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Greg Prince and Jason Fry
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.

Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.

Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.

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The Metness Protection Program

REMINDER: TONIGHT IS AMAZIN’ TUESDAY AT TWO BOOTS TAVERN. BRING A METS BASEBALL CARD, GET A FREE BEER. HEAR FROM SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE METS WRITERS. WATCH THE METS MAYBE BEAT THE NATIONALS TWICE IN A ROW. Full details HERE.

I’m already worried about how the Mets will blow the 2013 All-Star Game. They’re supposed to host it. Nothing official, but that’s been the word from the last two ASGs. It’s the Mets’ turn. It was probably the Mets’ turn around 1988, but better late than never.

(I once read Al Harazin quoted on why the Stars never came out at Shea after 1964: too much bother, he said in just about those words. Apparently a team that hosted 81 baseball games a year was flummoxed by the prospect of opening its gates for even one more…which might explain why Al Harazin strenuously steered the Mets away from the playoffs as GM.)

If you’ve watched All-Star Games in recent years, you know the host team, working in conjunction with Major League Baseball, usually has something special planned to honor one of its own. Stan Musial was a focal point of the celebration in St. Louis. The Yankees made a big deal of Yogi Berra last year. The Giants did the same for Willie Mays in 2007. Ted Williams crowned the All-Century festivities at Fenway in 1999.

What will the Mets do when they get the Midsummer Classic four Julys hence? How will they blow off their own history and make us feel insignificant yet again?

Forgive the fatalism, but look who we’re dealing with. If this same ownership group and management team are in place come 2013, I have three guesses as to what might serve as the commemorative backdrop for Citi Field’s first and perhaps only All-Star Game.

1) Jackie Robinson, American Hero

2) A Salute to International Baseball

3) Derek Jeter’s Fortieth Year on Earth

Tom Seaver, knock wood, will be 68 years old in the summer of 2013. It will be the 40th anniversary of You Gotta Believe and the reams of transcendent baseball lore (including Willie’s and Yogi’s) it gave birth to. The Mets will be marking their 50th season in Queens. And, knock more wood, David Wright, who was called up from Norfolk five years ago today, will be lining up for his ninth consecutive All-Star appearance, having earned by deed and desire his place as Met for Life. There are several Met angles one could objectively envision being played up when the Mets get their chance to shine.

To whatever extent the host team gets a say in constructing the MLB showcase of showcases, I imagine…no, I believe the Mets will add as little Mets flavor to the occasion as possible. If they help out at all, it will be to tip another cap to Jackie or applaud stars from around the world or be good neighbors and make the event all about an All-Star who plays in New York, but not for them.

The Mets don’t care about the Mets.

Repeat: the Mets don’t care about the Mets. By extension, they don’t care about their most committed fans either.

Everything you need to know to understand the mindset of this organization was spelled out explicitly this past weekend when two different stories, one in the News and one in the Times, appeared and asked the same question: When might the Mets bring back Old Timers Day?

The answer was consistent in each story: Never. The subtext was clear as well: Why are you even asking?

The Mets think you should be happy they opened a new ballpark where you can give them your money and have a pleasant few hours. Then they hope you’ll go home and forget the context of what you saw…but remember to come back again, with your money.

This is not a winning formula for sustaining long-term interest in your product or brand or sports team. The strongest ingredient in any such winning formula is consistently winning on the field. Do that and everything else is a sidebar. But the Mets aren’t doing that, so we can’t help but notice when they’re veering off stride in other areas.

If the Mets were in first place right now, we probably wouldn’t be so offended when their top business executive scoffs at the idea of reviving Old Timers Day. The Mets, however, aren’t in first place.

We are offended.

Without a compelling backstory, the Mets are just another a suitor for your entertainment dollars. Without acknowledging that they are part of something that came before what’s unfolding between 7:10 and 10:00 or 10:30 on a given night, they are a mercurial experience. They are an evening at a Cyclones or a Ducks game, but far more expensive. They’re the New York Liberty even. Stephanie and I went to our annual Liberty game Sunday because we were quite fond of the local WNBA franchise when it was new and regularly contended for a championship. We felt we were a part of something ongoing. Now a Liberty game feels like an excuse for the Garden A/V squad to test its volume controls (rest assured they go to 11). Yet we return in 2009 because we loved them in 1999. That’s the appeal of spectator sports at its best. That’s why it reaches above the level of novelty. That’s why you more readily invest your time and money in it than in a random trip to the movies.

Mets management, by most indications, isn’t particularly concerned whether you view their product with that kind of commitment. They want to make your evening or afternoon a fine time, no doubt, but it’s makes no nevermind to them if it’s one that connects you to absolutely nothing about the Mets. They want you to drop in, buy some food, maybe a sweatshirt and leave. If you’d like to watch the game and cheer, they’re not gonna stop you. But the idea that there are Mets fans who see each Mets game and Mets season as a precious thread in a rich and compelling tapestry of a lifetime of loving and caring…it doesn’t penetrate their thought process.

Dave Howard’s statements to the papers that Old Timers Day was “unpopular” when discontinued as an annual promotion after 1994 and therefore should never be revived reeks of anachronistic thinking. That it’s not worth reinstituting because it’s expensive…well, that’s just galling. Your tickets are expensive. Your concessions are expensive. Almost everything about going to a Mets game is expensive. The only thing that isn’t expensive is the lineup you’re putting out there lately. (Please let us know when we can expect our Alex Cora Overuse rebate checks.)

Management demonstrated a cavalier attitude at season’s beginning when it was challenged regarding the stunning lack of Metsiana in Citi Field; Howard glossed over it to Mike Francesa on WFAN and Fred Wilpon was vague about it when reporters asked him where all the Mets stuff was. Their answers then hint at a certain passivity toward Mets history in the planning of Citi Field, that it simply never occurred to them that a Mets ballpark should be bursting at the seams with Mets identity. This business with Old Timers Day, on the other hand, seems aggressively clueless to the point of self-hatred.

Or intense dislike for their most passionate customers at any rate.

I’m trying to think of another business in which the enthusiasm of its most loyal customers is regularly disregarded. I’m trying to think of another corporation that is content to watch its hard-earned brand equity blow by in the breeze. I’m trying to think of another entity that willingly tamps down its patrons’ expectations by promising to not deliver on some of the easiest consumer wins it can score.

I’m trying to think of one, but I can’t. Meet the Mets. They’ve got their finger on the pulse of not having their finger on the pulse of the core of their fan base.

Yet buried somewhere in Howard’s unfortunate statements, I get what he’s saying. I get that in the early to middle 1990s Old Timers Day wasn’t selling out Shea Stadium. Neither was anything else. But they were high points in the schedule. I attended in 1992, 1993 and 1994. ’92 (billed as Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball, featuring Davey Johnson and Buddy Harrelson making their first returns to Shea after each had been let go as manager) drew 39,000 on a Saturday night. ’93, in an absolutely horrific season, brought in almost 32,000 for a salute to the 1973 Mets and A’s — minus Tom Seaver, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson. It was another Upper Deck affair and it was another Saturday night.

1994’s Old Timers Day may have been the most disappointing event I ever witnessed at Shea that didn’t involve T#m Gl@v!ne and the final game of a season. It was the 25th anniversary of the Miracle Mets. Again, no Seaver or Berra (or Nolan Ryan). It was scheduled, for the first Old Timers Day in memory, on a Sunday. Worst of all, the “festivities” kicked off at 11:45 in the morning. No more than 5,000 people could have been in the stands at that hour. Paid attendance was a shade under 25,000.

I have a theory (less celebrated than my Yadier Molina theory) that posits Mets management has never quite shaken off the aftereffects of the disastrous 1993 season. While Omar tried — and failed — to craft a team that was going to build on its truncated 2006 success, the business side of the club is forever haunted by recurring thoughts that no one intrinsically loves, wants or needs their product. It doesn’t stop them from overpricing tickets and creating unnecessary enclaves of exclusivity like the glorified Logezzanine they call the Caesars Club level, but it does stick in their collective subconscious when it comes to selective memory.

Their selective memory where Old Timers Day is concerned is stuck in 1994, which is now fifteen years ago. In 1994, CDs were our most efficient music delivery system and the Contract With America was all the rage. Fifteen years is a long time. But that’s the reference point, apparently, for proving Old Timers Day, a cherished Met tradition dating back to the Polo Grounds (the Mets’ first ballpark, should the question come up in another CitiVision text poll any time soon), is unpopular.

The Mets were unpopular in 1994. The Mets were unpopular in 1994 because it was the year after 1993. If divisional races were conducted like political campaigns, the Phillies’ media consultants would just air footage of the 1993 Mets to scare the voters. The Mets’ genuine strides as a baseball enterprise in 1994 (a nearly .500 record after plummeting through the N.L. East floor with 103 losses) weren’t going to lure fans back to Shea Stadium. Three Fireworks Nights (because the one Fireworks Night held in 1993 was practically the only painless evening at Shea all year) weren’t going to lure fans back to Shea Stadium. Inaugurating the DynaMets Dash and opening Nickelodeon Extreme Baseball and conducting tours of Shea Stadium — all of which happened in 1994 — weren’t going to lure fans back to Shea Stadium. And Old Timers Day wasn’t necessarily going to do the trick in such a post-toxic atmosphere.

So instead of reasoning it was a bad year to be marketing the Mets no matter how many runs Jeff Kent was driving in, no matter how few batters Bret Saberhagen was walking and no matter that not a single firecracker unauthorized by the Grucci Brothers was exploding in anyone’s direction, the Mets decided Old Timers Day itself was the problem.

And they have apparently maintained that stance for fifteen years. Despite the fact that it is no longer 1994. Despite the fact that the Mets’ attendance base has rebuilt itself when the team has given people the impetus to attend regularly. Despite the fact that fans of a team with nearly 50 years on the books tend to feel connected to that team’s history and want to celebrate it.

I absolutely cannot believe Dave Howard would say Old Timers Day is unpopular based on evidence gleaned from nearly a generation ago. Thank goodness NASA didn’t follow the same thought process in the days leading up to July 20, 1969. You can’t put a man on the moon! I have a study here from 1954 that says it’s impossible!

The hidden-in-plain-sight secret is the Mets have run several Old Timers style events since giving up the ghost in ’94. They had a thirtieth anniversary get-together for the ’69 club — one of two Mets teams to win a world championship in case you’ve somehow missed that piece of information at Citi Field — in 1999. It drew more than 37,000, pretty good numbers for pre-2006 Shea. It had Seaver on hand, but it also got underway late on a Sunday morning, and its starting time wasn’t well-publicized. Thus, the stands were emptier than the tickets sold would indicate.

Then the Mets got smart. They began moving the event times to what was supposed to be first pitch. By making this simple shift, people began showing up in time to witness some of the most grand spectacles Shea offered in the past decade. That includes the 2000 Ten Greatest Moments celebration, the 2002 40th Anniversary All-Amazin’ Team presentation, the 2006 reunion of the 1986 Mets and 2007’s Ralph Kiner Night. All were huge attractions in their summers and all benefited from a boisterous, supportive crowd that was at its seats and on its feet for each of those respective happenings.

(The 2008 Shea Goodbye ceremonies were both a triumph and a fiasco that should probably be judged apart from all other events like it because there was nothing like it, but you can’t say people didn’t want in to the ballpark that day.)

Those weren’t traditional Old Timers Days. There was no Old Timers Game. Nobody put on full uniforms. Y’know what? That’s fine. We don’t need to see over-the-hill Mets, besides the ones under contract, trying to huff around the bases without injuring themselves. We just want to see them and cheer them. We want to connect to them because they, by their very presence in our midst, connect to us. We want nights like August 22 when the Mets will, despite trying to avoid association with the dreaded OTD phrase, gather their ’69ers, Ryan included at last, to toast the miracle of forty years ago. We want something in 2010 to commemorate the last Mets pennant winner from 2000 (and, if we live in a perfect world, their Wild Card predecessors from a year earlier). We want something come 2011 or 2012 for the 50th season or 50th anniversary of the franchise. And we’ll want the only Mets-hosted All-Star Game most of us are ever going to witness to have a Mets feel, a Mets flair, a Mets heart. Most of us aren’t going to manage a ticket for the 2013 All-Star Game, so we’d sure like something in-season to commemorate it besides pricey merchandise.

That stuff about these events being expensive to produce? Boo-bleeping-hoo. I’m sure it’s more expensive to fly in your retired players from around the country and world than it is to have 25,000 whatevers printed up (don’t get me started on the stunning cheapness and contempt the Mets continue to demonstrate by limiting their giveaways to fewer than two-thirds of the house). I’m sure each Old Timer needs accommodations and many require delicate handling and a few are probably outright prima donnas and pains in the ass.

And yet I don’t care. You’re charging us a nominal egg, as they say, 81 games a year for everything. For one night, suck it up. It doesn’t have to be a super grand buffet of Mets the way other teams bring back dozens and dozens of alumni (though that would be in order for the 50th anniversary). It doesn’t have to be called Old Timers Day if you really can’t help but have flashbacks to the vacant seats of 1994 by calling it that. You can make it relatively simple on yourselves by remembering that you used to have a Mets Hall of Fame ceremony almost every year. Those were hit and miss in terms of how they were promoted (the last one, Tommie Agee’s in 2002, was an embarrassment, held with no Mets in the dugout), but learn from what you’ve done right and repeat those aspects.

Ah, the Mets Hall of Fame…what’s wrong with you, Mets? How did it not occur to you to include one in your new ballpark? How could you stop inducting members? You’ve honored nobody since Agee and you managed to wait until he was gone. Are you afraid you’ll commission sculptures for Davey, for Darryl, for Doc and they won’t show up? I think they would. Are you hesitant because the committee that did the deciding isn’t any longer active, that the men who comprised it are either too far along or no longer with us?

Appoint a new committee. There are other writers, other broadcasters and, dare I say, some very serious bloggers who would be thrilled to help get this thing back on its feet. I’ve long maintained the Mets should make Citi Field the repository of everything New York baseball that isn’t the Yankees. The Mets should be the ones honoring Jackie Robinson, but not exclusively. Again: the Dodgers, the Giants, the Cubans, the Bushwicks, the high schools, the colleges, the local little leagues…but most of all, the Mets, the Mets, the Mets.

Make Citi Field about the Mets as an eternal entity, not just an interchangeable leisure option. Include in every season a weekend to absolutely revel in what the Mets mean to Mets fans. Stop acting as if this stuff doesn’t matter to us. It does. Stop fearing that if you build it, hold it, make a big thing of it, we won’t come. We will.

We’re the ones who give a damn.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

34 comments to The Metness Protection Program

  • Anonymous

    I agree I'd like to see all non-Yankees baseball honored at Citi Field. The history doesn't suggest it, but if they want to play up the “Only enough time to get the stadium up, we'll decorate it in '10” fine. Get some stuff in there. get some Mets Logos and those dark and dreary stairwells. Put some pictures of famous Mets moments near the concessions. There have been a billion ideas suggested, and many of them good. The only think I take solace in is that Citi Field is actually pretty amazing, and decorating it a little more is the easiest fix in the world.
    There is no added cost to hosting some of these types of events. Just time and effort. Getting more security to escort them in, or making sure the field is set up for them to walk on without hurting it, you know, simple administrative tasks. Any costs would be deferred by raising the Bronze level game to a Silver level game in the pricing scheme. The sponsor of whatever crap they give out usually pays for it. (And I've always bitched about the first XXX fans. or Kids. Just give one to everyone and get over it. There are extras? raffle off goodie bags between innings. You can even sponsor the goodie bags to make even more money!)
    I'm hoping the Mets can offset possibly messing up the 2013 All Star game by being 3-time defending World Champions. It'd be hard to screw it up after that right?

  • Anonymous

    As a 40 year plus life long Met fan, I'm getting tired in recent history, of the Mets being the laughing stock of the league. What is it going to take to wake the Wilpons up?
    Sure, honoring Jackie Robinson was a fine thing – I don't have a problem with that. But Citi Field is the METS home stadium, for crying out loud. How about we actually make that clear to even a non fan?
    The Wilpons are totally out of touch with us lowly fans. Sad thing is, I don't see this ever changing. We wouldn't even be discussing this if the Wilpons had a clue….

  • Anonymous

    “We don't need to see over-the-hill Mets, besides the ones under contract, trying to huff around the bases without injuring themselves.”
    Line of the day. Great stuff. I live in San Diego and am willing to bet there's more of a home team homage in a tiny part of Petco Park than there is in all of Citi Field.

  • Anonymous

    Perfect Greg. Just perfect.
    My grandfather would have approved.

  • Anonymous

    My first year with season tix, they had a retrospective of the 1973 championship season in 2003 and it was great to see most of the guys there. It was Tug's last appearance at Shea (I think he threw out the first pitch)….I went to a corporate event at Citifield and asked Omar what the reaction of the owners was when the backlash of lack of Met-dom was raised in the media and elsewhere. After telling me to talk to dave Howard, he basically said, no one in NY is ever satisfied.

  • Anonymous

    Oh my freaking God, Greg, that was a great read. Nothing I can add to it. Thanks.

  • Anonymous

    You put into eloquent words what so many of us Mets fans feel. Killer last line.
    My co-blogger Fred Coupon put up a funny song about the Mets sung to the tune of “American Pie” here:
    http://sheahey.blogspot.com/2009/07/coupon-cannatar-on-end.html
    Also got a decent post-mortem post up today with a drawing I hope you will find amusing.

  • Anonymous

    really, what explains the arms-length distance the mets front office maintains from the mets' history?
    i cannot figure it out. it's like they have contempt for their own club.
    a small, simple example: there's no shout-out to gil hodges. you want the dodger tie, who better than the manager of the world-champion 1969 mets whose number is retired? since cooperstown seems to have a lock on its door, why NOT make a slightly big deal about the guy?
    was fred wilpon dissed by hodges some long-ago time? or in the possession of some kodachrome negatives? there's really no good reason offered. ever.

  • Anonymous

    Brilliant post, Greg. This should be guerilla-posted on every available inch of Citi Field. This should be what takes up the space on the SNY network. You have said it all and you deserve an answer.

  • Anonymous

    I never even for a second thought the Mets would be so vapid and unprepared to not think to include a team Hall of Fame in their new stadium. If anything I was afraid they'd overdo it or get a few things wrong …. but surely they would do something.
    They don't have the first clue.
    Anyway, now that I'm all worked up I'll be happy to volunteer as Sergeant-at-Arms of the Mets Alternative Historical Association (or whatever clever acronym we can turn that into). Time to fight back.

  • Anonymous

    2013??? Isn't that the 50th Anniversary of the Dodgers winning the 1963 World Series? What do you guys mean there is nothing for them to celebrate for the All-Star Game? The Dodgers beat the Yankees in four games.

  • Anonymous

    “the business side of the club is forever haunted by recurring thoughts that no one intrinsically loves, wants or needs their product. It doesn't stop them from overpricing tickets and creating unnecessary enclaves of exclusivity like the glorified Logezzanine they call the Caesars Club level,”
    HI Greg,
    You're right on target as always. Despite whatever fear they might have had, the Wilpons, knowing how much the fans love the team and that the base kept on coming and coming, found they could increase the costs of tickets, food and parking over the years and get away with it. Hence, Citifield is more a shopping mall than a ballpark and the Mets are not telling fans to sit back and enjoy the game – – they want fans to watch the game as they roam around the park and go to the stores.
    For those who didn't see the replay of the 1971 All-Star Game recently aired on MLB Network, there was an old baseball promo with Curt Gowdy citing baseball was the only form of entertaininment where one could take the family out and have a good time without breaking the bank. The Wilpons saw that fans would actually break their bank if they had to. So blame the fans – they continued opening their wallets while the cost of going to the ballpark began matching that of a weekend at the Jersey Shore.
    Mary Jane and I love the Mets but rising costs limited us to maybe one or two games each of the past few seasons. And we're not going to spend $250 to $300 for only a day at the ballpark today (depending on seat location plus parking, food and that sweatshirt).
    So maybe the WIlpon's nightmare is starting to materialize, however, it's not due to fans no longer loveing the team. It's just that fans finally learned not to love throwing money away. The Wilpons and other owners should take a lesson from Curt if they want to save their product. Otherwise baseball, like football, will be less a spectator sport and more one geared for the television audience.

  • Anonymous

    Outstanding piece of writing Greg, If the Skill Sets had any brains they'd make you the project manager of the Mets Hall of Fame. But we know brains are in short supply in home office

  • Anonymous

    Brilliant.
    I have to admit, I really have not been the same since Castillo made history in June. I find myself watching an inning or two here and there, but rarely the whole game. The preceding Phillies series (not to mention the past 2 seasons) had already put my nervous system on overload, and I just snapped after Luis sent his RSVP to Met Hell (there's still time to turn it around, Castillo). It's been a sad month where the Mets have not been my number one priority, leaving me to wonder if it will be like this forever.
    Then I read this post about how much our clueless ownership regularly pisses on our shoes while pickpocketing our wallets, and it reminds me why I love this team. It's the Mets! It's my team! It's our team! And god dammit, despite everything, we will prevail one day.
    PS–Don't forget Greg, in all fairness, that the Mets have done something really great at Citi Field to promote their history. The only problem with it is that it's about 20 feet off and uses the term–for the first time in recorded history–“pitcher's plate”. Fuckin Mets…

  • Anonymous

    I hate to nitpick, but I believe you omitted the proper modifier for the Grucci Brothers (“world famous”). It may seem trivial, but it's akin to leaving out “reasonable” when discussing facsimile batting helmets.

  • Anonymous

    Good post. You left out one thing in the Metsness protection program – the Shea memorabilia that included some great photos and vinyl hangings from Mets history (you know, the ones that really belong in Citi Field to replace those bare walls). Sad to see that stuff get liquidated on Saturday.
    (shameless plug) see my great photos of the auction here:
    http://rememberingshea.blogspot.com/2009/07/auction-part-1.html

  • Anonymous

    No no no…the reason they don't want to celebrate the 1980s Mets is because of all the alcoholics and drug addicts! That's the real reason and they can't say so because one of those “drug addicts” is in the announcer booth.
    Hmmm. Announcer booth. With two ex-Mets in it. Do any other teams have two former players from their team announcing for them right now? (Only a few even have one.)
    But I agree that basing a decision to sack OTG for good based on ticket sales coming off a 100-loss season 15 years ago makes no sense at all. If in fact that's the actual reason and it's not just a bunch of political BS and fear of seeming all alter-kockerish in front of the kids, which seems a lot more likely.
    FWIW, there is very little Dodger memorabilia of any kind on display at Dodger Stadium. They had, what, 45 years to set up some kind of standing tribute to Robinson at that stadium where most fans could see it easily, and they didn't do it? No OTGs there either since 1995. The Angels (whose history more strongly resembles the Mets') don't have 'em either.
    In fact, are there teams besides the Yankees who have them every year? I get the feeling that MLB in general would rather forget about Grandpa's favorite players, other than hauling them out during All-Star games. Why they bother to put on this we're-too-cool-for-school display, I have no idea. The kids who care like the game already; the kids who don't care aren't going to start caring just because we put on loud music and hide all the geezers.

  • Anonymous

    Paul, I think you hit it more or less on the head. They'll make it a salute to All-Star pitching (because Citi Field will still be waiting for its 200th home run by then) and instead of building up to Tom Seaver, they'll make it about Sandy Koufax. That he wasn't a Met…well, that's literally where we came in.

  • Anonymous

    I'm mortified. For committing such an egregious oversight, I'm stuck with the non-revised yearbook straight to the end of the year. No Angel Berroa. No Cory Sullivan. And no Pepe Mangual.

  • Anonymous

    The Dodgers have regularly done clever things like festoon their outfield fences with the faces of their legends. They don't seem ashamed.
    Not a lot of full-blown OTDs out there, but this is New York, where there is a tradition. Not just the Yankees' tradition but what was the Mets' tradition. The Harazinian mindset is probably worse than the actual lack of respect for the history.
    Bring out the geezers!

  • Anonymous

    And again I am reminded why this is the Chateu Latour of Mets blogs.
    Splendid!

  • Anonymous

    Great post.
    At this rate I think we're going to see “Part-Timers Day” before we see Old-Timers Day — At this point, I envision the team just keeping all of its injured players on the DL until they are all ready to return, and then we're going to see three innings of Reyes, Delgado and Beltran vs. Cora, Murphy and Pagan.

  • Anonymous

    “I'm mortified. For committing such an egregious oversight, I'm stuck with the non-revised yearbook straight to the end of the year. No Angel Berroa. No Cory Sullivan. And no Pepe Mangual.”
    Greg,
    There is no more such a thing as a “revised” Met Yearbook. Another cost-saving decision by the Wilpons? Heck, in 1963, the Mets had at least four published, including two “final” revised editions.

  • Anonymous

    There isn't as a rule, of course, but there was last year. The Mets issued a final-ever Shea yearbook (with roster revisions) for the final week of the season to lure folks like myself. They also created a Final Week program that was trumped by a Final Day program, the latter of which they didn't print up enough copies.
    Not to pile on, but yearbooks haven't been the same since Dairylea fell out as a sponsor.

  • Anonymous

    SELL! THIS! TEAM! NOW!
    This ownership group is even more clueless than the mid-'70's Maras. They've gone beyond being “out of touch” with their fan base to open contempt for it.
    Mark Cuban, COME ON DOWN!

  • Anonymous

    Given your example, Charlie, we're going to Pasadena in about ten years, so there's hope yet.
    Now to hire George Young and Bill Parcells and draft Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor…

  • Anonymous

    Actually, “going to Pasadena” would be a Wilponic dream: the Mets could become a Dodgers farm team…
    You know, I was home sick yesterday — I had a (admittedly self-diagnosed) bizarre bout of vertigo. It was kind of like that Underdog episode: “He feels fine when he sits down, but when he stands up, things spin around!” Anyway, I figured that under these cricumstances, driving 80 mile round trip to work wouldn't be the best idea. So I stayed home.
    With time on my hands and a large screen HDTV at my disposal, I popped in the DVD of 1986 NLCS Game #6 & watched the whole thing, from strike 1 to Mookie to Keith Jackson's sign off. By the time it was finished, I felt healthy again.
    Then I put on the “real” game & got depressed…

  • Anonymous

    Breaking News: Mets' COO Jeff Wilpon responds to front office chaos with new Yolato stand adjacent to Pepsi Party Porch.

  • Anonymous

    Actually, the proper response would've been “Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory stand”
    Of course, they should have that anyway. Actually, the Pepsi Porch needs an exit on the OF side anyway, to get to Taste of the City easier. How about hollowing out the old apple for a pool, and a diving board? the 2009 Mets experience! Plummet from the porch!

  • Anonymous

    No one in NY is ever satisfied…he's right. The Mets have given us exciting, pulse-pounding pennant race action right down to the final day for two years running. And still we complain.

  • Anonymous

    Earlier today, I started a FaceBook Group called “Mark Cuban Should Buy The New York Mets”

  • Anonymous

    In the suite level, there's Met stuff EVERYWHERE…not some much where the commoners sit.

  • Anonymous

    They also “sold out” of Opening Night (bleech) programs….what a friggin mess of a franchise.

  • […] during their 40th anniversary celebration in August.” This is the same organization that claimed fans don’t care about items like Old Timers Day. Don’t listen to what we said; listen […]