the end of last season. "We had visitors from all over the country and out of the U.S. who said they were curious to see a game because they saw Chase Field in the All-Star Game," Hall said. "I don't know if we can quantify that, but people were intrigued by the stadium." When the game is over, MLB traditionally makes a donation to the host team's charitable foundation. Hall said MLB gave the Diamondbacks between $2.5 million and $3 million, which the team distributed to various community groups. The Mets can expect something similar. "That's really the financial thank you, so to speak," Howard said. MLB also covers operational costs of the game, such as paying ballpark concession workers and parking lot attendants. But for team executives, preparing to host the game�scheduled for July 16, 2013�is just part of the job. "We all now have a second job, yes," Howard said. "But it's going to be a great event, so we're excited." Gives credence to the Harazin quote I read years ago on the Mets considering bidding for the 1988 ASG to mark Shea's 25th season, but deciding it was a lot of work (for a team that was riding high and didn't need a marketing tool).

Attendance this week has been less than middling, each game announced in the low 20,000s (looking like considerably less on TV). Unhelpful weather Monday and Tuesday -- though that doesn't speak to advance sales -- but beautiful night last night, the team playing exciting ball of late for the most part, Johan pitching and David scorching...yet 22,000 despite value-date pricing. (Yes, local hockey playoffs are in progress and school isn't out, but the Mets have attracted large crowds on similar May nights before; and such circumstances don't bother Red Sox and Phillie fans.) I bring this up because though it's early and perceptions take time to catch up to reality for the gate to feel a positive impact, it's not like Mets fans are busting down doors to see their homegrown hero in all his glory. It was more or less the same deal last year when Jose was having the season of his (and, in a way, the franchise's) life and for all the coverage of the guy holding the Don't Trade Jose sign, there didn't seem to be an attendance groundswell on Reyes's behalf. There's more to a star player's popular appeal than how 'x' number of dates draw (never mind impact on the team's long-term competitive fortunes), but when a potentially monster contract is being weighed, I can't imagine it won't enter somebody's mind across the table from David's representatives that, sure, your boy had a great season, but his drawing power is negligible. Or in Branch Rickey terms, we finished 12th in league attendance with you, we can finish 12th without you.

...the old dude who maintains my youthful illusions.

Carrasco-free Mets have been tied by the Jose-ful Marlins for the second WC spot, with the Todd Frazier Reds still lurking at Citi Field, a half-game behind. The 37-game season has been a relative success. Let us see where the 38-game season takes us.

BALK!

Duda 2.5 Santana 2.0 Baxter 2.0 Davis 1.5 Nickeas 1.0 Parnell 0.5

Johnny Callison's name will be spoken more for the next 14 months than it has been for the last 40 years.

I'm pretty sure it was Marty Noble who told our little Amazin' Tuesday group in 2010 that the C had been offered to DW and he didn't want it. People and preferences change, but Marty's take was David didn't need/want that sort of designation even though he was the de facto Man by then already. Nice shirt, though.