Mets Sports Illustrated covers throughout the years

In honor of Matt Harvey being the regional cover boy of Sports Illustrated last week, it might be a fun trip into the TARDIS/Delorean/hot tub/time travel device of your choice…or even SI’s online archives, and chronicle Met covers through the years.

We start off with March 5^th, 1962 and a rather dour Casey Stengel in a Met cap, jacket and road grey graces the cover.  Perhaps knowing how the rest of the Mets’ debut year will go!  The cover indicates that it is SI’s Spring Training/preview issue.

Then it is off to another Spring Training preview issue, that of 1964 and March 2^nd to be exact.  The banner reads “The Baseball Battle For New York” and features Casey alongside rookie Yankee skipper, Lawrence Peter “Yogi Berra.”

The next time a Met graces the cover is Ron Swoboda on May 6^th, 1968.  Headline is The Movin’ Mets for an article on the crop of youngsters on the Met roster at the time.

Rod Gaspar backs into the cover on October 20^th, 1969, which spotlighted Oriole third baseman Brooks Robinson for the World Series coverage issue.  1969 would also see the only Met representation for SI’s Athlete of the Year, and Tom Seaver graces the cover for that issue, December 22^nd.

It is The Mets Against The World on the week of April 17^th, 1970 as a photo insert of Jerry Koosman is surrounded by caps of all of the other teams.

Perhaps foreshadowing their NLCS tussle in 1973, a disgruntled Pete Rose looks up as Bud Harrelson is in a pivoting motion on the cover for September 7^th.  On September 28^th, you’d have to flip the cover page over to see the Cub’s Leo Durocher and Gil Hodges, along with main cover subject, Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh as the NL East race was heating up.

June 21^st, 1971 also describes hot pennant race action with Jerry Grote gracing the cover.

Willie Mays’ grand return to New York is celebrated on the May 22^nd, 1972 issue with a punny caption, The Amaysing Mets.

1973’s World Series coverage issue, October 22^nd, 1973 features Bert Campaneris scampering out of the way of a John Milner tag.

The consecutive year string would be snapped with 1974, but Tom Seaver would join Jim Palmer on the cover for a nice side-by-side look at the best hurlers of the day on the July 21^st, 1975 issue.  That would be all of the Mets’ 1970s appearances, but if you wanted to be technical about it, Pete Rose’s NL record hit streak is spotlighted on the August 7^th, 1978 cover.  It is Rose batting at Shea, and you can make out Ron Hodges (by the uniform number #42) sitting in the Met dugout.

Speaking of Tom Terrific, his return to the Mets is celebrated on the next proper Met SI cover, that of April 18^th, 1983.  By the way, for the Seaver completest out there, he does grace a couple of covers as a Red through his years of exile in Cincinnati.

A little more than a year later, April 23^rd, 1984 to be exact, Darryl Strawberry graces the cover as The Straw That Stirs The Mets.

The hot NL East race between the Cubs and Mets, as well as the NL Cy Young race, is spotlighted on the cover of the September 24^th issue featuring rookie phenom Dwight Gooden alongside the Cubs’ Rick Sutcliffe.

Doc would go on to grace the Baseball ’85 issue, April 15^th, 1985.  And he followed that up by gracing the cover of the September 2^nd issue in celebration of notching his 20^th win of the season.

You might be considered slightly more OCD or Met completest if you pick up the September 28^th, 1985 issue with Ozzie Smith on the cover than you would getting the aforementioned 1978 Rose issue.  It’s the Wizard running towards first at Shea, but the fellows in the Met dugout are too blurred to make out. (Oddly enough the issue of June 6^th of 1995 is the same thing with Matt Williams of the Giants swinging away at Shea, but with Met personnel too blurred or blocked out to tell whom they are)

1986 was a great summer for the Mets, and the August 25^th cover spotlighted Ron Darling in an article looking at the greatness of that year’s pitching staff.

A bare chested Darryl Strawberry graces the October 6^th Baseball Playoff Preview issue.

The World Series is spotlighted on both the October 27^th, and November 3^rd issues.  Jim Rice scores as Gary Carter awaits the throw on the former, and Ray Knight touching home after his Game 7 clinching home run is on the latter.

Baseball salaries are discussed in the April 20^th, 1987 issue, and Gary Carter and Gene Walter are among the 40 or so headshots on the cover.

New York City baseball is spotlighted on the July 13^th cover with separate pictures of Darryl Strawberry, indicating the feuding going on in the Met locker room, and Don Mattingly, indicating the Yankees surge that summer.

Almost a year later, July 11^th, 1988 to be exact, Strawberry is the solo cover star.

The apparent doom for wooden bats is the cover story for the July 24^th, 1989 issue, which has Gregg Jefferies splintering a bat.

The Mets briefly turned around their 1990 bad start during the summer, and so the July 9^th issue featured Darryl Strawberry batting, with Howard Johnson on deck with The Amazin’ Mess (crossed out) Mets.

By March 23^rd of 1993, both hard living and injuries were taking their toll on the right arm of Dwight Gooden.  And so the caption of Gooden’s cover article read What’s Up Doc?-Even Dwight Gooden doesn’t know how much stuff he has left.

John Cangelosi backs onto the May 23^rd, 1994 cover, as he is about to be pummeled by ex-Met and current Brave Charlie O’Brien, with Terry Pendleton coming into the fray.  The cover spotlighted the recent rash of bench clearing brawls in baseball that spring.

The February 27^th 1995 issue shows Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden in better times as the article inside chronicles their respective falls from grace.

The story was about his May 15^th, 1998 trade to the Florida Marlins and final days as a Dodger, and he is featured on the cover in his Dodger gear (can sort of tell by the font of 31 on his helmet), but since the cover date of May 25^th was a few days after his trade from Florida to the Mets, Mike Piazza becomes next Met to grace an SI cover.

Was John Olerud at first, Edgardo Alfonzo at second, Robin Ventura at third and Rey Ordonez at short the best infield ever?  That question is posed on the September 6^th 1999 issue.

Mike Piazza as a Met proper graces the August 21^st, 2000 cover.

Piazza is also on the November 1^st cover behind a scoring Derek Jeter on the World Series issue.

As part of SI’s 50^th anniversary, the November 10^th, 2003 issue featured a collage of random covers from all the years.  The Stengel/Berra one from 1964 is among them.

The Mets returned to prominence with the 2006 NL East champions, and they got spotlighted with the July 17^th issue that featured Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Paul Lo Duca, Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes on the cover.

A little less than year later, June 18^th, 2007 to be exact, a poised group shots of Mets were given the cover treatment.  This time, Orlando Hernandez, Omar Minaya, Oliver Perez, Willie Randolph, Endy Chavez and John Maine were the cover subjects.  This cover is also part of a montage of the year in covers on the December 31^st year end issue cover.

It looked like the Mets landed themselves a true ace that they seemed to lack during the epic collapse of September of 2007 in the winter of 2008, and so Johan Santana graced the February 25^th, 2008 cover.

Special regional specific versions of covers have dominated Sports Illustrated over the last 10 years or so, and as part of the April 6^th 2009 Baseball Preview issue, David Wright was in the insert on the Northeast region copy as SI had predicted the Mets to win the World Series.

And finally, on July 17^th of 2009, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan were the cover subjects of SI’s annual Where Are They Now issue.  The cover is a nice black & white photo of the two in their Met glory days.

All of that of course leading to Matt Harvey’s cover shot on May 14^th, 2013!