These are the Comeback Kids! They are creating memories of a lifetime - seemingly on a daily basis. Here’s how crazy it’s been: my 18-year-old son called me from college to revel in the excitement. Not a text. A phone call. Amazing! Sept. 30, 2024 The Mets faced elimination from the playoffs unless they beat the Braves in Atlanta. In one of [...]
The five most exhilarating words in sports broadcasting come from horse racing, but it applies with equal force to the pennant chase days of baseball in September. The New York Mets, after being left for dead in early June (at least by this writer), find themselves squarely in the mix for a Wild Card berth [...]
In the immortal words of the Talking Heads in their seminal song “Once in a Lifetime”, David Byrne observed his large automobile, his beautiful house and his beautiful wife and asked, “How did I get here?” Looking at the Mets’ two-thirds of the way through the baseball season, another part of the lyric shouts out [...]
At least this year they got it over with at the beginning of the season, rather than fool us into believing that they had a shot, only to stick a dagger in our hearts later in the year. The “May Swoon” has been unbelievably painful to watch. On Saturday, May 25, Luis Severino took a [...]
Umpiring and Replay Robbery Any true Mets fan knows full well that we have been getting screwed by umpires for decades. When others bemoaned the introduction of replay, I cheered. Over the years, umpires blew obvious calls that replays overturned. (Remember Omar Santos’ home run at Fenway Park?) In a recent season, the Mets were [...]
One of the great things about baseball is that the season is six months long. There are peaks and valleys every year. No team is out of it after the first series of the year. In 2005, the Mets went 0-5 to start the season. It felt like they were playing uphill the whole rest [...]
Every great offense in baseball is built on the concept of balance. A lineup of sluggers only doesn’t work. Neither does a lineup consisting solely of singles’ hitters. Great offenses have some guys who get on base (and move themselves along) and others who drive them in. In today’s game, the rule book is [...]
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 [...]
Art Shamsky played Major League Baseball from 1965 through 1972. He played predominantly for the Cincinnati Reds (1965-1967) and the New York Mets (1968-1971). He once hit four home runs in consecutive at-bats, tying a Major League record. He is the only such player, however, to hit the first three of those home runs in [...]
Now that the Mets have lost out on Yoshinobu Yamamoto, all eyes turn toward the team’s most difficult question of the off-season: Pete Alonso’s future with the Mets. In an article from last spring, it was suggested that the team should extend his contract and that it would cost north of $400M. Some scoffed at [...]
It’s December in New York and so that means the Hot Stove is heating up. Major League Baseball’s Winter Meeting is convening once again and when baseball executives meet, they can’t help themselves from doing deals. The hottest two players on the free agent front are Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto: Where will they land? [...]
When legendary labor leader Marvin Miller devised the free agent system that Major League Baseball still uses today (with some tweaks along the way), the framework of the system created an “exclusive rights” period during which teams could negotiate with their players to whom free agency was an option. Originally, a 10-day window, this year [...]