Offseason’s greetings everyone!
Hope you enjoyed the World Series, and aren’t too anxious yet about who will be next to employ Pete Alonso [1], Edwin Diaz [2] or both. There’ll be time for that, promise.
[3]For now, something to fill an hour very pleasantly: Welcome, Josh Levin, to the Wilbur Huckle Appreciation Society!
Twelve years ago — the night Dom Smith got drafted, as it happened — I wrote a little post [4] about early Mets farmhand Wilbur Huckle, a pair of strange campaign buttons I’d run across, and the unlikely story of a cult hero who never quite got the call.
Levin found a Huckle button in a Kensington, Md., antique store, and had a lot of the same questions I did. But unlike me, he answered them — and those answers add up to a fascinating tour through American pop culture, political theater, and of course Mets history. Before you come out of the Huckle rabbit hole, you’ll have heard from Ron Swoboda [5], Rod Gaspar [6] and from Huckle himself — who may never have been an official big-league ballplayer but sounds like he’s lived a pretty wonderful life.
This is the inaugural episode of Levin’s new podcast series Replay Booth [7], and if the premiere is any indication, we’re all in for a treat. To which I’ll add my own little afterword: A while back, using an old Topps photo unearthed and shared by Keith Olbermann, I made a custom ’65 Huckle. (Which of course recognizes his Metropolitan Party candidacy in the back bio.)
It’s not a card that ever existed, just one that should have.