Naming Scores and Scoring Names

I hope SNY, having sat Jose Reyes in the studio co-anchor chair next to Gary Apple this weekend, never gives our old shortstop any “how to be on TV” lessons, because he’s wonderful as is. On the postgame show Friday night, following the Mets’ 9-1 loss in Pittsburgh, Apple asked Reyes about falling victim to Mitch Keller, a pitcher who came into the game on a ten-game losing streak. Jose’s answer was, in essence, that when he was a player, he and his teammates would be licking their chops to face a pitcher doing so badly. No “every athlete is elite and can compete on any given day” or “Keller is really a much better pitcher than his numbers would indicate” rationalizing. Jose’s message, if I heard it correctly, was the Mets had no business getting shut down by somebody dragging a 1-10 record around.

The same would go for losing to the Pirates, the team that had been 32-50. They’re now 33-50. Against the Mets, they appeared transposed and transformed. The Mets? Behind their heretofore most reliable starter David Peterson, they appeared adrift. The only saving grace to their performance was Blade Tidwell returning from the minors to take Griffin Canning’s place after Canning went down with what has been diagnosed as a ruptured left Achilles and pick up all the innings Peterson couldn’t finish. Blade (3.1 IP, 4 ER) wasn’t any more effective than David (4.2 IP, 5 ER), but he kept the bullpen, including fresh callup Colin Poche, rested. This team always needs fresh bullpen, same as it can use fresh perspectives like those Reyes offered.

The freshest thing in the world on April 23, 1962, was a 9-1 Mets game in Pittsburgh. It was the first win the Mets ever had. Yes, the Mets were once capable of dropping the Pirates by the same score they had dropped on them Friday night. One would guess the 10-0 Pirates of yore, and anybody covering that game for Bucco-coded media, licked their chops aplenty as the sight of the 0-9 Mets. The 0-9 Mets loomed as one big Mitch Keller. The 1962 Pirates had no business getting shut down by some team dragging an 0-9 record around.

But they did, slipping to 10-1 as the Mets rose to 1-9, and even though they managed a dollop of revenge sixty-three years later by flipping the score back on us, it will always stand as the first positive milestone in franchise history. We’ll take a milestone over a millstone any day. And we’ll use any excuse to invoke 1962 if we can. We’d rather do it because “wow, the 2025 sure didn’t play like the 1962 Mets on Friday,” but we’ll take what we can get.

Selective interpretation of results notwithstanding, the 2025 Mets, at 48-35, are a better team through 83 games than the 1962 Mets were through nine or even ten games. Other than occasionally posting an evocative score, the 2025/1962 comparisons should be scant. Yet there is one thing the first and most recent editions of this ballclub have in common:

Really excellent names.

Here in 2025, we have or have had…

One Genesis (beginning anew with the Pirates now)
One Luisangel
One Dedniel
One Huascar
One Tylor
One Minter
One Winker
One Zuber
An Azocar
An Adcock
A Devenski
A Jankowski
A Senga
A Senger
A Stanek
A Kranick (wherefore art thou Joe Panik?)
A Siri who hasn’t answered any queries since early April
Blade Tidwell
Dicky Lovelady (sadly opting for free agency following his humorless designation for assignment)
And, hanging by the bullpen telephone, one call away, Colin Poche

Back in 1962, we had…

One Roadblock
One Choo Choo
One Hot Rod
One Marvelous Marv
One Throneberry (double-dipping, but we’ll allow it)
One Butterball (Bob Botz, cut in Spring Training, but we’ll also allow it)
Two Bob Millers (one known internally as Nelson, neither known as Butterball)
Two Sammys (one a Taylor, one a Drake)
Two Craigs (one whose last name came first, one who was vice-versa)
Elio Evaristo Chacon
Edward Emil Kranepool
Christopher John Cannizzaro
Clement Walter Labine
Donald William Zimmer, a.k.a. Zip, Zim, and Popeye
(Bill “Spaceman” Lee hung “The Gerbil” on Don Zimmer later)
Myron Nathan Ginsberg, better known as Joe
Joseph Benjamin Pignatano, eventually known as Piggy

And, best of all, Vinegar Bend Mizell, whose given name was Wilmer David Mizell, but Baseball-Reference doesn’t even bother with that — he’s Vinegar Bend in their listings, because if you’ve got a Vinegar Bend Mizell on top of a Sherman “Roadblock” Jones, a Clarence “Choo Choo” Coleman, a Roderick “Hot Rod” Kanehl, and a Marvelous Marvin Eugene Throneberry (M.E.T.), hiding it would earn you a demerit.

Oh, and the 1962 Mets had John DeMerit. DeMerit, the 19th Met overall, is still around, one of seven survivors from that first inimitably Marvelous season. Let the 2025 Mets rack up 9-1 scores in the wrong direction. Let the 2025 Rockies rack up immeasurable losses. We have the Originals. We always will.

Herrscher from 1962 holds court in 2025 (photo courtesy of Dirk Lammers).

DeMerit is joined on the Mets Alumni active roster — if not the itinerary for this September’s Mets Alumni Classic Game — by Rick Herrscherr, who’s been holding court this weekend at the national SABR convention in Dallas; Cliff Cook; Jim Marshall; Craig Anderson; Galen Cisco; and Jay Hook. Howie Kussoy recently caught up with most of these fellas in a terrific story in the Post. These fellas have been telling terrific stories since 1962. The tenor can’t help but have changed with the passage of time.

“We’re at that age, so many have passed away,” Hook, the winning pitcher in that 9-1 decision of so many April 23s ago, reflected. Jay went the distance then, just as he’s going the distance these days. “After the pope passed away, we were watching TV and they were saying the pope was born in December 1936. I turned to my wife and said, ‘Hey, I was born in November 1936.’”

In 1962, that made you practically a kid. In 2025, that makes you, well, someone with quite a memory to mine. Kussoy asked Cisco what it was all like to be one among that first batch of New York Mets.

The Mets Alumni Classic will have team Shea Stadium face off versus Team Citi Field. What’s left of Team Polo Grounds wins simply by sticking around.

“It was the perfect time for a new club to step in because they were hungry for National League baseball again,” the pitcher said. “They were such great fans. They loved their Mets. Whenever we’d win a game, the fans would go nuts. They didn’t expect you to win two of three. If you got one, they were satisfied.”

Our expectations have risen since. But win today, and we’ll be satisfied until tomorrow.