HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY FROM CARD OF THE WEEK A quick Columbus Day holiday greeting from COTW, in convenient card form... For those of you scoring at home, that would be NINo EspinosA Joe PIgNaTAno Johan SANTAna MARIo RAmirez Nino Espinosa Joe Pignatano Johan Santana Mario Ramirez
1984 FLEER UPDATE RON DARLING The mid '80s Mets were a lazy headline writer's dream. First off, it was a headline-worthy bunch: a winning team, chock-full of outsized personalities. And with (nick)names like Doc, Mex, the Kid, Strawberry, and Darling, the headlines pretty much wrote themselves. So if it wasn't “Doc Delivers Gem” it was [...]
1962 SALADA JUNKET BOB MILLER What strange currency is this? Better yet, which Bob Miller is this? Is it Bob L. Miller, the RHP who went 1-12 with a 4.89 ERA for the '62 Mets? Or is it Bob G. Miller, the LHP who went 2-2 with a 7.08 ERA for the '62 Mets? Bob [...]
1994 SIGNATURE ROOKIES BILL PULSIPHER Ah, the promise this card once represented. First off, it's a genuine autograph numbered to 7,750, which actually seemed pretty cool and limited back in 1994. And of course, it's the left-handed vertex of Generation K, that pitching triforce that was supposed to bring the Mets a decade of pennants [...]
METS IN SPECS It's a special Back-to-School edition of Card of the Week, wherein we take a quick squint at the history of Mets players wearing prescription glasses on Topps cards. 1962, 1963 Ken MacKenzie Ken looks like he should live in Williamsburg, drink PBR, and listen to a lot of Animal Collective... 1965, 1966 [...]
1964 TOPPS GIANTS ROY MCMILLAN If I asked you to name the worst-hitting season by a Mets player with at least 400 PA, you would probably name someone like Rey Ordonez or Doug Flynn or Bud Harrelson. Those are all good guesses but not the right answer. An inspired selection would be Rafael Santana, who [...]
1984 TOPPS TIFFANY DOUG SISK “Hate” is such an unpleasant word. As an able substitute today, let's use the word “dislike.” I am at heart a loyalist. My allegiances don't wax and wane based on mere turns of fortune. So across the years, I have not disliked many Mets. Sure, the team has had the [...]
1984 7-11 KEITH HERNANDEZ Here's a little relic from the Renaissance... In the summer of '84, 7-11 sealed these plastic coins in the base of Slurpee cups. If you shook an empty cup, you could hear the disc rattle around like a knock-hockey puck. The fronts of the coins feature a dual “flicker” image that [...]
1990 LEAF TIM TEUFEL We all have our favorite Mets' mannerisms. As a child of the '70s/'80s, here are some of the player tics and techniques that I would emulate in the Shea Stadiums of my backyard and my driveway and my mind: • Tom Seaver dragging his right knee across the downslope of the [...]
1986 DONRUSS BILLY BEANE “Moneyball” opens in September, and this bit of Billy Beane hagiography is the first film ever to revolve around a minor character in '80s Mets' history. But Hollywood being the recycling plant that it is, there are a few more such projects on the way: “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” [...]
1972 TOPPS TRADED JIM FREGOSI Right now everyone’s mind is on the trade deadline so what better time to break out this classic Topps card with TRADED bolded and stamped across the groin of poor Jim Fregosi. This was one of seven cards in the last series of the 1972 set to be so branded. [...]
1967 TOPPS TOM REYNOLDS Did you ever wonder about the force that drove apart the “Tom” and “Reynolds” at the top of this Tommie Reynolds card? The 1967 Topps set is in general a clean, well-designed issue, and this odd gap seems out of character. So what strange, supernal powers were at work here? A [...]