The 2010 Mets are a temporary condition. Mets fandom, however, is a lifetime proposition. Some dispatches from around Metsopotamia, most of them showing us again that blue and orange waters run deep.
• Faith and Fear reader Tim Hanley wrote in to let us know he and his home movie of Ron Swoboda’s Game Four catch in the 1969 World Series will be included in the forthcoming Baseball: A New York Love Story, with his segment premiering on Channel 13, Wednesday, September 29, at 10:30 PM and Channel 21 Thursday, September 30, at 12:30 AM. This is part of a multichapter documentary WNET produced in conjunction with Baseball: The Tenth Inning, which itself debuts Tuesday. Ken Burns’s work picks up where his original masterpiece left off, in the early ’90s. If there are 30 seconds devoted to the Mets in these four new hours, I’ll be shocked.
• Faith and Fear reader Sharon Chapman is running diligently toward the New York City Marathon in early November. When not training, she’s been raising funds (with the help of viewers like you) for the Tug McGraw Foundation, collecting nearly $5,400 to date for a most worthy cause. Her most recent warmup race was the Rock ‘n’ Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon and her wristband of choice, naturally, bore the imprint of your favorite blog. To donate to Tug’s foundation and help fight brain tumors, please click here.
Hey guy! The FAFIF tee takes its place alongside the likes of Stan the Man in Cooperstown.
• We can now say the Faith and Fear t-shirt has made it to the Hall of Fame. Inducted? Not quite, but ace illustrator Jim Haines was kind enough to don our garment of choice when visiting Cooperstown this summer and thorough enough to let everyone checking out the ballparks exhibit the URL you all need to know. Note that Jim has stopped off at the Polo Grounds; that was the first home of the Mets in case anybody in Mets ownership needs to be reminded.
The rarely photographed back of our shirt, pictured in front of images rarely invoked at Citi Field.
• There are no actual Elimination shirts, but Randy Medina at the Apple knew there ought to be. And they were a hit! Hopefully the Fourth Place Clinching shirts are right around the corner.
• The Apple’s Elimination apparel line may be pure fiction, but you can actually still get a Gary Sheffield 500th Home Run cap on mets.com for some unfathomable reason along with $19.97 plus shipping and handling. $19.97 for a Gary Sheffield 500th Home Run cap? That’s about $17.97 more than it should be (if it should be at all), but take heart: it’s marked down from $24.99.
• Can’t let the subject of Metwear go by without tipping you off to Metstradamus’s investigative report from an Old Navy location in Queens. Let’s just say it’s a great place to get your hands on a Marlins tee.
• Belated congratulations to savvy Mets GM nominee Howard Megdal who swept all his primaries (including ours) and has since taken the next step of letting the Mets know about it. We look forward to a Megdal administration, both for the wins and the poems we’re sure it will produce.
• One of the greatest World Series games ever has just turned up intact on kinescope, thanks to Bing Crosby’s superstition and meticulousness. You’ve gotta read Richard Sandomir’s story in the Times of how we’ll finally get to see the Yankees lose Game Seven of the 1960 Fall Classic to Bill Mazeroski and the Pirates. How is this Mets-related? C’mon…
• Throughout this mostly desultory year, Matt Silverman has been rebuilding the season-by-season history of New York Mets, even the seasons that were akin to 2010 (spoiler alert: there were a lot of them). Visit Met Silverman and catch up, starting with the most recent installment, a salute to 1982 that far exceeds the 65-97 campaign itself.
• Finally, a reluctant farewell to 1979 Met pitcher Wayne Twitchell, who died too young (62, from cancer) earlier this month in his native Oregon. Aaron Fentress of the Oregonian captures his life before, during and after his time as a major leaguer, most of which he spent with the Phillies. I was on hand for his one and only Met home start, which wasn’t the greatest night for either him or me, but it’s all part of the tapestry. Our condolences go out to his loving family.
As always, thanks for the support. Faith and Fear in Flushing is the greatest blog sponsor a runner could ever want!
I want to thank Greg Prince and “Fear and Faith in Flushing” for their support in alerting Mets fans to my appearance in the upcoming Channel 13 documentary “Baseball: A New York Love Story.” Of course, the entire five-episode series will be worth a watch, along with the Ken Burns documentary “Baseball: The Tenth Inning.”
In the last day or so the producers of the local programs have informed me of last-minute changes in the broadcast dates and times for the series. Even the information posted earlier today on FAFIF in not entirely correct. I now have, what I believe to be the final schedule for my episode “Brushes with History.” That episode premieres on Channel 13 on Wednesday, September 29, at 10:02 PM, and on Channel 21 on Thursday, September 30, at 12:10 AM. (The other showings will be on Channel 13 on October 1, at 3:05 AM, and October 4, at 1:00 AM.) The entire series will be available shortly after broadcast on the Channel 13 website: http://www.thirteen.org/baseball
Some other quick points: Although my story deals with my home movie of the great Ron Swoboda catch during the 1969 World Series, I do not know if the actual film clip will appear in the “Baseball: A New York Love Story” documentary. I have not yet seen how my segment was edited and produced. MLB Properties now owns the rights to that film clip. (Interestingly, the film clip does appear within the Mets Hall of Fame and Museum’s highlight reel of the 1969 World Series.) And the film clip also appears — with an on screen credit (“Courtesy Tim Hanley”) — within the MLB Network program “Baseball’s Seasons: 1969.”
I look forward to watching all of the programs, as I am sure are all baseball fans.
Hi Greg,
Thanks to you and Jason for another great season of FAFIF. Please do not hibernate too often during the long, cold winter of discontent that is sure to follow. Keep that hot stove season hot.
Be assured that I will not be without the orange and blue during those months for I plan to watch or listen to at least one Met game per week, trying to keep them in chronological order from the first ever game in St. Louis in 1962, to the first game played at Shea, onto Tom Terrific’s near perfecto and other wonderful moments from that miracle season, past another miracle with the ball that passed Bill Buckner (I taped that and game 7 myself and have the great channel four local newscasts that followed) to the return after 9/11 and onto the last game MJ and I attended at Shea (recorded on DVR and then preserved forever on DVD), concluding with the pre and post game tearful goodbye to Shea when Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza closing that center field entrance forever.
Heard about the kinescope of the Mazeroski game a few days back. And anyone who doesn’t know the connection between that and the Mets…, well, of course, it’s Ralph Terry (plus that the next game managed by Casey would be with him donning the orange and blue).
Jeez. With all the Wayne Twitchell jokes I’ve made in my life, how did I not know that he was not only from here, but that he still lived here and coached at Wilson High until the year before I moved here? Sorry Wayne, it was nothing personal. RIP.
I need that Gary Sheffield 500th home run cap, to wear when I’m not sporting my Glavine 300 cap.
I hear that in sweatshops throughout Queens they’re waiting for D. Wright to take strike three twice more and push the button on the T-shit commemorating his push past Mets whiff kings Tommie Agee (1970) and King Kongman (1982). Order now for your “Know You’re Wright: All-Time Mets Strikeout King.” You know he’ll get that done…maybe he’s saving it for the home folks. And you thought this was garbage time!
Thanks for the shout out to the annual countdown, Greg. This year has felt a bit like 1982…and 1981…and 1980…
really annoyed, us mets fans only have a few historic memories in the past 18 years that don’t involve the word collapse of course. the main one, in my opinion, being piazza’s september 2001 homerun. burns has an entire section on 9/11. nothing about piazza. instead he focuses on bonds (?) and the yankees. seems like the only teams in baseball from 1992 on were the braves, pirates, mariners, yankees, red sox and giants.
Ken Burns is myopic — he has a Red Sock over one eye.