Which is sometimes true, but breaks down when it comes to doubleheaders. There are a lot of things that are more fun than watching [...]]]> Following too many losses I’ve tried to be philosophical: Watching your team lose a baseball game isn’t so bad — in fact, it’s the second-best thing you can do with three hours.

Which is sometimes true, but breaks down when it comes to doubleheaders. There are a lot of things that are more fun than watching your team lose a baseball game, take a brief break, and then promptly lose another one.

Game 1′s starter was Chris Schwinden, who by his own admission never expected to make AA ball. To be horribly unfair, if you saw Schwinden you’d probably say the same thing — he looks not only thoroughly ordinary but, well, lumpy. (I know that’s shallow. Besides the fact that I’m pretty lumpy myself these days, Heath Bell looks more like a guy in search of a La-Z-Boy than a star closer, and Babe Ruth needs no introduction.) Schwinden’s unprepossessing in action, too: He looks like your basic chucker, a guy who sort of slings the ball and relies on the eight guys behind him to keep bad things from happening.

In belated fairness to Schwinden, the eight guys behind him proved particularly unreliable in the early innings of Game 1: If Angel Pagan wasn’t misplaying a ball and air-mailing the cutoff man, Ronny Paulino was dropping the throw at home, which couldn’t have helped a young pitcher’s nerves. Schwinden might have been forgiven if he wondered if his fielders had also cheated the odds by escaping the Eastern League. To his credit he settled down after that, pitching capably enough in what’s been billed as his only start of the year, and maybe his only Mets start ever. Meanwhile, Jason Bay hit a grand slam, bringing most of the Citi Field crowd to its feet to make about as much noise as 250 or so people can make. Seriously, it was like a continuation of the Marlins’ series, with green shirts dotting acres of green seats.

Having played the early innings like drunks in a fistfight, the Mets and Braves then spent the rest of the twinbill playing more like teams irritated at losing an off-day. Chipper Jones throttled several Mets pitchers, as is his wont, and Nick Evans hit into bad luck in both games, sending a long drive to Jason Heyward that possibly would have been out of 2012 Citi Field, and then getting robbed by Jack Wilson in the nightcap.

Game 1 ended with the Mets failing to capitalize on a leadoff single by Jose Reyes: Ruben Tejada went too far for strike three after failing to bunt and watching Jose stick tight to first, Justin Turner was retired on a bullet of a liner to Michael Bourn in center, and Lucas Duda was caught looking on a perfect pitch to end things. The executioner was Braves super-rookie Craig Kimbrel, who leans in for the sign with shoulders lowered, eyes peering plateward and pitching arm dangling ominously, a display that reminds me of a vulture sitting on a root sticking out of a cliff face. Kimbrel was much admired in the SNY booth for his intimidating demeanor, which the vulture thing tells you I bought into pretty thoroughly myself. But we have to remember this stuff is storytelling, not scouting. Kimbrel is a lights-out closer, so he looks like an intimidating bird of prey. If he were a mop-up guy with an ERA north of six, we’d snicker that he looks like he can’t see the signs and is going to fall off the mound. It’s phrenology, basically.

Game 2′s highlight, besides the fact that it ended, was the Mets debut of hulking Quad-A slugger Valentino Pascucci, likely the last new entry in The Holy Books for 2011, and the 917th 915th Met. While I still think it’s bullshit for the Mets to reissue Carlos Beltran’s No. 15 so soon, I was glad to see Pascucci’s long and rather strange baseball journey bring him back to the Show at last.

He was last sighted at Shea, in the Montreal Expos’ final game. Pascucci went 3 for 4 that day, collecting a long single off Heath Bell in his final at-bat. Then he was off to Japan (where he played under Bobby Valentine as a Chiba Lotte Marine, alongside Benny Agbayani and Matt Franco, not to mention Satoru Komiyama and Matt Watson), Albuquerque, New Orleans, Lehigh Valley, Portland, Albuquerque again, the Camden Riversharks, Buffalo, and finally the Mets. How many times must he have decided “fuck this fucking game?” (Obligatory Crash Davis reference? Check.) But he didn’t, and tonight there he was, in the blue and orange and black drop shadow and phony parchment of a Mets uniform. I was happy for him, and for another little piece of Mets history.

And then I thought to myself that he looked like a slightly smaller version of Fezzik from The Princess Bride.

To which Andre the Giant Met responded by promptly lining a single. Which perhaps wasn’t as useful as bashing Chipper against a rock this afternoon would have been, but that wouldn’t have been sportsmanlike. Besides, Mets fans and minor-league pilgrims have something in common: We take what we can get.

Addendum: Here’s wishing the Mets’ Jay Horwitz and Shannon Forde speedy recoveries from broken ankles. One of the pleasures of the Mets’ outreach to bloggers has been getting to know Shannon, Jay and the rest of the Mets’ media-relations folks. Get well soon, you two.

Spring's coming. Promise.

And it has nothing to do with our front office. [...]]]> It’s not yet the Baseball Equinox — though I’m eagerly awaiting word from Greg that we’re finally closer to new baseball than we are to old. But nonetheless, in the last couple of days I’ve felt a quickening somewhere in my blue-and-orange soul.

Spring's coming. Promise.

And it has nothing to do with our front office. Just having Sandy Alderson on the payroll is grounds for celebration, as is having him make smart hires and calmly explain to everybody from Mike Francesa to panicky Mets fans what is and isn’t happening, and that there’s a plan that’s being stuck to. (And hey, getting to talk to the man himself is certainly a welcome new experience.) Still, even the wisest doings of men in jackets and ties can only do so much.

This was different.

And welcome, as I was beginning to worry a bit.

After the 2010 season mercifully expired with Oliver Perez and a bunch of Jerry Manuel Veteran Leaders (TM) taking up space at Citi Field, I didn’t particularly want to think about my misbegotten baseball team for a while. The Giants and Rangers offered a welcome diversion, but then — as always happens — baseball was over and it was winter.

For a while filling my days wasn’t a problem: I was insanely, frighteningly busy in a medium-term freelance gig I’d taken, and I was trying to finish a book that had been squeezed into night-owl hours but whose deadline hadn’t moved. It was about the most tired I’d ever been — I registered the departures of Omar and Jerry and the arrivals of Sandy and J.P. and DePo with what approval I could muster, but mostly I just stayed tired.

And then when I got my breath back a bit, it was clear that the Mets weren’t going to be making big headlines. No Cliff Lees or Zack Greinkes or even Orlando Hudsons were going to be showing up to awkwardly button a jersey over a shirt and tie (seriously, this looks ridiculous) and say can-do things. No, it was Paulino and Carrasco time. I’ve watched the Knicks a bit, with what started as a professional duty turning into a genuine rooting interest. (Perhaps sensing the arrival of a Mets fan, they’ve now stopped winning.) Today I checked in on the Giants, decided to watch them finish off the Eagles, and found myself profoundly grateful that I didn’t really care as Tom Coughlin’s bunch gagged horribly. No offense meant to the Knicks and Giants (or the Jets, Nets, Rangers, Isles, Devils and anybody else), but the more I reallocate my portfolio of Sports Caring, the more I realize that for me there’s baseball and there’s everything else.

So what lifted my spirits? Baseball cards. Yes, in December.

Topps just released 2010 Bowman Draft Picks, news that I greeted with the kind of enthusiasm appropriate for a minor card set purporting to belong to a year that’s over. But then I noticed that Justin Turner had a card — Justin Turner who’d gone into The Holy Books with an evocative but inappropriate Norfolk Tides card from his time as an Oriole. Cool, I thought (becoming one of at least five or six people on the planet to do so), now I have a Justin Turner Mets card.

And hey, Topps made a Matt Harvey card — better get two of those, in case Harvey makes the big club. And ditto for potential future catcher/backup/trade bait/minor-league washout/who? Blake Forsythe. Thinking of Harvey made me think of Alderson’s announcement that the Mets would no longer abide by Bud Selig’s ridiculous slot criteria in the draft. Thinking about Turner made me think about Daniel Murphy and Ruben Tejada and Luis Castillo and Brad Emaus and a second-base competition in Port St. Lucie.

And that was a pure baseball thought — it wasn’t about the front office or cards or payrolls or draft picks. It wasn’t about being mad at Omar Minaya, or wondering about 2012. It was a brief vision of dirt and grass and sunshine, the pops of balls in gloves and the thunk of spring-training contact before little crowds.

Not so far away, I thought. And then, finally: That will be nice.

After a month of insanity (finishing a Star Wars book, grueling new freelance gig), I can finally think once again about my beloved New York Mets. (Nod to the beyond-awesome Citi ad set in Istanbul.) So let me sally forth by looking back — and giving a slightly overdue welcome to the [...]]]> Yoo-hoo? Anybody miss me?

After a month of insanity (finishing a Star Wars book, grueling new freelance gig), I can finally think once again about my beloved New York Mets. (Nod to the beyond-awesome Citi ad set in Istanbul.) So let me sally forth by looking back — and giving a slightly overdue welcome to the THB Class of 2010. (Previous annals here, here, here, here and here.)

Here’s a recap for newcomers: I have a pair of binders, dubbed The Holy Books (THB) by Greg, that contain a baseball card for every Met on the all-time roster. (News flash: Binder #2 is now full. The Alderson Era will be a fresh start in more ways than you thought.) The binders are ordered by year, with a card for each player who made his Met debut that year: Tom Seaver is Class of ’67, Mike Piazza is Class of ’98, Jose Reyes is Class of ’03, etc. There are extra pages for the rosters of the two World Series winners, including managers, and one for the 1961 Expansion Draft. That includes the infamous Lee Walls, the only THB resident who neither played for nor managed the Mets.

Welcome, new boys!

If a player gets a Topps card as a Met, I use that unless it’s truly horrible — Topps was here a decade before there were Mets, so they get to be the card of record. No Met Topps card? Then I look for a Bisons card, a non-Topps Met card, a Topps non-Met card, or anything else. Topps had a baseball-card monopoly until 1981, and minor-league cards only really began in the mid-1970s, so cup-of-coffee guys from before ’75 or so are a problem. Companies like TCMA and Renata Galasso made odd sets with players from the 1960s — the likes of Jim Bethke, Bob Moorhead and Dave Eilers are immortalized through their efforts. And a card dealer named Larry Fritsch put out sets of “One Year Winners” spotlighting blink-and-you-missed-them guys such as Ted Schreiber and Joe Moock. (A new wrinkle: Topps has recently been selling off its stock of old photos, including ones of guys who never got proper cards. I was outbid for the Ted Schreiber, to my moderate but slowly escalating annoyance.)

Then there are the legendary Lost Nine — guys who never got a regulation-sized, acceptable card from anybody. Brian Ostrosser got a 1975 minor-league card that looks like a bad Xerox. Leon Brown has a terrible 1975 minor-league card and an oversized Omaha Royals card put out as a promotional set by the police department. Tommy Moore got a 1990 Senior League card as a 42-year-old with the Bradenton Explorers. Then there are Al Schmelz, Francisco Estrada, Lute Barnes, Bob Rauch, Greg Harts and Rich Puig, who have no cards whatsoever — the oddball 1991 Nobody Beats the Wiz set is too undersized to work. Best I can tell, Al Schmelz never even had a decent color photograph taken while wearing his Met uniform. (Here’s a crappy black-and-white photo I felt compelled to buy.) The Lost Nine are represented in THB by DIY cards I Photoshopped and had printed on cardstock, because I am insane.

During the season I scrutinize new card sets in hopes of finding a) better cards of established Mets; b) cards to stockpile for prospects who might make the Show; and most importantly c) a card for each new big-league Met. At season’s end, the new guys get added to the binders, to be studied now and then until February. When it’s time to pull old Topps cards of the spring-training invitees and start the cycle again.

Anyway, here they are, the final class of the already unbeloved Minaya regime:

Manny Acosta: Lanky reliever threw hard, but had problems hitting the plate and with dinger-related neck strain. This description suffices for approximately 73,541 relievers in baseball history. If not for having surrendered a couple of huge hits in big spots, I’d probably think of him more fondly. But he did and so I don’t.  Manny gets a mock Topps ’52 card from a few years ago, on which he’s depicted as a Brave.

Joaquin Arias: Stats-minded Mets fans appreciated Arias for not being Jeff Francoeur, but I thought the Mets deserved praise for a different reason: It looked as if the Rangers organization had denied Arias food in Oklahoma City, which is mean. Seriously, the guy made post-Marines Buddy Harrelson look like an offensive lineman. Has since been waived, and possibly is being hand-fed gruel by Sally Struthers as you read this.  Topps ’52 card as a Ranger.

Rod Barajas: Seemed like a fine acquisition when he was slugging clutch home runs, not so much when it became obvious that nobody had told him that Ball 4 = First Base. Still, a decent sort who was an interesting interview and kept the catcher’s seat warm for Josh Thole, whom the Mets didn’t hold back because someone with Veteran Leadership TM was on the roster. So no particular harm, no particular foul. Barajas got a Topps Update card as a Met, despite spending the last six weeks of the season employed by the Los Angeles Dodgers. While we’re on the subject, Alex Cora got a Mets Topps Update card despite being released two weeks before Barajas left town. I’m sure it’s completely unrelated that 2010 was the first year in three decades in which Topps was given a monopoly on major-league baseball cards. Competition, kids! It makes products better!

Jason Bay: Sitting in the stands at Citi, I noticed Jason Bay’s at-bat music — an odd, off-kilter riff leading into a metalesque singer who sounded a bit like David Lee Roth. To my surprise, the song was by Pearl Jam, which has always been a band I admire rather than like. Anyway, “The Fixer” became a favorite of mine, and I rehearsed a blog post in which I’d talk about the song and weave in its lyrics — which are about redemption and taking a problem on your shoulders and making things better — with an account of a big Jason Bay hit. All I needed was the big Jason Bay hit. Topps Update card.

Henry Blanco: Tattooed, imposing catcher did about all you could ask from a back-up catcher. Really good back-up catchers are like pleasant laundry rooms — they’re a nice thing to find in a house, but nobody’s ever stalked away from a showing because the laundry room was lacking. I’d call Henry Blanco a stacked washer-dryer with a sufficient supply of off-brand dryer sheets and maybe a plastic laundry basket that’s a no-longer-fashionable color but still serviceable. Blanco got a Topps Update card, which must make back-up catchers in Pittsburgh or Houston mad.

Chris Carter: The Animal was amusingly intense, got some big hits, and was also a welcome antidote to the assumption that baseball players’ mental activity away from the stadium pretty much consists of thinking about hitting baseballs. Carter went to Stanford, where he got a degree in human biology — in three years. He’s interested in things such as the dedifferentation of blood cells, stem-cell research and cloning. What does Carter get for this doubly impressive resume? A lousy Buffalo Bisons card — and it’s a dreaded horizontal to boot.

Frank Catalanotto: Catalanotto was given the heave-ho after showing very little as a pinch-hitter early in the year, which wasn’t particularly fair but is how things work: Pinch-hitters, like middle relievers, wind up unemployed if one of their bad stretches happens to come at the start of their tenure. Topps showed they were paying at least fitful attention by not giving him a Mets card seven months later, leaving THB to content itself with last year’s update card, on which he is a  Brewer.

Ike Davis: Oh, Ike. Tall, outwardly amiable, and looked like an overgrown Nadia Comaneci with a dugout railing at hand. Ike swiftly displaced Mike Jacobs — part of the ample evidence in the case of Fans v. Omar Minaya — in the lineup and gained a spot in our hearts. He hit tape-measure home runs, he had some idea of the strike zone, and he was wonderfully sure-handed at first base. (He should’ve won a Gold Glove except for the award being a stupid popularity contest.) Best of all, he suffered through a rough early summer and then had a pretty fine September, which bodes well for future years. Topps snuck in a short-printed Series 2 of Ike after he’d been crowned with a shaving-cream pie, which I refused to buy because a) it was expensive and b) that kind of card is a Yankee thing. His Topps Update card will do just fine.

R.A. Dickey: Exhibit A in the half-hearted case made by the defense in Fans v. Omar Minaya. Dickey was one of the finest stories to come around these parts in years: a fireballer who got jobbed out of most of his signing bonus for the sin of being born without an ulnar collateral ligament, had to reinvent himself as a knuckleballer and somehow made it work. The Mets had never had a knuckleballer of any merit, but Dickey proved he was no novelty act: He was a student of pitching, a terrific fielder and a pretty fair hitter to boot. Plus he spoke like a character from a W.P. Kinsella story. Baseball players like this typically only exist in novels and overheated blog posts, but every time we pinched ourselves, Dickey was still there. His lone card is a Buffalo horizontal, a Topps oversight that upset me to an unhealthy degree.

Lucas Duda: With his huge frame, vaguely smash-faced visage and lumbering strides in left field, Duda looked like an 1990s Milwaukee Brewer or the understudy for Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” And during September his brand-new career took a decidedly tragic turn — he collected his first hit in Chicago and then went so cold that you wondered if he’d ever get another one. He was 1 for 34, and you wanted to time your bathroom trips for his at-bats, not because you were mad at him but because his struggles were so pitiful that it felt cruel to watch. But Duda then broke out of it with a monstrous home run and went on an honest-to-goodness tear, hitting tracers out of Citi Field. Far too much baseball writing attributes getting a hit to character (or not getting one to a lack of it), but being 1 for 34 in the big leagues and staying even-keeled really does seems indicative of some measure of it. I don’t know if we’ll ever hear from Lucas Duda again, but I’ll remember the story of his September for some time. He gets a horrible 2008 Bowman Chrome card for now; here’s hoping for an upgrade down the line.

Jesus Feliciano: Feliciano toiled in the minor leagues for 13 seasons before finally getting his chance at the age of 31. That’s a lot of time staring at the ceiling of cheap motels and riding around on crappy buses in pursuit of a dream that must have come to seem like it wasn’t going to come true. It’s great that it did. All that makes me feel shrivel-hearted and small-souled for now pointing out that Jesus Feliciano wasn’t really very good. Topps Update card.

Dillon Gee: If you circled Dillon Gee’s big-league debut in Washington in red pen, you probably have the same last name as him. (And this is coming from a guy who drove from D.C. to Philly to see the Mets take the wraps off Bobby Jones.) But Gee took a no-hitter into the sixth in his debut and didn’t even get accused of not caring about injured veterans later. He pitched pretty well, all told, for the rest of the year — certainly well enough to merit a 2011 look. Gee is one of those guys who has to have very good location and command all his pitches to succeed, and guys like that generally sit at the back end of rotations and get hit. But sometimes they don’t: It’s overly optimistic assuming every change speeds/hit spots guy can be Greg Maddux or even Rick Reed, but it’s overly pessimistic to dismiss the idea that a guy like that has no chance. Got a 2010 Bowman card.

Luis Hernandez: Hit a home run with a broken toe, which is pretty impressive. Beyond that, I have trouble remembering much of anything he did beyond Not Being Luis Castillo. We can do better than that from now on, right Mr. Alderson? Depressing Factoid: Luis’s homer was the only one hit by a Mets second baseman in 2010. Yipes. His card is a Topps ’52 style Oriole. There were a bunch of those this year for some reason.

Mike Hessman: Late in 2010 I was trying to explain the concept of “Quadruple-A player” to my son. Once I used Hessman as an example he got it instantly. Represented by a Topps Pro Debut card.

Ryota Igarashi: Nicknamed Rocket Boy. Rockets that miss with the depressing frequency shown by Igarashi are generally destroyed remotely from the control room. Got a two-year deal, while Hisanori Takahashi got a chance to walk after one campaign. Good job, Omar! Represented by a 2008 Baseball Magazine Japanese card on which he is a Yakult Swallow.

Jenrry Mejia: There was Gary Matthews Jr. in center, Mike Jacobs at first, the stubborn insistence that John Maine and Oliver Perez would be just fine, and the continuing presence of Luis Castillo. But what really got the torch-bearing mob advancing on Castle Omar was sacrificing a year of the fireballing Mejia’s development while wasting him as a middle reliever. I’m annoyed all over again just thinking about it. Here’s hoping young Jenrry has a career good enough that I eventually think of him without automatically also thinking of Met front-office stupidity. Got a Topps Series 2 card that I’d be happier never to have seen, given why it existed.

Mike Nickeas: Minor-league journeyman makes average. His father sort of played for Liverpool. Got a 2005 Bowman Draft Picks card in which he was a Ranger. Curious amount of Mets-Rangers traffic this season.

Hisanori Takahashi: Wily, brave Japanese veteran who pitched capably as a middle reliever, starter and emergency closer. Headed elsewhere in 2011 after seeking what I’ll admit seemed like a lot of years to commit to a pretty old pitcher. We’ll miss him whenever Igarashi gives up a double in the gap or K-Rod punches a relative. Didn’t get a Topps Update card, but did get a  Topps Chrome card. Damn it, Topps.

Ruben Tejada: Slick-fielding second baseman clearly wasn’t ready with the bat, but survived a grueling season and the existence of Jerry Manuel to put up encouraging numbers in September. His soft hands and precocious baseball instincts were a joy to watch, but one has to be realistic about that bat. Got a Topps Series 2 card.

Justin Turner: Showed flashes in a brief midsummer callup, but didn’t return in September. Given the collective wattage of the Mets braintrust in 2010, it’s possible they forgot he existed. (Reading this, Nick Evans squeezes the mouse too hard and breaks it.) Can we take another moment to sing hallelujahs that people with functioning cerebellums now run our club? Has a card as a 2009 Tide, which continues to startle me even though I know perfectly well the Tides were an Orioles farm team by then.

Raul Valdes: The definition of warm body. Has a 2006 Bowman card on which he’s a Cub and his name is spelled “Valdez.” This undoubtedly strikes him as more of an injustice than it does me.

Near the end of winter my neighbor’s younger brother died unexpectedly. Emily and I are friendly with our neighbor, and offered him our condolences. But we don’t really know each other, for all the usual city reasons that you regret on one level but mostly look past while you’re [...]]]> Update: Here’s this story revisited for NPR.

Near the end of winter my neighbor’s younger brother died unexpectedly. Emily and I are friendly with our neighbor, and offered him our condolences. But we don’t really know each other, for all the usual city reasons that you regret on one level but mostly look past while you’re busy being busy.

On Sunday I was walking through the neighborhood when I came across my neighbor rolling a luggage cart piled with stacked bags and boxes. I waved, and he stopped me.

“Just the person I wanted to see,” he said. “You’re a baseball fan, right?”

He’d just finished the unhappy business of cleaning out his brother’s apartment. A lot of stuff had gone to the charity shop, but there were some things he hadn’t wanted to just hand over. He said his brother had been a baseball fan and had kept some things, which he didn’t know what to do with.

Standing there on the street, my neighbor drew out one of the bags from the stack on the luggage cart and opened it. Inside was a stack of yearbooks. The 1961 Yankees were on top. Farther down in the stack I saw the Jets logo, and then a familiar sight: Tom Seaver smiling behind assembled baseballs. Mets, 1975. Then a Seventies Yankee, swinger’s locks flying, about to crash into a catcher at home plate. Then Mr. Met in a tri-cornered hat. 1976 — I’d had that yearbook, when I was a kid.

My neighbor explained that he hadn’t wanted to leave the baseball stuff to be thrown out or sold to just anybody. He wasn’t interested in getting money for it, but he did want it to go to someone who would appreciate it. He looked harried, but mostly sad: He knew there were people out there who would love this stuff, but he didn’t know how to find them.

“I can help you with that,” I said.

So later that afternoon I stood in my neighbor’s apartment, looking at a daybed covered with a stack of baseball books and four boxes — his brother’s baseball collection. The books tended toward big volumes celebrating the game’s history — the kind of lavish coffee-table things I’m always tempted by in bookstores. They looked brand-new. A big box held a stack of games by Cadaco, a company I’d never heard of. The games were some variant of Strat-o-Matic, from the late 1960s and mid-1970s. Another box held the yearbooks. And then there were two shoeboxes. My neighbor said those were full of baseball cards, and I could have them if I wanted them.

I told him I’d take the collection and look through it. Some of it might be pretty valuable, I said, adding that I’d set that stuff aside so he could figure out what to do with it. The things that weren’t so valuable I’d find homes for. The books, for instance, would be a great baseball introduction for Joshua, a way for him to quietly read and soak up knowledge and backstory on his time, arming himself with tales of Ty Cobb and Ted Williams and Frank Robinson. That’s how I’d caught up with the adult baseball fans in my life, spending evenings and car rides reading “Strange But True Baseball Stories” and hagiographies of vanished stars and chronicles of long-ago seasons.

We ferried the stuff down to my apartment. I sorted through the baseball books, putting some in the upstairs bookcase and some in Joshua’s room for him to discover. I put the mysterious games in the closet for closer scrutiny some other time. I looked through the yearbooks (they turned out not to be worth as much as I’d thought), pondering who might like them. There wasn’t a yearbook newer than 1980, though there were copies of Street and Smith’s annuals from 1985 and 1986. The newer stuff was pristine, almost as if it hadn’t been read. The older stuff showed its wear — it had been well-kept, but obviously read quite a bit.

And then I turned to the shoeboxes. These weren’t the long white boxes that card collectors use these days, but honest-to-goodness shoeboxes bearing the logos of old brands: Thom McAn and Walk-Over. 9 1/2. They would have fit me, I thought idly.

I opened the first one. There were cards stacked this way and that, and I suddenly remembered something I’d known as a child: Despite their place in Americana, shoeboxes aren’t a great fit for baseball cards, as long rows of cards don’t completely fill up the box, leaving it vulnerable to flexing. This box was tightly and carefully packed, with no wasted space. The second shoebox was the same way, but there was a baseball nestled among the cards. I eased it free and saw a signature on it, one I knew.

BABE RUTH

Wow, I thought. Then realized: No. It was a stamp. Next to the Babe’s signature was a stamp of Hank Aaron’s. The ball was white, but you could feel its age: It had gone hard as stone.

I put the souvenir ball aside and took out stacks of cards, arranging them on my dining-room table. There were hundreds of 1974s, with chevrons top and bottom. The corners were tight and perfect. I realized I wasn’t used to seeing old cards like this, as pristine cardboard rectangles. Mixed in with them were dozens of gaudy 1972s, with their Pop-Art colors and 3-D stars, a handful of 1975s, and ranks of dour, almost-military white 1973s. Then there were lots and lots of silver-gray 1970s, the last Topps cards to bear painterly portraits.

I started sorting the cards, at first idly, then methodically. There were few if any doubles from the 1972s and 1973s and 1975s. For the other two years there were lots — the stacks of doubles quickly topped 50, then 100. My neighbor’s brother had all but cornered the market on 1974 traded cards of Steve Stone, and the cards practically sang with a frustration I recalled: In 1976, the first year I’d collected, I’d been a magnet for traded cards of Mike Anderson.

The 1970s were in good shape, but not collector-quality. A lot of the corners were rounded, and some cards had been written on. Same with the 72s: Many had positions added on the front in pen. The 74s, on the other hand, were marred only by the occasional faintly burred front or discolored back. I remembered what caused those patterns. In a wax pack, the rectangle of dry pink gum was bound against the front of the first card, and adhesive often got on the back of the last card.

My neighbor’s brother had been born eight years before me. Looking over his cards, I did the math. He’d been nine when he collected those 1970s, and 14 when he bought a few 75s. I’d started collecting in 1976, when I was seven, and quit (the first time) in 1981, when I was 12. The ages were different, but the age range was the same. And so was the pattern of wear. I’d played with my 1976s endlessly, and today they’re almost round. My 1981 cards? They were put away basically untouched.

I kept looking for signs of order as I sorted the cards, but there weren’t any. Well, except for one thing: I wasn’t finding star cards or valuable rookies. Until, in the middle of the second box, I came to a 1970 Willie McCovey. Next was a 1972 Willie Mays (with CF added in ballpoint pen). I wasn’t surprised by what followed: Dave Winfields, Nolan Ryans, a Mike Schmidt, Tom Seavers, Joe Morgan, Harmon Killebrews, Pete Rose, Rollie Fingers. At some point (around 1980, by the evidence) my neighbor’s brother had taken down those shoeboxes and searched for stars. I suspect he sold, traded or gave some away — there were fewer valuable cards than chance would dictate, and no 1971s — and then put the rest back, where they sat undisturbed for another 30 years.

And there was one other, much subtler sign of order.

Looking through the 1970s, I found this sequence: Rod Gaspar (Mets), Bob Aspromonte (Braves), Jose Cardenal (Cardinals), Dave Marshall (Giants), Larry Stahl (Padres), Joe Foy (Mets), Sandy Alomar (Angels), Calvin Koonce (Mets), Bill Dillman (Cardinals), Ron Herbel (Padres), Dick Selma (Phillies).

That is not a random grouping: All of those guys were Mets at some point, except Dillman. I looked up Bill Dillman. He was a member of the 1972 Tidewater Tides.

My neighbor’s brother was a Mets fan — and not a casual one, either. He knew Larry Stahl and Ron Herbel had worn blue and orange even if they’d never had Mets cards, and he knew that Bill Dillman hadn’t quite earned a ticket back to the Show as a member of the Mets organization. He’d collected cards for a while, then put them aside, their apparent randomness hiding patterns that the right person would be able to read. Someone who knew not just baseball cards, but also obscure Mets. Someone like me.

Looking at those cards, I knew he’d loved the same team I do, and I could see how his mind had worked. I sorted his cards carefully, separating them into years and doubles. I put aside the small stack of valuable cards for my neighbor to consider. I checked to see if the cards of Mets and guys who’d been Mets were in better shape than my own, swapping mine for his when they were. I put aside the partial sets of 1970s and 1974s I’d reconstructed. And then I sat at the table pondering homes for yearbooks and thinking about baseball fans I knew who would see a packet of random 30-year-old Cardinals or Yankees or Expos as a welcome gift, worth pondering at odd moments or kept to be passed on to someone else who would appreciate them.

I never knew my neighbor’s brother, but I think he would like that.

I know, it’s February. That’s the way things go these days — the first series of cards arrives in the dead of winter, weeks before anyone even shows up in Florida or Arizona, with a couple of cup-of-coffee rookies adorning their first cards (Tobi [...]]]> Here’s another sign of spring for you: 2010 Topps Baseball is out.

I know, it’s February. That’s the way things go these days — the first series of cards arrives in the dead of winter, weeks before anyone even shows up in Florida or Arizona, with a couple of cup-of-coffee rookies adorning their first cards (Tobi Stoner has now made his Topps regular-series debut) and a couple of old veterans appearing on Mets cards when they’re no longer Mets. (Sorry, Mr. Delgado.) There will be a second series in the spring, followed by the traded set in the fall, and then the cycle will begin again.

This year’s cards are pretty nice, at least to my eyes: prominent Mets logos and cards in Met colors. (I still can’t get over that in 1976, the first year I collected, the Mets cards came in Michigan colors.) And even though there’s snow on the ground, it’s great to be able to momentarily glimpse the coming baseball summer through a little cardboard window. Flipping from Daniel Murphy’s 2009 stats back to his picture on the front, you realize spring isn’t so far away and you’ll probably make it, yet again, through the Super Bowl and the tail end of another cruel winter to the promised land of pitchers and catchers.

Still, there are odd things afoot this year. Major League Baseball has now reduced the number of card makers to one — Topps — echoing the monopoly of years past. Upper Deck is still in the game, but won’t be able to use team logos, which I suppose means it will issue cards that look like the pictures of players you used to find on wiffle-ball cartons, or the cards Topps would produce for guys who’d changed teams, with blank caps or no caps at all. (The term for the latter is BHNH — “big head no hat.” More on this in a bit.)

From the highly parochial perspective of The Holy Books this is bad news: In recent years Upper Deck did a public service by rounding up cards for the lesser lights of baseball rosters, and without competition I doubt Topps will worry overmuch about immortalizing fourth outfielders and middle relievers. From THB’s roster of 26 2009 Mets, Upper Deck was responsible for Casey Fossum, Andy Green, Pat Misch and Darren O’Day — not guys you’ve thought of much since Game 162, but Mets nonetheless.

Speaking of which, 2010 Topps Series I brought new THB cards for Angel Pagan, Gary Sheffield, Fernando Martinez, Josh Thole and Stoner. Thole is an annoyance, though — he’s no longer an Eastern League All-Star, but now he’s stuck with a dreaded horizontal card. Still, at least that’s better than the franchise-history card Topps stuck the Mets with: It’s Tom Seaver tossing the closing pitch under the SHEA GOODBYE banner.

No disrespect to the Franchise or the Mets’ old home, but really? That’s the image that sums up the franchise? An old player in a phony antique jersey bidding farewell to a concrete doughnut after a soul-killing loss that left fans near suicide? I suppose it’s a better fit than we’d like to admit, but can’t the positive be accentuated in a situation like this? Why not young Seaver’s knee scraping dirt? Jerry Koosman jumping into Jerry Grote’s arms? Tug McGraw slapping his glove against his knee? Ray Knight with his hands on his helmet in happy disbelief? Jesse Orosco putting his glove in orbit? Todd Pratt hoisting Robin Ventura aloft? I haven’t seen the rest of the set, but I won’t be surprised to discover that the Yankees’ franchise-history card documents Yogi Berra descending to the surface of the Moon or Derek Jeter capturing Osama bin Laden.

Speaking of franchise history, recently Mets Guy in Michigan and the Crane Pool Forum collaborated to uncover an interesting sidelight to an oddity of Mets baseball cards. There are no 1972 and 1973 Topps cards for Rusty Staub, apparently because of a contract dispute. But Staub is featured on one of the most horrifying-looking cards in Met history — a late 1970s Hostess card in which he bears an awkwardly repainted “Mets” batting helmet. (Follow either link to see it.)

Ugly, but not exactly surprising: As MGIM chronicles nicely, lots of players from the 1960s and 1970s wound up with their new team allegiances achieved through added pinstripes, awkwardly changed colors and repainted caps. What vaults the Staub card into the ranks of the truly grotesque is that the Expos logo is still very visible on his uniform, and his added Mets pinstripes peter out in the vicinity of his right shoulder.

The theory advanced on the Crane Pool Forum feels right: This is an unused Topps photo from the early 1970s, when Staub was an Expo, that was converted into a Met card but never used until it was handed over to Hostess. The visible Expos logo and missing pinstripes? You can see them (or not see them) because Hostess didn’t crop the photo tightly, as Topps would have done. Tighten the crop, add in a 1972 Mets overlay and RUSTY STAUB in ’72′s font, and you have what very probably would have been Staub’s 1972 card. It makes perfect sense, and it’s immensely satisfying to see.

I don’t have that card, though I’m tempted to make one of my own. But I did recently get another oddball card: an alternate Rusty Staub card from 1971, before his falling-out with Topps. This one was put out in Canada by O-Pee-Chee, which used alternate shots of some Expos and added some other Montreal players to the checklist for the purposes of their domestic market. Like the reconstructed ’72 Staub, looking at my alternate ’71 Rusty gives me a little chill: A card that had escaped me exists, and for a moment I feel like a little kid pausing halfway through a wax pack to gaze at the latest treasure — a ’76 Tom Seaver, say, or even a ’77 Mike Phillips — he’ll be able to display in the neighborhood, and love until the corners are round.

And it’s not even a horizontal.

There were 54 1967 Mets — 35 making their team debuts — and those 54 players managed 61 wins, [...]]]> Longtime readers of this blog know of my quixotic pursuit of a decent picture of Al Schmelz, former Alaska Goldpanner and briefly a New York Met, along with many other momentary ballplayers in the bizarre 1967 campaign.

There were 54 1967 Mets — 35 making their team debuts — and those 54 players managed 61 wins, or 1.13 per Met. Those making their blue-and-orange debuts included a future Hall of Famer (Tom Seaver, of course), a player who’d become a star in New York (Jerry Koosman), one who did so elsewhere (Amos Otis), future workers of Miracles (Ken Boswell, Don Cardwell, Ed Charles, Cal Koonce and Ron Taylor), a guy who’d be better known in Met circles as a coach and a father (Sandy Alomar), a guy whose name would live in mild infamy (cruelly overhyped center fielder Don Bosch), another who’d be better known for his watering hole than his on-field pursuits (Phil Linz, impresario of the once-upon-a-time famous tavern Mister Laffs), and a lot of guys of interest only as answers to trivia questions posed on blogs such as this one (Dennis Bennett, Bill Graham, Joe Grzenda, Joe Moock, Les Rohr, Bart Shirley, Billy Wynne).

But all those guys, from Bennett to Billy, got a decent baseball card one way or another, and are now enshrined in The Holy Books — my pair of binders collecting baseball cards for all the Mets since 1962: one card for each new Met, ordered by year. Including the Class of ’67.

Some of the ’67 Mets are fortunate enough to actually appear on Topps cards as Mets. Others demand creativity. Momentary Met Les Rohr has to share a 1968 rookie card with Ivan Murrell, a Houston outfielder wearing one of Topps’ blank black hats, but hey, it’s a card. Billy Connors shares a ’67 rookie card with fellow Cub Dave Dowling. Bill Denehy, Bob Heise, Bob Johnson, Jack Lamabe and Larry Stahl and Amos Otis appear hatless in their Met uniforms, or with their caps rendered generic, and are identified as members of other teams on their Topps cards. Properly attired as members of other teams are Bennett (Red Sox), Shirley (Dodgers), Nick Willhite and Wynne (Angels). Hal Reniff, sad to say, is a Yankee.

Graham and Moock never got Topps cards, and their careers were over before minor-league teams started issuing card sets in the mid-1970s. (A number of Mets in The Holy Books have cards from their tenure as Tides, Zephyrs, Bisons or members of other organizations’ farm clubs.) But Graham and Moock do have baseball cards, thanks to the efforts of a veteran card dealer named Larry Fritsch. Beginning in the late 1970s, Fritsch made several series of cards called One Year Winners, giving cardboard immortality to players who’d never had a card before. His efforts saved 10 thimbleful-of-coffee Mets — Graham and Moock, as well as Ray Daviault, Larry Foss, Rick Herrscher, Ted Schreiber, Wayne Graham, Dennis Musgraves, Shaun Fitzmaurice, Dick Rusteck — from anonymity.

But despite such efforts, a few Mets slipped through the cracks. Two — Brian Ostrosser and Leon Brown — got minor-league cards that are so dismal they’d be better off with nothing. (In Brown’s case this happened twice.) Tommy Moore got a Senior League card long after his big-league tenure. On it, he looks … well, senior. Then there are the guys who got nothing: Francisco Estrada, Lute Barnes, Bob Rauch, Greg Harts, Brian Ostrosser and Rich Puig. And, of course, Al Schmelz. Together, these nine make up the lonely roster of the Lost Mets.

In a fit of spectacular OCDism, I decided a few years ago that if the Lost Mets didn’t have cards, I would make cards for them — and so I did, using Photoshop to cobble together cards from old yearbook photos and scans of Topps cards. Which worked out fine for everybody — except Schmelz.

No moment of Schmelz’s baseball career seems to have been captured in a decent color photo. There are shots of him as an Alaska Goldpanner, but they’re in black and white. A couple of Mets yearbooks have pictures of him grouped with other guys invited to camp — always group shots, always black and white. He’s in the team photos — in glorious color, no less — in the ’67 and ’68 yearbooks, but of course he’s in the back, almost completely blocked by his teammates. His Holy Books card is a Frankenstein assemblage, with his body assembled from bits of pieces of different Mets from that ’67 team photo. It was the best I could do.

The Mets don’t have a better picture. As far as I can tell, no one else does either. I’ve even written to Schmelz himself a couple of times, with no answer. (I no longer do that — it seems like a ridiculous reason to wind up the subject of a restraining order.) Though Schmelz was photographed a few years ago at a fantasy camp in Arizona: He was wearing 1990s-looking Mets garb, sunglasses and what I had to interpret as a slightly mocking smile.

Every couple of months, out of habit, I Google Schmelz’s name. The results are not as straightforward as you might think: “Al Schmelz” appears to mean “aluminum smelter” in German. I also look for him on eBay. Sometimes this turns up a copy of an undersized, black-and-white semi-card he got as part of a 1990 Shea giveaway. (Cool, but no good for THB purposes.) Mostly it turns up nothing.

Until this morning. There it was, a snapshot of Al Schmelz, wearing the number that would one day belong to Dwight Gooden. As you can see, naturally it’s in black and white. Inevitably, Schmelz’s face is mottled by shadows. Of course his expression suggests that he just had a gulp of milk past its expiration date. No matter. It’s a picture of Al Schmelz, and though it’s faint praise to say it’s the best picture of him I’ve ever seen, it’s the best picture of him I’ve ever seen.

Of course I bought it. By now, it’s pretty much my job. Besides, who else would?

In a better world, many more of these would be Bisons cards. Oh well. Commentary here.