It’s the time of the year meant for looking ahead. To Carson Benge not being Don Bosch. To Vidal Bruján and Mike Tauchman potentially making themselves more useful than Bill Pecota. To Nolan McLean overcoming vertigo-like symptoms [1] so he can pitch in the WBC, then not getting hurt in the WBC (which goes for all Mets in the WBC). To the holdover veteran pitchers turning around their second-half miseries from last summer. To the winter imports tasked with manning corner infield positions learning where to stand and when to bend. Some of the advice Bo Bichette told SNY’s Michelle Margaux that he received from accomplished third basemen like Matt Chapman and Nolan Arenado included, “Make it your own. Get low. Don’t make it too complicated. Just be an athlete.”
For us, the perennial advice isn’t too complicated, either. Just be a fan, especially come March. It’s the time of the year when we prefer to get high. On baseball. On hope. On history, despite the need to look forward, because why would we be here, looking ahead, if we weren’t so informed by what’s piled up behind us?
Piling up in Flushing last year, according to Newsday’s perusal of a “recent final disclosure filed by the club,” was more than $300 million in ballpark revenue [2]. I didn’t think I’d bought that many pretzels, but they were on discount most every Tuesday. I wasn’t alone in getting my five bucks’ worth. Record Citi Field attendance filled the ballpark to be let down by the baseball in 2025, if happily distracted by the chance to get away from life. More than $150 million in ticket sales. More than $50 million in ad revenue. Close to $40 million worth of concessions. Plus a whole lot in suites and such, along with plenty for parking. I wouldn’t know about the last one since I take the train. I also wouldn’t know if the reported total of $311.4 million is a lot relative to what it normally is, but Newsday says it really is — 19.4% greater than what the Mets took in during 2024. The 2025 bottom line reaped the rewards of the excitement generated in 2024. Any circumspection that infiltrates our aspirations to be high on baseball hope in 2026 may be a byproduct of not being thrilled by how 2025 came apart. One way or another, history is always driving us.
The Mets issued a statement to Newsday that “the organization remains focused first and foremost on delivering he best fan experience in baseball, continually looking for ways, from food and beverage to retail, in-game entertainment and beyond to ensure a top-tier experience at Citi Field.” It doesn’t mention better play on the field, but we’ll take that as a baked-in goal of every year. We’ll also acknowledge that the entire package, whether it’s improving on an 83-win campaign or continuing the largesse of $5 Tuesdays [3], ensuring that once a week pretzels and a few other staples will remain only marginally rather than comically overpriced, represents a better state of affairs to what Jack Lang reported in the Daily News 47 years ago this month:
“The prospects of the Mets having a financially successful season in 1979 are remote. Because they do not have a team to sell, Mets’ ticket sales are down. Even radio-TV sponsors are tough to come by. Already the number of TV games has been cut by about 20 games this year and there is a chance some games will not heard over the radio. All of this adds up to another financially disastrous season…one which could result in the Payson family selling the club by October, the end of the corporation’s fiscal year.”
Which, besides Lee Mazzilli’s quest to keep his average above .300, became our primary rooting interest as that year unfolded.
One of the losses that touched a historical nerve [4] during this past Mets’ offseason was the passing in October of Lorinda de Roulet [5], who ran the organization for one season, perhaps its roughest season ever, 1979. As anybody who constituted any fraction of the 788,905 fans who passed through Shea Stadium’s turnstiles as a paying customer in 1979 will attest, the happiest day of the de Roulet stewardship — itself the end result of the lack of an effective succession plan following the death of her mother Joan Payson in 1975 — was when it ended. Linda, as those who knew he called her during her 95 years on the planet, may have truly wanted the best for the Mets when she succeeded the reviled M. Donald Grant as board chairman, but the resources simply weren’t there. Linda’s father Charles was not a baseball fan the way Joan was (and was said to pull for the Red Sox when he rooted at all), but he did control a vast majority of Mets stock. Lang informed us in the News during the Spring his daughter took charge that Charles had “already tightened the purse strings by refusing to pour any more of family money into a losing operation. […] At the age of 80, he sees no future in it.”
Thus, when the club was sold to the group headed by Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon in January 1980 (much as was the case when the club was sold by the Wilpons to Steve Cohen in November 2020), a world of conceivable possibilities opened up. After three straight seasons of last-place finishes witnessed in person by ever fewer Metsochists, there was finally a future to all this, soon, if not immediately. Whereas the de Roulet ownership couldn’t spend, the new regime loomed as a legitimate contender to sign free agents in the years ahead. The years ahead represented a reasonable timeline, as new chief operating officer Wilpon promised to spend “whatever is necessary to see a World Series flag flying over Shea Stadium in the ’80s.” The year ahead singular would be a tougher task to make better, as most of the plum free agent names were already off the market by the time the sale of the team went through. Then again, two-time National League MVP Joe Morgan, one of the all-time great second basemen, coming off his eighth consecutive All-Star selection, remained available.
While the Mets were now able to go after a player of Morgan’s stature, it didn’t mean they would take a late-career flyer on the surefire Hall of Famer. Manager Joe Torre told Bill Madden in the Daily News, “The future of this ballclub is Taveras and Flynn. I know Joe Morgan can hit, but unless he could play third base or somewhere else for us, I don’t know if he could help us.”
A statement of such a definitive nature regarding the Metsian future indicates it might not have been de Roulet’s leadership that was the problem with those Mets, but in the context of the moment, Torre’s take wasn’t as ludicrous as the intervening decades make it sound. Second baseman Doug Flynn was a terrific fielder who somehow drove in 61 runs while batting eighth every day for a cellar-dweller in 1979, while shortstop Frank Taveras came over from the Pirates in April and proceeded to shatter the Mets’ single-season stolen base mark, swiping 42 bags. From the perspective of building a ballclub during that era, you could view your middle infield as a foundational block, add the ability to spend to shore up other positions, and, presto chango, the future of the Mets fan imagination, à la Taveras runs wild!
The actual future? It saw Frank Cashen hired as general manager in February of 1980, and, once the 1981 season ended, Cashen ridding himself of Torre, Flynn, and Taveras before the throngs in Times Square could count down to 1982. “You’ve heard about incentive clauses for ballplayers, but here’s a new twist,” Jack Lang wrote in The Sporting News during Christmas week. “Cashen offered a pair of Gucci loafers to whichever one of his aides managed to complete a deal for Frank Taveras. The winner has not been announced, but Taveras is gone.”
Perspectives in baseball change, just like calendars change, and it can happen quicker than you’d suspect. For example, it’s suddenly March, not just for baseball, but for everything. How did it get to be March? In baseball terms, how is every player who needs to be somewhere not yet somewhere? With not quite three weeks to go before Opening Day, it’s getting late early within the leagues of grapefruits and cacti, though one supposes it’s not too late until it is. A mere two years ago, J.D. Martinez waited until there was about a week to go to come to terms with the New York Mets. He wasn’t available to play until late April, but there was time enough to do a deal and make an impact.
Still, better to get on a team before teams make other plans. Many are, even if took them well into February to get somewhere. Like free agent Starling Marte, who has signed on with the Royals. Maybe we won’t miss Starling in the sense that he’s going to be as productive for Kansas City as he was for us circa 2022, but he was an endearing Met for four seasons, and you always miss that. Like Old Friend™ Michael Conforto, who has signed on with the Cubs. We’ve had a bunch of years to stop missing Michael, and I’ve rarely thought how much better off the post-2021 Mets lineup would be with his bat within it, but I see his name and I think of a hot Met prospect who came up to herald a pennant drive in 2015 and caught fire to spark a playoff push (albeit one that fell short) in 2019. I watch him occasionally go deep on a Mets Classic and wonder how he never quite became what we projected he would. Good for Michael catching on somewhere, even, as with Starling in K.C., if it’s with a team we’re historically predisposed to not like. Since we need old enemies to balance out our Old Friends, it’s perversely reassuring to know Rhys Hoskins found a deal in Cleveland. He’s not Chase Utley in the bottom of the barrel of our esteem, but he’s the closest thing I can think of in terms of active major leaguers I could fall out of bed in the dead of winter and instinctively start booing, mostly from that episode of him feigning boo-hooing [6] at Citi Field two years ago.
Juan Lagares announced his retirement in February. I saw Juan Lagares play in last season’s Mets Alumni Classic, a pretty good indicator that he was not otherwise occupied by the rigors of a baseball playing schedule from late March to late September. Relatively few players seem to come right out and say “I’m done playing” the moment they’ve registered their final statistic on Baseball-Reference’s overview page. Only the elite inspire retirement tours. Only the supremely self-assured know immediately when one part of their life is ready to give way to another. Everybody else presumably needs time to weigh opportunities or the lack thereof. For example, the aforementioned J.D. Martinez hasn’t swung a bat for the record since Game Four of the 2024 NLCS, a postseason when he shared designated hitter duties with the currently unsigned Jesse Winker. Said he planned to play in 2025 last Spring, but apparently had no takers. Competed in something called a Celebrity Pickleball Showdown [7] in the fall (implying he can still hit some). He’s played no baseball that we know of, but J.D., 38, isn’t retired from the game until he says he is, whether or not the game has decided it has moved on from him.
J.D. the DH never did anything with a glove when he was a Met. Conversely, Juan did wonders with one from 2013 into 2020. He then took his equipment to the L.A. Angels for a couple of years, the last of them in 2022. Every winter since then, the keeper of the glove where extra-base hits went to die plied his craft for the Aguilas Cibaeñas in the Dominican. Our most recent Gold Glove winner (2014, back when run prevention was simply called defense) decided to wait until his 37th birthday approached to make it official that he was done for all seasons.
Winter ball, we on the mainland might want to remind ourselves, is some kind of ball. I’ve been reading How Life Imitates the World Series [8] by Tom Boswell, the Washington Post’s legendary baseball columnist (back when the Post covered sports), and one of the stops Boz makes along his long-ago journey is Puerto Rico’s winter league, where the author finds Ruben Gomez winding down his pitching career. If you’re like me, you might recognize Gomez from the New York Giants of the 1950s, a key component of the rotation that shut down the Indians in the 1954 World Series. What I didn’t know anything about was the length of Ruben’s career between major league calendars. Per his SABR bio [9], Gomez pitched in the Puerto Rican Winter League for 29 seasons. By the late 1970s, when he wasn’t engaged in his passion of building cars “from the frame up, selling some, renting others, but always keeping the fastest for himself,” he was, in the neighborhood of 50 years old, pitching for Vaqueros de Bayamon, or the Bayamon Cowboys. The experienced righty didn’t concern himself too much with numbers, evidenced by his predilection for disregarding speed limits.
“Toward sundown,” Boswell wrote in his 1982 collection, “he heads for the ballpark, negotiating the deserted beachside highway at 120 miles per hour. […] If the police stop him, Gomez simply blurts, ‘I am hurrying to my wife.’ Only once did a policia dare to tell the island’s venerable celebrity, ‘Señor Gomez, all of Puerto Rico knows that your wife died seven years ago.’
“‘In that case,’ said Gomez, switching to his changeup, ‘I’m going to the cemetery.’”
Still revealing a pulse of sorts seventeen years since it was torn down is the very same facility few were paying to enter amid the reign of Linda de Roulet. Once the American League champion Toronto Blue Jays and 41-year-old Max Scherzer agreed to continue their professional relationship, it guaranteed (good health willing) that the 2026 Major League Baseball season will include a player who played at Shea Stadium. Without dismissing any of his 42 regular-season starts as a Met, including the one that clinched us a playoff spot in 2022, this may turn out to be Scherzer’s defining Met legacy. Three others who earned Shea stripes pitched during 2025, but each of them — Clayton Kershaw, David Robertson, and Rich Hill — has confirmed some version of retirement from baseball. Kershaw is with Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, but is otherwise inactive. Scherzer, like Kershaw, first came up in Shea’s last year, 2008. He got into a game there that June when he was a Diamondback (a helluva game [10] it was). Max went a long way from there. Shea didn’t, but now it gets to maintain a glimmer of existence, as Scherzer nails down his status as this generation’s Pete Rose. In 1986, Rose became the last active player who could say he played at the Polo Grounds, outlasting Rusty Staub, whose last game was in 1985, and Joe Morgan, whose baseball-playing future reached its limit in 1984 (two years beyond Taveras’s, if a year shy of Flynn’s).
Even as the WBC supplants MLB on Spring’s center stage for a spell, a couple of other acronyms deserve a moment in the March sun. One is HBP, which should never happen to anybody, unless it’s the gentlest of sleeve-brushing hit-by-pitches taken for the team with the bases loaded. HBPs can be sore subjects in more ways than one. Yes, Ruben Gomez was an icon of winter ball longevity, and he surely went seven-and-a-third in defeating Cleveland in Game Three of the ’54 Fall Classic, but if his name rings a resonant bell at all, it’s likely from his encounter with Joe Adcock of the Milwaukee Braves in 1956. An Associated Press account detailed the incident:
“A howling crowd of 33,239 saw one of baseball’s wildest scenes last night as the Giants’ Ruben Gomez hit Joe Adcock twice with a ball — once as Adcock charged the mound — and then bolted like a gunshy rabbit for his dugout, the fiery angry Braves’ slugger in hot pursuit.”
An inside pitch had nicked Adcock’s right wrist. Words were exchanged as the batter headed to first before Adcock redirected his route toward the mound. “Gomez, who by this time had a new ball,” the AP reported, “flung it at the onrushing Adcock about 25 feet way, and hit Joe on the left thigh. The 175-pound pitcher then turned tail and raced for all he was worth — his back hunched over as if he expected the worst — for the Giant dugout. The 210-pound Adcock was right behind.” Umpires and police officers got involved. Both players were “escorted from the game”. Joe had endured his share of injuries from being hit, which might explain some of the action and reaction. It may not have been a good look for Ruben to evade the batter, but survival skills clearly served the righty well. Remember, this is a man who was still pitching somewhere more than twenty years later.
“What would you have done with that big coming at you?” reasoned Giants manager Bill Rigney. “Probably run, too.”
A Mets fan who has witnessed one too many HBPs in recent years might have emotionally sided with Adcock. We’ve been on the wrong end of a lot of hit-by-pitches going back a while. We lost Marte for the balance of September on a hit-by-pitch as we fought to hold on to the 2022 division title that slipped away. Starling wasn’t the only one to collect bruises in recent Met lineups. From 2018 through 2025, there’s been at least one Met to finish in the Top Ten of the National League’s hit-by-pitch leaders. For that matter, the three longest-tenured position players the Mets traded or let leave as the Hot Stove burned — Pete Alonso, Brandon Nimmo, and Jeff McNeil — are Nos. 1, 2, and 3 on the franchise’s all-time HBP leaderboard. Francisco Lindor suddenly takes over as the active team leader, with 55, many bruises from Pete’s 100, Brandon’s 87, and Jeff’s 85.
I’d say that’s not a record meant to be broken, but if that was true, Ron Hunt, whose 41 HBPs were the Met standard from the 1960s until the 2010s (and remains lodged within the Top Ten), would still have it.
One acronymic distinction that appears bound to change hands in 2026, particularly as March marches on, is that of LAMSA. Unlike HBP, you won’t find LAMSA listed on BB-Ref. LAMSA is a FAFIF exclusive, denoting Longest Ago Met Still Active. We’ve been tracking LAMSA matters so long that when Faith and Fear in Flushing began thinking about it [11], we were just realizing the LAMSA crown sat on the head of a very much active Jeff Kent, the same Jeff Kent who will be going into the Hall of Fame this summer alongside Carlos Beltran, who will be going into the Hall of Fame this summer with a Mets cap if no trace of a LAMSA crown on his head.
Beltran, a Met for the first time in 2005, played for ages, until 2017. But that never won him LAMSA status, nor its companion honor, Last Met Standing. Whereas LAMSA tells us what onetime New York Met has lasted the longest in the majors from his Metropolitan start date forward at any given moment, Last Met Standing speaks to a player being the last of his chronological breed to still be playing. The last 1962 Met? Ed Kranepool. The last 1963 Met? Ed Kranepool. The last 1964 Met? Ed Kranepool. It’s easy enough to monitor, even when the answer stops being Ed Kranepool. (Ed’s 1965 Mets teammate Tug McGraw outlasted him in the majors by five years.)
We haven’t had to open the LAMSA or Last Met Standing books since Spring Training in 2023, which was when one title was shifted and another was confirmed. Joe Smith, the last of the Shea Mets, from 2008, pitched his last. So did Darren O’Day. O’Day came to the Mets in 2009 and went almost as quickly, but no Met fro the first Citi season outlasted him on the MLB scene, and boy did he stick around elsewhere. Once Smith’s and O’Days respective careers lacked any trace of adhesion, that left Justin Turner, a Met from 2010 to 2013, as the Longest Ago Met Still Active overall, and the Last Met Standing from 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Justin Turner, through 2025, had been around forever. From a utilityman for us to his star years with the Dodgers, spanning 2014 through 2022, to his veteran pickup incarnation. The Red Sox signed him. The Blue Jays traded for him. The Mariners signed him. The Cubs signed him. That kept him going in 2023, 2024, and 2025. It’s 2026. It’s March. He’s 41. Justin Turner is unsigned.
Meaning? Well, from a LAMSA standpoint, the Longest Ago Met Still Active when the 2026 season begins projects to be Phillie ace Zack Wheeler, though with something of an asterisk, as Wheeler — Met debut June 18, 2013 — is sitting on the injured list until at least a couple of weeks past Opening Day. That counts as active if not totally active, but it’s enough to satisfy LAMSA’s parameters…though, if we’re being picky, the next longest-ago Met who is slated to being the season on a major league roster is Angels catcher Travis d’Arnaud, the quintessential Old Friend™ whose Met debut came on August 17, 2013, two months after Zack’s and eleven days after that of Wilmer Flores, who is in the same boat as Justin Turner, Jesse Winker and anybody else stranded aboard the S.S. Currently Unsigned. The upside of free agency is you can sign anywhere you like. The downside is you have to like the deal you’re being offered, assuming you’re being offered one. Flores has received feelers of the minor league variety. He’s been a major leaguer since his 22nd birthday, August 6, 2013, and would prefer a guarantee of something at that level. The erstwhile Giant recently declared to the San Francisco Chronicle, “I’m not done playing. I’m just waiting.”
And we’re just waiting to find out who the Last Met Standing from 2013 will be. Could be Wheeler. Could be d’Arnaud. Could still be Flores, because who are we to not believe Wilmer? They were all Mets in 2014 as well, as were active major leaguers Rafael Montero and Jacob deGrom. Wheeler was on what then known as the DL in 2015, but all among Flores, d’Arnaud, Montero, deGrom, Steven Matz, and hot prospect Michael Conforto played as Mets then, that NL championship season which now sits more than a decade in the past. Weren’t they all pretty young together not so long ago?
Like Carly Simon right around the same time the Mets last won a world championship, we know nothing stays the same. But we’re willing to play the game. Baseball is coming around again [12]. Comfort from the familiar. Anticipation for what’s unknown. Carly mentioned anticipation [13], too, along the way, and she used to get rides to Ebbets Field from her Stamford neighbor Jackie Robinson [14]. That must have been something to look forward to, huh?
LONGEST AGO MET STILL ACTIVE: Chronology
• Felix Mantilla, debuted as a Met, 4/11/1962; last game in the major leagues, 10/2/1966
• Al Jackson, 4/14/1962; 9/26/1969
• Chris Cannizzaro, 4/14/1962*; 9/28/1974
• Ed Kranepool, 9/22/1962; 9/30/1979
• Tug McGraw, 4/18/1965; 9/25/1984
• Nolan Ryan, 9/11/1966; 9/22/1993
• Jesse Orosco, 4/5/1979; 9/27/2003
• John Franco, 4/11/1990; 7/1/2005
• Jeff Kent, 8/28/1992; 9/27/2008
• Jason Isringhausen**, 7/17/1995; 9/19/2012
• Octavio Dotel, 6/26/1999; 4/19/2013
• Bruce Chen, 8/1/2001; 5/15/2015
• Jose Reyes, 6/10/2003; 9/30/2018
• Oliver Perez***, 8/26/2006; 4/24/2022
• Joe Smith*** 4/1/2007; 8/2/2022
• Justin Turner 7/16/2010; 10/6/2025 (41 and currently unsigned)
• Zack Wheeler 6/18/2013; still active (will start 2026 on IL)
*Cannizzaro was Jackson’s catcher on April 14, 1962, at the Polo Grounds, so for LAMSA purposes, he debuted as a Met after his pitcher.
**During Isringhausen’s extensive injury rehabilitation period between 6/13/2009 and 4/11/2011, Paul Byrd (debuted as a Met on 7/28/1995); Jay Payton (9/1/1998); and Melvin Mora (5/30/1999) could each temporarily lay claim to LAMSA status, but Izzy ultimately outlasted them all.
*** Perez appeared to have finished his MLB career on 4/22/2021, leaving Joe Smith — whose Met debut was 4/1/2007 — as the LAMSA for the rest of the 2021 season. Perez returned to the majors on 4/7/2022, resuming his LAMSA reign, ultimately rendering Smith’s initial LAMSA status as interim.
LAST MET STANDING: 1962-2012
1962-1964: Ed Kranepool (final MLB game: 9/30/1979)
1965: Tug McGraw (9/25/1984)
1966: Nolan Ryan (9/22/1993)
1967: Tom Seaver (9/19/1986)
1968-1971: Nolan Ryan (9/22/1993)
1972-1974: Tom Seaver (9/19/1986)
1975: Dave Kingman (10/5/1986)
1976-1977: Lee Mazzilli (10/7/1989)
1978: Alex Treviño (9/30/1990)
1979: Jesse Orosco (9/27/2003)
1980: Hubie Brooks (7/2/1994)
1981-1987: Jesse Orosco (9/27/2003)
1988-1989: David Cone (5/28/2003)
1990-1991: John Franco (7/1/2005)
1992-1994: Jeff Kent (9/27/2008)
1995-1997: Jason Isringhausen (9/19/2012)
1998: Jay Payton (10/3/2010)
1999: Octavio Dotel (4/19/2013)
2000: Melvin Mora (6/29/2011)
2001-2002: Bruce Chen (5/15/2015)
2003-2005: Jose Reyes (9/30/2018)
2006: Oliver Perez (4/24/2022)
2007-2008: Joe Smith (8/2/2022)
2009: Darren O’Day (7/11/2022)
2010-2012: Justin Turner (10/6/2025; 41 and currently unsigned)
As of Spring Training 2026, two 2013 Mets — Zack Wheeler and Travis d’Arnaud — remain active, while a third, Wilmer Flores, seeks his next contract)