batmagadanleadoff

Ike Davis (quiz)

Mo Vaughn (quiz)

Shea in action, close to the the end of the de Roulet era (9/9/1979), Beat me to it on the 9/9/79 date. Didn't notice. de Roulet Shea; [FIMG=666]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50999288555_2f0272e86d_o.jpg[/FIMG] [FIMG=666]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50999288590_926b59de5d_o.jpg[/FIMG]

September 9, 1979. Where were youse? That was the only run Burrris allowed that game.Mets blow a 4-1ead to the eventual WS champs. John Stearns goes 3 for 4 with a walk and a double, but was also caught stealing - the weakest part of his game.

=G-Fafif post_id=58381 time=1616475330 user_id=55] =batmagadanleadoff post_id=58380 time=1616473394 user_id=68] I decided to google the 1971 Nathan's Mets batting helmet having rekindled old memories of the thing. I spent about 10 minutes or so, looking and looking. And looking. Just one sole entry is what I came up with. Just one. It's from 2005. No pics. Excerpt: May 8, 1971: My dad bought me a replica Mets batting helmet at Nathan's in Oceanside. The availability of such a treasured item at a local outlet had obsessed me. Other than a crappy cap that fell apart in day camp a year earlier, it was probably my first legitimate piece of Metsiana (not counting cards). It was billed as the very same one you could buy at Shea Stadium, something I had to take on faith since I was still two years from my first Mets game. My parents were basketball fans, not baseball fans. I loved that helmet. I would've worn it that summer in Pee-Wee League had it been regulation. Some years later, when tomfoolery finally did it in, I committed to buying a new one on my next trip to Shea, which came August 10, 1977. I gave the fellow at the concession stand on the third-base side of field level a twenty and he gave me back change for a ten. You have to understand that I was giddy to be at this particular game because it was the first one I ever went to without adult supervision (midweek afternoon against the Cardinals, ticket paid for with proceeds from my Newsday route which I outsourced for the day), so I wasn't necessarily keeping good track of my money. I wasn't but a few steps away when the vendor called me over and gave me back the rest of my change. I've still got the replacement helmet. Not only that, but the vendor who was honest enough not to take advantage of a starry-eyed 14-year-old (starry-eyed for the 1977 Mets, yet) is now my brother-in-law. In one of the top five Small World events of my life, my sister brought home her new boyfriend from NYU the following winter. He had been talked up to me as a Shea Stadium employee, me to him as a big Mets fan. And damned if we didn't recognize each other in an instant. Mark claims that he must've liked me because most of the time he kept the change. If i didn't already know who wrote the piece from googling it and then copying and pasting it to this forum, I'd still know who wrote it just from the clues in the piece. ,Youse would, too.

I decided to google the 1971 Nathan's Mets batting helmet having rekindled old memories of the thing. I spent about 10 minutes or so, looking and looking. And looking. Just one sole entry is what I came up with. Just one. It's from 2005. No pics. Excerpt: May 8, 1971: My dad bought me a replica Mets batting helmet at Nathan's in Oceanside. The availability of such a treasured item at a local outlet had obsessed me. Other than a crappy cap that fell apart in day camp a year earlier, it was probably my first legitimate piece of Metsiana (not counting cards). It was billed as the very same one you could buy at Shea Stadium, something I had to take on faith since I was still two years from my first Mets game. My parents were basketball fans, not baseball fans. I loved that helmet. I would've worn it that summer in Pee-Wee League had it been regulation. Some years later, when tomfoolery finally did it in, I committed to buying a new one on my next trip to Shea, which came August 10, 1977. I gave the fellow at the concession stand on the third-base side of field level a twenty and he gave me back change for a ten. You have to understand that I was giddy to be at this particular game because it was the first one I ever went to without adult supervision (midweek afternoon against the Cardinals, ticket paid for with proceeds from my Newsday route which I outsourced for the day), so I wasn't necessarily keeping good track of my money. I wasn't but a few steps away when the vendor called me over and gave me back the rest of my change. I've still got the replacement helmet. Not only that, but the vendor who was honest enough not to take advantage of a starry-eyed 14-year-old (starry-eyed for the 1977 Mets, yet) is now my brother-in-law. In one of the top five Small World events of my life, my sister brought home her new boyfriend from NYU the following winter. He had been talked up to me as a Shea Stadium employee, me to him as a big Mets fan. And damned if we didn't recognize each other in an instant. Mark claims that he must've liked me because most of the time he kept the change. If i didn't already know who wrote the piece from googling it and then copying and pasting it to this forum, I'd still know who wrote it just from the clues in the piece. ,Youse would, too.

Zvon woulda loved this thread. I bet he had a Nathan's 1971 Mets batting helmet, too. We would've had an entire series of Topps 1971 replica Mets batting helmet cards by dawn, including coins celebrating the Nathan's menu. For sure. Getting back to the original post, I agree with Hencken's UniWatch critique of those Davey Johnson era Mets home unis. But I have a soft spot for the unis, nevertheless. So many wonderful Mets stuff is connected to those unis. The Mets most dominant period. It's the home uni my all-time favorite Met - Keith Hernandez - wore. It's the uni Dwight Gooden wore when not even God could touch Doc. And how exciting was it to watch Doc in '84 and '85? Was there ever anything more exciting in Mets history? Tuning in to a Mets game after missing the first coupl'a minutes of the game and like clockwork, I'd see the Mets leadoff hitter already on second base and the #2 hitter on first. Sid Fernandez so often looking like Sandy Koufax for the first three or four innings. And on and on and on. I guess that's what the writer was referring to about fans liking unis mainly because of how the team performed in them. And speaking of dominant untouchable era Doc, what hardly anyone ever mentions, if at all, is how Doc was so unjustly robbed of the '84 Cy Young award. He was untouchable in '84 and nobody was even remotely close, including Rick Sutcliffe, that year's winner. But Rick had the wins and his team made the playoffs, and it being 1984, you knew how that would turn out. Doc's legacy, as uneven and troubled as it is, should include winning the CYA in his first two seasons -- winning his first one while pitching the entire season as a teen-ager. [FIMG=444]https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81BZ9PSFRrL._AC_SX425_.jpg[/FIMG]

I could talk about the stuff in this thread all day. Like I care what anybody thinks Drew Ferguson might do this year. He sounds like a quarterback, anyways. Back to Nathan's -- while I was food shopping a few weeks ago, I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with a Nathan's behind-the-counter employee a few years ago. He said that the fries Nathan's sells are the exact same fries you could now buy in the frozen food section of your basic supermarkets. Makes sense, once I thought about it. I mean, those fries must arrive at Nathan's's's frozen in gigantic bags. No way Nathan's restaurants are peeling potatoes from scratch on the spot and then crinkling them up before frying them. So when I remembered that conversation, I bought a bag of Nathan's fries. I never, I mean never, buy frozen food fries for home, otherwise. Anyways, I made them. In the oven, as per the instructions. They were on the soggy or mushy side. After, I noticed that the bag said that for crispier results, frying is recommended. Zvon woulda loved this thread. I bet he had a Nathan's 1971 Mets batting helmet, too.

=G-Fafif post_id=58311 time=1616419321 user_id=55] But the ONE movie for which I will drop everything when I find it's on and obsess over is Rudy. He showed them.

Tom Seaver just missed the Mets two-button pullovers on both ends of the deal and never wore them in an actual regular season MLB game. Lucky for him. He was traded to the Reds a few months before the Mets would debut the two-buttoners. And he returned to the Mets for the first season in which the two-buttoners were totally ditched for good. Though he did appear in the two-buttoners in several promotions and photo ops just before the start of the 1983 regular season.

Frayed Knot wrote: Edgy MD wrote: I'm guessing that playing in Mexico in the winter season, and having a legit visa to come to the US in the spring, somebody made a mule of him. That was the player's excuse/explanation -- "Yeah it's my bag but I had no idea what was in it" -- which, while it's one not likely to fly with law enforcement, might actually be somewhat accurate considering he voluntarily allowed the police to search his car after being pulled over for speeding nowhere near a border crossing (Colorado). So if the drug dealers placed the drugs in the car without Corrales's knowledge, what did the dealers think was ultimately gonna happem being that Corrales was transporting the drugs unwittingly? How was Corrales supposed to complete the drug deal? I suppose that the dealers would eventually commandeer Corrales's car stateside and just take the drugs, right? Was that the story?

Edgy MD wrote: The Nathan's in Oceanside in the early seventies was more of a palace than a restaurant. Visiting there, as a kid, was more event dining for me than even the Coney Island one. Though not a Long Islander, I'm pretty sure I ate there a few times during my elementary school years. Did that Nathan's have like a small kiddie-themed amusement park with rides?

I think you're the only person that I can recall ever acknowledging the 1971 Nathan's Mets batting helmet.

[FIMG=555]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51060655228_999fd50a55_o.jpg[/FIMG] To square the topical circle, finding an Official Mets Yearbook away from Shea matched the thrill of being able to buy a Mets replica batting helmet, like the ones seen here, at Nathan's in 1971. So did I! At Nathan's. Which, in 1971, I wore to the very first Mets game I ever attended and removed from my head and placed it over my heart for the singing of the National Anthem. And then from a peripheral vision side glance, caught my older cousin smirking and elbowing his fiancee to look at me when he caught me in the act of saluting with my Nathan's helmet -- not a mean or mocking smirk, more of an "aww, how cute" smirk, I assumed. One day, I was playing golf with that helmet in the living room. I don't mean that I was golfing while wearing the Nathan's helmet. Instead, I had invented some golf-like game where the helmet was the golf ball. And when I tapped the helmet ever so lightly with my age-appropriate wooden baseball bat, the helmet cracked into like three or four pieces. Lucky me I wasn't playing the hardball or real version of baseball back then, beciause if I did, I would've surely worn that Nathan's helmet. With pride. And with a very false sense of security. That helmet was one of my prized possessions from that era.

Terribly cheap-looking in retrospect, too. I was too dazzled by that 9-6 start in 1978. I was impressed that when the alumni were brought back for Shea Goodbye, the players of that era were outfitted appropriately, as if somebody had been paying attention. Those Rangers never won anything but they sure sported some sweet threads. While I knew, logically, how bad those Mets were, I was still young enough to remain unreasonably optimistic about their chances. I mean, I was crazy for Steve Henderson, and saddened when, in the end, it became clear that he would never duplicate the magic of his rookie season. And for two years, I would argue with everyone 'till I was blue in the face that Craig Swan was one of baseball's best pitchers, which he was, but didn't get his due because his Mets were atrocious and back then, hardly anyone bothered to look beyond a starting pitcher's unimpressive W-L record. If I was joining this forum today, I could just as easily pick swanbelongsontheallstarteam for a handle. Some of those Rangers unis were fantastic. How much more awesome would this awesome Rangers home uniform look in button-down style? [FIMG=444]https://render.fineartamerica.com/images/rendered/default/print/10.5/14/break/images/artworkimages/medium/2/texas-rangers-bump-wills-march-28-1977-sports-illustrated-cover.jpg[/FIMG]

Edgy MD wrote: Found a fourth two-button two-teamer. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61%2BZCGG7vUL._AC_SY445_.jpg> https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9m66ardIALg/XF3cjTgHEpI/AAAAAAABDEQ/5DUN-ixhJa45L0vh67KjtMMiCKXsM0H8gCLcBGAs/s1600/377bc28dcb7a6461230401a4b30a.jpg> Dock and Rusty could start their own club: players who wore both the Mets and Rangers two-button pullovers in the same season. If they were alive.

When the Mets adopted the side stripes, I thought, “Oh, like the Expos have.” Because I was away at college the first month of the '83 season, I don't think the update really sunk in for me until I saw the yearbook on sale at my local newsstand in May and it was featured in cartoon form on the cover. You could buy a Mets yearbook at a newsstand in Tampa? Never mind. You were back home in Mets country in May. [FIMG=555]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51060655228_999fd50a55_o.jpg[/FIMG]

=G-Fafif post_id=58278 time=1616381668 user_id=55] Man, was I ready for the 1978 Jersey update. To my adolescent mind, everything about the Mets was tired rather than traditional. It's the same reason I welcomed Steve Albert with open ears. I seem to recall Bob Murphy being very approving of the new look, what with the two buttons keeping it from being a pure pullover. (Trying to imagine Murph being virulently against something.)

=G-Fafif post_id=58277 time=1616381425 user_id=55] Never mind. You were back home in Mets country in May. You got it. I can still see that yearbook in that magazine rack in that particular luncheonette on the Saturday night I spotted it and can still feel the giddiness of it being available somewhere besides Shea.

Edgy MD wrote: Two button pullover top baseball trivia -- The only other MLB team to wear two-button pullover tops in the same style worn by the Joe Torre managed era Mets were the Texas Rangers in the 1970s. The only players to have worn the two-button pullover tops for both the Rangers and the Mets were Lenny Randle and Tom Grieve. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/mVcAAOSwyqleDZ8j/s-l400.jpg> [fimg=300]https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/lsoAAOSwMz5fyGID/s-l500.jpg[/fimg] No? Yes! Good catch. I forgot about Rusty and I realize why: I was only thinking about players who were Rangers in the 70s before they were Mets from that era because I assumed that the Rangers didn't wear the two-buttons in the 80s.

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=58272 time=1616380846 user_id=68] =G-Fafif post_id=58270 time=1616380717 user_id=55] When the Mets adopted the side stripes, I thought, “Oh, like the Expos have.” Because I was away at college the first month of the '83 season, I don't think the update really sunk in for me until I saw the yearbook on sale at my local newsstand in May and it was featured in cartoon form on the cover.

=G-Fafif post_id=58270 time=1616380717 user_id=55] When the Mets adopted the side stripes, I thought, “Oh, like the Expos have.” Because I was away at college the first month of the '83 season, I don't think the update really sunk in for me until I saw the yearbook on sale at my local newsstand in May and it was featured in cartoon form on the cover.

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=58268 time=1616379923 user_id=68] The guy that dissed these unis more than anyone I know (or heard), is .... Keith Hernandez.

The guy that dissed these unis more than anyone I know (or heard), is .... Keith Hernandez.

[FIMG=444]https://dugout.uni-watch.com/app/uploads/2021/03/1986-nlcs-game-7-mets-vs-astros-e1616270195229.jpg[/FIMG] Excerpt: One thing that has always piqued my interest is how fans can “like” a certain uniform — one we might otherwise consider bad, or of poor design — based on how well a team does while wearing it. [***] I am probably in the minority here, especially as a Mets fan, but I've always hated the uniforms worn by the Mets when they won their second, and most recent, World Series, way back in 1986. I've always thought it was a poor design — I'm fine with pins, and I'm fine with racing stripes — but having both on a uniform was overkill. Not only that, but somewhat inexplicably, the team chose to go with pullover jerseys but paired them with belted pants, a rather disjointed look. Yes, not every team that wore pullovers wore sansabelt pants (or vice versa), but these were exceptions rather than rules. But because the team won the World Series in these uniforms, fans love them, and by extension, think they're “good” uniforms. Not only was their stripe overkill, but frequently during play, the jerseys would shift, causing misaligned stripes (this is especially upsetting to those of us with OCD). I didn't dislike the gray roadies as they didn't have pinstripes. And I will always like the Expos racing stripes (especially since they wore button fronts and belts), [FIMG=333]https://theundefeated.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/gettyimages-53203899.jpg?w=1024[/FIMG] but I never liked the stripes/pins look of the Mets, despite their success wearing them https://uni-watch.com/https://uni-watch.com/