Almost every life is defined by a break (could be a good one or a bad one) and Jerry Koosman’s is no different. What makes him stand out is the multiple breaks he received on his way to the majors. And then perhaps as payment, a few bad breaks that perhaps kept him from reaching [...]
Because of last year’s deadline deals to restock the farm system, there’s been a lot more talk about prospects now than there’s been in many years. It’s really nice to see all of the attention being given to prospects. It’s even better to hear David Stearns talk about youngsters from the farm system needing to [...]
One of my earliest Mets’ memories is Game 5 of the 1969 World Series. My second grade home room teacher, Mrs. Goudey, let us watch the game on a clunky old black and white television she wheeled into the classroom on a tall metal cart. When she turned on the game, Jerry Koosman had already [...]
National League baseball deserted New York when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants departed after the 1957 season. When the Mets started in 1962, they tried to claim the history of both of those teams. But most people felt the team was closer to the old Dodgers than the old Giants. With that thought [...]
A point of commonality for the two Mets championship seasons of 1969 and 1986 was that both teams possessed an excellent pitching coach, Rube Walker for the ‘69 squad and Mel Stottlemyre in ‘86. Walker was a baseball lifer, his playing career was mostly as a backup catcher, first for the Cubs, then for the [...]
Fans who grew up with David Wright holding down third base for a decade had a different experience than Mets fans who came before them. It was a running joke how the Mets simply couldn’t find someone to play third. And it wasn’t for a lack of trying. We wish they didn’t try so hard, [...]
As we are nearly done with 2023, let’s look back on the best December free agent signings and trade deals in Met history. On December 14, 2013, the Mets inked Bartolo Colon to a 2-year deal worth $20 million. He made at least 31 starts and exceed 191 innings each year. He was paid an [...]
The New York Mets reached the World Series in 2015 behind their dominant pitching staff, but ultimately fell short to the Kansas City Royals in five games. While the Mets' pitching was certainly a strength throughout the postseason, their lack of offense was the primary reason they were unable to bring home the championship. During [...]
Today is George Foster’s 75th birthday. Mets fans of a certain age view Foster as a poster boy in the case for being wary about getting guys on the wrong side of 30. It certainly looked like a slam-dunk move when the Mets acquired Foster before the start of the 1982 season. But it certainly [...]
One baseball player trait fans admire is “played their whole career with the same team”. It is standard trivia to know Brooks Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski both spent their entire 23-year careers with the same team – that’s the record. There are 11 players, all in the Hall of Fame, that played in 20 or [...]
Now that we are deeply entrenched into the playoffs, one in which the Mets are again watching from home, it is easy to fall back into the “why again do we root for this team?” mode. A little more than 60 years in existence, we only have two world series titles to show for our [...]
We all want things to be perfect. Yet rarely in life do things work out that way. This is so universal that we even have an idiom to describe things that fall short of perfection. You’re probably heard of the saying – don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Which brings us [...]