Edgy MD

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=37372 time=1590456489 user_id=68] Riveting. I'd like to see the '86 Mets play the '81-'82 49ers. In a game of basketball.

I killed it with the 1978 Braves in Strat-o-Matic, platooning Pocaroba with former Met Joe Nolan and playing Dale Murphy mostly at first.

That game I'm remembering wasn't even close to the Stick, but was actually in https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON198204240.shtmlMontreal. I need a brain workup.

Almost every sports movie about a douchey young man who had it all and lost it and needs to find redemption through coaching ... is almost always really about a douchey slipping A-list actor who had a great Q-rating and lost it and needs to find redemption though a family movie.

One that sticks with me that may in fact not be from Candlestick at all is from a time when Joel Youngblood and Ellis Valentine were competing for a single regular spot, and despite having perhaps the two best outfield arms in the league, both were losing. The Mets were in the top of the ninth with a slim lead and Kingman and Foster in the corner outfield spots, so George Bamberger told both Youngblood and Valentine to get ready to go in for defense. The two of them elected to loosen up by playing catch in front of the Mets dugout as the team came to bat in the top of the ninth. The captain of the umpire crew came over to Bambi, and was like, "Are you fucking kidding me? Your players can't just play catch in front of the dugout while the game is going on. This isn't weekend softball. And Bambi was like, "Well, we're the 1982 Mets in the ninth inning at Candlestick, with 275 patrons left in the house. It's pretty close." And Umpy was all, "Don't play stupid, Bamberger. If your player need to warm up, they can go down to the bullpen." And Bambi was all, "Well, that's only 100 feet away, so we're just talking about a matter of degrees here, but whatever." (OE: I can't find the game, so there may be misremembering going on.)

The weird thing is that Clark's catch, in the pantheon of catches, was just a really nice catch, nothing truly superlative, but the combination of the context (the downfall of a formidable Cowboys dynasty and everything it represented) and that fantastic photo elevated it to monumental status. So, seeing as I was stupid wrong about the 2000 playoffs, and we're not only looking beyond Mets games but beyond football, are we saying that the Mets have played two million games at the Stick and none of them stand out?

Benjamin Grimm wrote: That 2000 game you mentioned, with Franco striking out Barry Bonds, is the greatest game that the Mets have played in San Francisco. But the Giants were in their new stadium by then. Well, blow me down.

Candlestick Park, also known as Harney Stadium, also known as The Stick, also not really known as 3Com Park at Candlestick Point, San Francisco Stadium at Candlestick Point, and Monster Park, was a feature of any west coast trip. A start by John Montefusco seemed to be in the part of the festivities for about 40 years, Ken Moffitt would come in out of the bullpen, and if you were really lucky, Johnny LeMaster would be at shortstop. Ralph Kiner would be helpful in explaining that the real indicator of the wind wasn't the direction the flags were beating but that you should instead keep your eyes on the swirling hot-dog wrappers. Dave Kingman would hopefully do something devastating, despite the Giants taking three of four, and it would always be a puzzle that a great city such as San Francisco would feature a park nobody that almost nobody ever said anything good about. But wind, dampness, dew, and fog always made for interesting conversation and added features to a game. But then came 1989, and the Cross-Bay World Series, and this highly derided baseball stadium held steady with perhaps 63,000 Americans shat their pants as the Loma Prieta earthquake rumbled through with a 6.9 Richter magnitude. And just as all of baseball started saying, "Hey, we talk shit about the Stick, but that building has soul," the powers that be were making plans to demolish her. The longtime home of Mays and McCovey, where Mays used Bobby Bonds for leverage in making the second most famous catch of his career, Candlestick has held the Mets to a 104-139 all-time record that frankly feels worse. It's where Roger Craig taught everybody the splitter, and where bullpens in foul territory always added to the fun. Like Busch, she went from grass to a rug to grass, but had the good sense to toss the rug after 1978, a rare time in that strange year where good sense trumped bad taste. The park was also the longtime home of the San Francisco 49ers, the short-time home of the early-AFL version of the Oakland Raiders, and the location of the almost-entirely forgotten San Francisco Golden Gate Gales' single season with the United Soccer Association. It was the site of the last official (non-rooftop) concert by the Beatles and it's final public event was a return engagement by Beatle Paul McCartney. Popular lore says missing that 1966 Beatles show broke Brian Epstein's heart and contributed to his premature decline. A 1988 stop by the Monsters of Rock tour featured a massive food fight in the upper deck, the tremendous waste of which might have broken the heart of Pope John Paul II, who had visited a year earlier, celebrated Mass for 70,000, and famously cried out for God's blessing upon the victims of the AIDS epidemic. Such were our times. As noted above, all my Candlestick game memories tend to fade into one. That may in part be due to the games coming after midnight so often, but for a while they tried to follow the Cubs model of afternoon ball being the standard. But it's hard to displace the 2000 playoff game that began the Mets pennant run. An Alfonzo home put the Mets up 4-1 in the ninth before a pinch-hit JT Snow three-run homer off of Armando Benitez tied it up and set up Benny Agbayani to put the Mets ahead for good in the 10th and John Franco to lock it down. What are your Metly memories of the Stick? https://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/cand.jpg> https://www.beatlesbible.com/wp/media/66_beatles_001.jpg> https://cdnph.upi.com/pv/upi/4af3cc4d5bb0a33a6688471f8dd0d259/ABCD-Files-UPI-DC.jpg> [YOUTUBE]TDmwdJug57c[/YOUTUBE]

Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard allegedly signed a lease for an expensive apartment in Gotham, but didn't move in, what with the way things have been, and he allegedly hasn't bothered with his rent obligation.

The problem is that the alcohol intake that has damaged your judgment to the point where you're driving with a load on tends to lead a lot of people to be something less than humble and penitent and circumspect when talking to the officer, whether you're Glenn Campbell or Reese Witherspoon or Mel Gibson. You're best advised to confine your comments to yes, sir, and no, mam'n. Most cops, particularly highway patrolmen, are used to folks talking shit at the time, and don't let themselves get provoked. But that shit-talking goes into the report. Also, embarrassingly playing your famous boyfriend's name for legal favors isn't going to help your relationship much.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: He developed a rep as a mercenary ... This is way true. If a team in that period thought they needed one more starter to put them over the top, the first two calls they'd make would be about Brown or David Cone. A downside of being a mercenary is that, after you retire, there's no natural constituency of fans and sportswriters to advocate for you. I have to say that I wouldn't recognize the guy from Adam. Great pitchers from that era — Maddux, Johnson, Clemens, Schilling, Pedro, Rivera, and even lesser lights — if they all put on masks, I'd recognize them from their motion, their pitches, and their body types. I don't think I'd have any luck at all picking Brown out. I guess that's in part a byproduct of moving around, but he got into two straight World Series so I should remember something about the guy. On the other hand, the 1997 World Series was about the snoriest one ever.

I nominate him for the Dewayne Hall of Fame!

He came to mind when Ashie mentioned that the 1986 Mets were taking on the 1998 Pads. I didn't like the guy either, but he had a heckuva career for somebody who got the one-and-done treatment from the Baseball Hall of Fame. I don't even see or hear his name come up, but it probably wouldn't be hard to find 10 starting pitchers enshrined for lesser careers.

Sports Films Set in Indiana Breaking Away (1979) Hoosiers (1986) Speedway (1929) The Winning Season (2009) Rudy (1993) Knute Rockne, All American (1940) Home of the Giants (2007) American Teen (2008) The Great Dan Patch (1949) Born to Speed (1947)

One thing they get wrong is that they seem to suggest the Mets moved Samuel to centerfield. The Phillies had already done that, and Frank Cashen acquired him explicitly as a centerfielder. I do agree that the model of establishing a wunderkind in the lineup by playing him at multiple posiitons until a permanent spot opens up is healthy, and would have worked better for him. But I don't think it's an explicitly modern day model. There were plenty of examples back then. Hell, Hank Aaron, and Jackie Robinson floated around until an appropriate position opened for them. Honus Wagner too, for that matter. Overall it's a good summary. The "I didn't write the letter" position, in another time, would blow up. WFAN would be wall to wall with phone calls asking, "Well, who DID?! It's classic Jefferies, trying to pass the buck and not take responsibility for himself! HIS NAME IS ON THE LETTER!!"

Good memory. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN197307261.shtmlJuly 6, 1973. Gibson's second career grand salami and final career homer.

Willets Point wrote: I love Breaking Away but it's been about 20 years since I last watched. I never saw Bad News Bears but I tried to watch it with my son a couple of months ago and he asked me to turn it off about 15 minutes in. I don't think the constant use of ethnic slurs appealed to either one of us. There's a lot of ugly stuff there, no doubt.

Yeah, I did a dis-service not mentioning Tudor's role in that game.

Busch Memorial Stadium (aka Busch II) was the home of the Cardinals from 1966 to 2005. Part of the family of "Cookie Cutter Parks" (the designation is confusing, because it's not so much that the parks resemble cookie cutters, but their shapes resemble forms made by cookie cutters), Busch came into existence a few years after Shea Stadium, with it's arched overhang matching the Gateway arch beyond left center field, and becoming the park's defining architectural feature. Busch was a rare park in that it started it's life with a grass surface before transitioning to to a rug just in time for the 1970s. It then went back to natural grass in 1996 in order to live its final decade with a little class. Our previous visit to Fulton-County reminds me that it was an accepted fact that Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was supposed to be the hottest ballpark of it's time, but I never saw players baking like they did in a mid-summer day game at Busch. Curiously enough, the two parks came into service in the same season. The home of Steve Carlton and Bob Gibson, Lou Brock and Albert Pujols, few parks ever worked in conjunction with the tenant's organizational philosophy like Busch worked with the 1980s Cardinals, as the hard surface and deep power alleys complimented the Cardinals' team speed day in and day out. The eighties was cool like that — all the good teams seemed to have different philosophies. It was a decade of biodiversity. The park has also had a diversity of tenants, having also hosted the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals before they fled to Phoenix, as well as the St. Louis Rams after they emigrated out of Los Angeles. Soccer's St. Louis Stars called the building home while playing in two different leagues — the NPSL as well as the NASL. Yes, the Beatles played there, and McCartney returned in 1993. The venue has also hosted the Stones, New Kids on the Fucking Block, Billy Juckets and Elton John together, and U2. But for my money, it's peak concert day was Super Jam 1976, featuring Ted Nugent, Jefferson Starship, Jeff Beck, and Fleetwood Mac. Rumours was still in the recording stage, but the band debuted "You Make Loving Fun" in the middle of the set. Amazing to think what they would pull out for an encore before the introduction of "Don't Stop," but this day, it was Buckingham/Nicks leftover "Don't Let Me Down Again," and strangely, "Hypnotized," the jazzy make-out song left over from Bob Welch's tenure. It had been a minor hit in the band's Nixon era, but that's sort of an anti-climactic way to end a show if I'm springing for the tickets. The Mets history in the park is ... extensive — featuring an all-time winning (154-151) record at the park Keith Hernandez once called home. But surely one or two games stand out. My first thought is Ron Darling's big start at the end of 1985, won by Darryl Strawberry in the 10th with a long drive ricocheting off the stadium clock, allowing the team to live for one more day. There was also an early-season win in 1986 where a ninth-inning Howard Johnson two-run homer off of Todd Worrell tied the game and the Mets won it in the 11th. The Mets had been a legendary juggernaut out of the gate that year, and while it's hard to think of such a thing happening on April 24, the team's lore says that this was the win that made it clear that the Cardinals would not be catching them that year, and if not the Cardinals, then nobody. The team would go on to finish 8-1 at Busch that year, and Johnson, who had lost his 2/3 of a starting job at third base to a red-hot Ray Knight, would take pride in this game being his big contribution to 1986. The Mets took both of the games at Busch in the 2000 playoffs, the second being the start that effectively ended Rick Ankiel's pitching career. He would return to the mound for a handful of starts the next season but the yips would never disappear. The two teams would match up in the post-season again in 2006, but that would be in the Cardinals' new digs. Those are big days, but surely there are more. http://northeastnews.net/pages/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/pc-1024x701.jpg> https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a1/f4/60/a1f460cce873c384899ec997d0767ba2.jpg>

Great job on finding the Noc-a-homa tales in the notes sections. That's where they belong, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to look there. It's funny to see how many errors there are in that copy. The first report seems to be missing words in two or three sentences, and/or perhaps uses the wrong word. The second one mis-identifies Stearns as a linebacker. He was a defensive back and punter. I can see an Atlanta writer getting that wrong, but it's pretty clumsy for a Mets beater to drop the ball there. Stearns had been with the team for seven seasons.

Also, different second-base umps and one has a jacket and the other doesn't.

Reminds me of gems like this: https://s.ecrater.com/stores/66095/4ff24312ed925_66095b.jpg> I had always felt like this is the same game if not the same inning as this notorious fake Agee card. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/HYcAAOSwpfpeKJC8/s-l640.jpg> But now I realize that it sorta can't be because Real Harrelson is wearing long sleeves and Harrelson-in-Disguise has his guns uncovered.

I may be misremembering, but I seem to recall Pascual Perez (I may have the wrong guy here) missing his first start for Atlanta, with the Mets in town, because he got stuck on the Interstate 285 Perimeter and was unable to find the exit. Tug McGraw got the win in the 1972 All-Star Game at AFCS, pitching the final two innings as the NL tied it in the ninth and won it in the 10th. He gave up just one hit (a two-out double by Joe Rudi) and struck out an impressive four batters (Reggie Jackson, Norm Cash, and Bobby Grich, sandwiched around Rudi's double in the ninth, and Carlton Fisk in the 10th). Joe Morgan, who singled in the winning run in the 10th as part of a 1-4 day, with a walk and a stolen base earlier, walked off with the MVP instead of Tug.

Having had a grass surface, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium aka The Launching Pad, like Shea Stadium, generally wasn't listed among the club of 1960s/early 1970s ballparks derided as "The Cookie Cutters," but any shot of the facility's exterior (or the symmetrical outfield) would lead to instant associations with it's brethren and sistren in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Philadelphia. it was where Chief Knock-a-Homa ruled from, it was where Hank Aaron broke one of the game's most hallowed records, and it was where the proliferation of cable TV turned the Braves into an unlikely national team. It was also bizarrely the last ballpark with a chain link fence and after doing damage to more than few outfielders' legs, became the first to feature a plexiglass fence. Like Shea Stadium and Olympic Stadium (and Citi Field for that matter), it as originally proposed to include a structural domed roof, which never quite developed. Hosting the Braves from 1966 to 1996, AFC was somehow the home of a Western Division ball club in a state that held an extensive Atlantic Coast shoreline. Other tenants included the International League Atlanta Crackers (for a season) as well as the NFL's Falcons and the NASL's Chiefs. The Peach Bowl called the place home for more than two decades. The site also hosted the Beatles only visit to Atlanta and one of the nation's largest Vietnam-era rallies — a pro-war rally. But what are your Metly memories of the place? It has to start with the 1985 Independence Day Marathon, right? But the Pad also hosted the first two post-season games in Mets history, both won handily by the visitors. Apart from the two post-season wins, the Mets went 90-100 at AFC over the life of the stadium, taking it particularly on chin in the Torre era, but making up a lot of time during Johnson reign, which should surprise nobody, but which games stay with you? https://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/afcs16_topv2.jpg>

If the union is split and some of the players are willing to come back to work and others aren't, we can play it like the wartime NFL and have a bunch of teams pair off and merge together.