Comments on: Saving Ron Gardenhire (Instead of Tom Seaver)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:00:00 +0000

Y'know, on further recollection, I was also rooting against the Astros because of Clemens. One of those deals where you'd like both teams to lose somehow.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:54:00 +0000

Probably Cochrane, Gardner & Gardenhire!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:02:00 +0000

Seaver was making in the neighborhood of $1.13 mil at the end of his career. Hard to remember that that was big money for baseball circa 1984.
I rooted for the White Sox in the 2005 World Series, but now you've got me reconsidering (actually, no, because Roger Clemens was on the Astros in the present).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:57:00 +0000

I was in Hallandale, Fla. for a family birthday gathering that weekend. Opened the Satuday Miami Herald and there was a short wire-service story. Mets Lose Seaver to White Sox or some such headline. Transporting myself back to that moment, I still can't believe it.
PS: My sister broke the other news to me the morning of December 9, 1980. She, who is no music fan whatsoever, said word-for-word exactly what I was thinking: “Now they'll never get back together.”

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:11:00 +0000

Johnson, in Bats, lets on that a remorseful Cashen had a deal lined up for a second Seaver re-acquisition in 1985, which Johnson wanted no part of, not wanting to disrupt his vision of a young five-aces rotation.
Wtih Seaver in the rotation for even part of 1985, and Aggie taking the load off of Sisk in the pen, it's hard to outline a scenario where they don't win the division — depending, of course, on who the Mets would have given up.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:14:00 +0000

This debacle was the closest the Mets ever came to losing me. I made it thru '77 because I was ten and at least we got some (crappy) players back, but this was just inexcusable. It seems hard to believe any sentient baseball executive could leave a first-ballot HOFer unprotected and assume he'd still be around. For what little it's worth, I do vaguely recall a Cashen interview where he copped to just that, citing Seaver's high salary, thinking no one would take a chance on an old, expensive guy whose main value was hometown gate attraction. I doubt we'll ever know the truth.
I rooted against the Sox in '05 just because of this. The wife pronounced me “nuts”.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:28:00 +0000

It was a wintry Saturday morning, my first year in college.
Dorm phone rang. It was my mother. She said, “You're not gonna believe this: the headline in this morning's Times says 'Mets Lose Seaver.' ”
Me: “What? No way! Not possible…!”
It was basically the same conversation we'd had the morning of December 9, 1980, when she told me John Lennon had been killed…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:16:00 +0000

What efforts did Cashen make to get Seaver from the ChiSox ?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 04:52:00 +0000

In Keith's diary/autobiography If At First, he said Seaver welcomed him to the Mets with a hearty/laconic “welcome to the Stems,” as in the Mets are so dismal at the moment, you can spell it backwards. Never heard of anything dissonant between the two and they always worked well as a broadcast crew.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:24:00 +0000

Begs the question. How well did Seaver and Hernandez get along when both were on the Mets ?
Seaver came back for the '83 season. Hernandez was acquired June 15, 1983. Seaver had a reputation for being a strait arrow. A Marine. Hernandez was rumored to be a cocaine user. I recall he testified at the trial of a Pittsburg drug dealer.
Did they get along ? Who did Cashen value more ?