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Longest Ago Mets Still Active chronology here.

Though he was quite nasty about New Yorkers in the wake of the 1973 pennant clinching (animals, I believe he called us), I appreciated that three years later that in praising Johnny Bench he was seen as trashing as Thurman Munson. We should also appreciate his giving up early on Howard Johnson.

Can have a nice chat sometime with Jeff Kent about being on a team that was headed to the World Series and, then whamo, being on the Mets (though Joaq-Ar was DFA'd before heading to DFW). Jerry decided he was an outfielder despite his never having been an outfielder.

metsguyinmichigan wrote: Lee Mazzilli! OE -- Scanned the list and didn't realize that Lee had been named through secret monikers. I'll add Mookie, who came before racing stripes. But Mookie never wore the unadorned jersey. His had had the collar and sleeve piping (which I really liked when it came along).

Steve Rushin penned a memorable profile in SI in 1993 dubbing Sparky the heir to the linguistic tango begun by Casey Stengel. To apply an old line to an old manager, Sparky Anderson doesn't have to be naked to count to 21. We know this because just the other day he mentioned the importance of mathematics. "You have to know your math," he said. "In school, I used to be finished with my math so early, I'd go to the bathroom, come back, and they'd still be workin' on it. Now, when a contractor's throwin' numbers together, I know if they add up." Sparky looks you square in the eye and taps his right index linger to a snow-white temple. "But English?" he continues. "What's the difference? If you're a writer, yeah, you gotta put it all in there or you'll get letters from teachers. But I see now they're even puttin' ain't in the dictionary, so I'm good, man." Sparky beams. "I'm covered." He is a learned man. Sparky frequently precedes his serpentine sentences with the phrase "There's one thing I've learned." There's one thing he's learned...and that one thing is something different every time. "There's one thing I've learned," says Sparky. "Live today the way today's lived. Every father walked through snowstorms to get to school. That's not today. Things change, so change with 'em." Ron Fimrite also wrote one that sticks in my mind, from the Tigers' magical 1984 season. This passage always got me: He may have lived most of his life in Southern California, but his roots are in the Midwest and his speech is heartland plain and peppered with ungrammatical homilies. Although he's capable of a certain eloquence. Sparky leads both leagues in double negatives. His politics are solidly Republican, founded on his father's as yet unproven economic theory that "the more millionaires there are, the better it is for us." In baseball, of course, Sparky finds himself bossing millionaires every day. The Captain Hook thing was perfect. He didn't necessarily have the horses to go nine, so he didn't fool around. It wasn't bullpen wizardry for the sake of innovation. He had to win games. Think about an all-time dynasty built on mostly medicore starting pitching: Billingham, Norman, Gullett (good but always battling injuries), Nolan (who never quite seemed to blossom)...Pat Zachry later...Jim McGlothlin and Jim Merritt earlier (winning 20 games with an ERA over 4.00, which was unheard of in 1970). Wayne Simpson was a comer lost to arm miseries. But what a way to mix and match with the bullpen before anybody else was doing it as regularly or effectively. I also loved that he had one set of rules for 21 Reds and individual sets of rules for Rose, Perez, Morgan and Bench. Why kid around? he asked -- they're our stars. And, of course, that he gave Les Nessman an autographed ball.

The Giants' secret weapon? Failed 1984 Met Dick Tidrow, according to Heyman. Their scouting guru has "a special brand of genius,'' said one admiring competitor. No one knows pitching like this former Yankees and Indians hurler, and he plucked starters Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner and Jonathan Sanchez and closer Brian Wilson with draft choices. The first three were first-rounders, with both Lincecum (in 2006) and Bumgarner (in 2007) going No. 10 overall. Matt Cain was the 25th pick in 2002 and both Sanchez (27th round in 2004) and Wilson (23rd round in 2003) were picked after round 20.

Came across Chris Russo reliving his Giants life, in two parts: ; . If you can forget how much you couldn't stand Chris Russo, how grossly overcompensated he is for what he does and what a Met baiter he was when things weren't going swimmingly for us, it's not bad.

Adam Rubin reporting Mets have hired J.P. Ricciardi.

When it comes to Bobby V, how long must I dream?

George Vecsey pays local homage. All was right in the firmaments for the Giants because management respected its past, did not pretend that the Giants landed in 1958, mysteriously steaming into the bay like it was El Dorado. The Giants came from uptown Manhattan. They had been there since 1883. Two years later, the owner-manager Jim Mutrie was so enamored of his sturdy lads swatting the ball that he gloated �My giants!� and the nickname stuck. They were the team of the carriage trade when the Yankees (nee Highlanders) and the Trolley Dodgers, the motley Brooklyn franchise, were irrelevant. The Giants and the Cubs were the best teams in the National League in the first quadrant of the last century. The Giants barnstormed to Japan and so impressed their hosts that the orange-and-black uniforms were picked up by the team that dominates that nation to this day, the Yomiuri Giants. The Giants had a hold on New York, including families like the Whitneys and the Walkers. One Whitney, married name Joan Payson, eventually bought the new team, the Mets. She had a minority stockholder named Herbert Walker, charming guy, had relatives named Bush. I often wonder what became of that family. Maybe they still follow baseball. Dunno. The Giants also had Irish fans, like the McGuinness men, who were like uncles to me, who took me to my first game at the Polo Grounds and chortled when the Giants beat my Dodgers on a chintzy home run. The Giants also claimed Vic Ziegel from the Bronx. When he became one of the great and funny voices in New York, he had a vocation of standing up for his departed team, once tracking down the modest plaque in a housing development that notes where the Polo Grounds used to be. Do I think it is a coincidence that Vic departed this world in late July and the Giants won the World Series in early November? Not really. Credit must also go to the inspired management of the Giants, which found role players, and had the courage to bench expensive parts like Barry Zito. As Tyler Kepner pointed out in The Times on Tuesday, there is probably a lesson to other teams about cautious spending. There is another lesson: the Giants respected history. They brought back Barry Bonds to throw out a ball during the League Championship Series. They brought back McCovey, Marichal, Perry, Cepeda and Irvin for the first game of the World Series. (Willie Mays was sick.) That fine man, Monte Irvin, now 91, went to the mound in a wheelchair. The next night, Dave Dravecky, who pitched for the Giants and later lost an arm to cancer, visited the mound. Bobby Thomson�s two daughters, tossed out the first pitches. Now Vic Ziegel�s cockatiel can start practicing new words. The Giants win the World Series! The Giants win the World Series!

The Cult of the Closer received quite a boost from the performance (in more ways than one) of Brian Wilson in this World Series.

A friend with Sirius passes along this report: He�s going over every Giants memory of his life-where he was and what he was doing. It�s a wrong team audio Cliff Notes version of your book. Couldn�t even DISCUSS 2000. (�Forget the Mets. Forget the Mets.�) Will always cherish the memory of the spontaneous "CHRIS RUSSO SUCKS!" chant that erupted as I approached the turnstile for the 7 after the Bobby Jones game.

The 2005 White Sox went 99-63 and were in first place wire-to-wire in the regular season (with the Tribe nipping at their heels late in the year but never catching them) and then swept the defending champion Red Sox, took the Angels 4-1 in the ALCS and swept the Astros in four tight games. Whatever the internals indicate, that was a great team for one year, which is all you have to be (that, and a little lucky).

Roger Angell, from today's Sporting Scene blog: Today my shriveled, Old Giants Fan cortex is suffused with happy thoughts for this young, freshly crowned World Championship edition of my old nine, which beat up on the Texas Rangers in the now concluded Series, winning four out of five games, and allowing them but a single run (and a single base-runner past second) over their last twenty-one innings. Two of the young, homegrown Giants starters, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, didn�t allow a run, and the third, the eccentric and delightful Tim Lincecum, out-pitched his celebrated (and far wealthier) opposite number, Cliff Lee, in the 3-1 finale last night. This was the Giants� first World Series win since 1954, when they played uptown from me at the Polo Grounds, and my glowing thoughts just now extend toward a slew of variously talented, fervent but disappointed heroes of mine who strove mightily in the years since then without ever waking up to this sort of morning: Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, John (the Count) Montefusco, Atlee Hammaker, Will Clark (whose eloquent swing, seen in time-frame sequence, is up on a bulletin board in my study), Jeff Leonard (whose home-run trot sometimes featured a broken-wing effect, left or right, to show up the pitcher); and a particular pal, the late Bill Rigney, a one-time Giants utility infielder who went on to manage the club (and two others) for a total of six years but never took them to the home port of October. Outpitched, outhit, and outmanaged, the powerful Rangers, who had easily dismissed the Yankees in the A.L.C.S., took an ugly sort of beating�a mugging�in these games, and it will take a while to figure out why. Their players, dispersing now toward their families and golf courses and hunting pastures, will be bad company for the next few weeks. This took away their pride, and they won�t recover it until they can bat and throw again in March and April, and resume the chancy, everyday winning and losing that comes with their trade. No such relief is available to their fans, who were exulting in their team�s first World Series in its fifty-year history, and now have only their ticket stubs and dorky outsize Ranger hats to show for it. I�m no hankie-waver, but I believe that we victory-stuffed Yankees fans or recently enriched Red Sox Nation loonies have little notion of this deep local pain, nor quite remember the quivering first joys of giving ourselves to the hopeless early Mets. Even in Dallas, sudden losing, catastrophe at the very end, is the price of caring, and remission comes slowly. We old baseball-capital types secretly patronize these dispersed Dallas hordes, I sense, but what owe them right now is a dab of pity. Players have little awareness of fan angst, but I�ve not forgotten an amazing late-summer conversation I had with the iconic, forty-year-old Willie McCovey at Candlestick Park, in 1978, at a time when his contending Giants had just dropped five out of six games and were beginning a customary September slide toward oblivion. �The fans sitting up there are helpless,� he said. �They can�t pick up a bat and come down and do something. Their only involvement is in how well you do. If you strike out or mess up out there, they feel they�ve done something wrong. You�re all they�ve got. The professional athlete knows there�s always another game or another year coming up. If he loses he swallows that bitter pill and comes back. It�s much harder for the fans.�

Maddux pitched the day game after the clincher on Pete Flynn's chewing gum and bailing wire lawn.

Speaking of Willie, he could use a street to call his own. After several highly publicized fights over who should be eligible for a street naming honor, New York�s City Council created a list of requirements to simplify the process in 2008, and Rule No. 1 is that streets are co-named only for people who have died. Yet once again, Mays�s name popped up on the list of proposed honorees submitted last Friday to the City Council for its review. Ydanis Rodriguez, the councilman whose district skirts the neighborhood where the Polo Grounds once stood, recognizes that the council is unlikely to approve a street name for Mays, but said that his accomplishments were worth noting. �I don�t think it�s worth fighting about at this moment because if we make an exception for Mays, it will open the window for everyone else who wants to recognize people who are alive,� Rodriguez said, adding that he would explore building a baseball museum in his district. �Youngsters need to see their elders who are role models.� Rodriguez took his cue from Community Board 10, whose borders overlap with the old Polo Grounds, and which in 2008 called for the creation of Willie Mays Drive on a service road off the Harlem River Drive between 155th and 163rd Streets. The drive for a Willie Mays Drive began with Jacob Morris, director of the Harlem Historical Society. Morris has pushed for other streets in Harlem to be co-named to honor civil rights leaders, musicians, athletes and others who lived and worked in the neighborhood. Also, he recently said he'd like to give that Wilpon kid a break. "I sent word that I would like to do a show (at Citi Field) because I heard that they weren't drawing too well," Mays told the Daily News Monday night at the "Great Sports Legends" dinner to support the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, held at the Waldorf Astoria. "I said to the kid (Jeff Wilpon), 'Mr. Wilpon, I'd like to come back and do a show there.' Like an autograph session, help myself, help the Mets." Mays, 79, socked all but 14 of his 660 home runs while wearing a Giants uniform, but he still remembers the reception he got when he returned to New York in 1972 to play for the Mets. "They really embraced me and made me feel welcome, like I never left," Mays said. "I want to do something for them."

Former Met Willie Mays enjoyed last night's result "Oh, man, I don't get overly excited about baseball, but looking at these kids and how excited they were, I had some tears in my eyes," Willie Mays said from his Peninsula home shortly after the Giants won the World Series on Monday night, "because you never know, this might be the last time something like this happens to some of these kids. It's a wonderful feeling for me, and I'm sure it's a wonderful feeling for these kids and their families." Mays, surrounded by a half-dozen friends, had to leave the room after watching the final out, Brian Wilson striking out Nelson Cruz. "I had to get out of here for a minute because I'm not used to getting emotional like this." As the current players dumped booze on one another, Mays was asked how he celebrated in '54 as a 23-year-old who capped off an MVP season with a sweep of the favored Indians. "Leo (Durocher) wouldn't let me drink," Mays said of his first manager. "They took care of me. I had no Champagne. Just soda."

Hung around a long time. Stole 1972 starting ASG gig from Buddy. Hit Doc like a son of a gun. No ring for you.

1. Dickey 2. Santana 3. Pelfrey 4. Niese 5. Takahashi

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: This team can mend Chris Isaak's broken heart.

Keep pitching Jamie. You alone keep me young.

SteveJRogers wrote: And just like that, after the '08 Cubs, and '48 Indians, the third longest stretch without a World Championship is the Pirates at 31. Let's not forget those who've never won: Astros 1962 Padres 1969 Brewers 1970 (1969) Rangers 1972 (1961) Mariners 1977 Rockies 1993 Rays 1998 Nationals 2005 (1969)

Surprisingly warm all over from this. I'm friendly with a clutch of New York Giants fans (real ones, as opposed to me) who never gave up -- which I find strange, but that's their choice. These are guys who've waited 56 years for this. I'm happy for them. I'm happy for whichever San Franciscans who've remained loyal and weren't jerks to bmfc when he visited Phone Company Park. I'm happy for the castoffs who seem to really appreciate this. And for what it's worth, the Rangers couldn't have looked less interested as this game wore down. You're off the hook now, Dusty. Russ Ortiz can take out that ball if he likes. You too, McCovey. That line drive was high enough at last.

T...T...T...That's all folks!