What I've never gotten about the Ishiis, Zambranos and pitchers who

walk too many batters is the idea that they don't know that they're not

supposed to do that. When erstwhile pitching guru George Bamberger

managed the Mets, he repeated over and over to erratic Pete Falcone,

“throw strikes”.

Pete Falcone didn't look him in the eye and respond, “you don't think I know that?”

Let's not let Falcone off the hook. His rap was that he had a

concentration problem on the mound. Huh? What else did he have to think

about up on that hill? Check

out that tomato in the third row…wonder if I can get in on Helmet

Day…were Elliott Maddox and Phil Mankowski making fun of me during

BP?…sure would be even more tranquil here without the

airplanes…shee-it, that's Bob Horner standing there…focus…FOCUS!

Falcone reportedly got religion late in his Mets tenure, laying off

his inability to get pitches over the plate on “God's will”. According

to Howie Rose, one of his frustrated coaches muttered, “ya think The

Good Lord would mind if he threw a strike now and then?”

Two loose ends from 60-41:

1) The play you're thinking of that signaled 1988's demise and,

perhaps, that of the whole glorious era of triumph and unmet

expectations occurred in the bottom of the sixth of Game Four. Kevin McReynolds

doubled (he and Straw homered back-to-back earlier). Gary Carter, for

the second-to-last time in his career, tripled, knocking out old

nemesis John Tudor. The Mets led 4-2. A sac fly, as you indicated,

would've made all the difference in the world. Tim Teufel, almost

certainly gritting his teeth, struck out. Kevin Elster walked. It's

first and third, one out, Gooden due up. Doc has allowed only one hit

since the first. He's also considered competent with the bat. You make

the call.

Leave Doc in? Ouch. He hits into a double play. Gary Carter dies on

third and the first real twinge of discomfort regarding this series

lodges in my gut. John Fricking Shelby awaits.

But Bobby Ojeda and his hedge trimmers were not a good

sign either. There was no time to trade for Kaz Ishii. The Mets had

Gooden, Darling, Fernandez and Cone but missed Ojeda like crazy in the

NLCS. Despite a losing record, he had five shutouts and an ERA under

three in '88 — or despite five shutouts and an ERA under three, he had

a losing record in '88. Talk about remnants of a bygone era, it was a

line out of 1968. Bobby O pulled off the neat trick of being all

business and a wild man simultaneously. Can you imagine four modern

Mets leaving themselves open to a Cooter's situation?

2) Willie Mays doesn't need a historical mulligan. He was

Willie Mays. I take you to Mabel Katz's third-grade classroom on Monday

morning, May 15, 1972, the day after Willie hit that home run to beat

the Giants. Mrs. Katz was probably 50, but she could have been a

hundred for all I knew. She used old-fashioned slang, and this was as

good a time as any to roll out the barrel of clichés for the newest Met.

“Willie,” Mabel Katz proclaimed, “always comes through in a pinch!”

It's too bad the Mets let Willie slip away in retirement to Magowan and San Francisco. Maybe that's what he preferred. He was so

New York's, though. In 1972, it was not up for debate (except, perhaps,

among the players who lost playing time to a 41-year-old living

legend/Payson pet). Fred Wilpon has built a shrine to the Dodgers in

Coney Island. The least he could give the rest of us is No. 24 on the

left field wall. Unless Kelvin Torve is coming back.

Billy Beane recently told Sports Illustrated that “emotional decisions can be devastating” to managing a payroll an building a roster. With Jason Phillips following Joe McEwing out the door, unemotional decisions kind of hurt, too. Only Mets fans would get a touch misty for a guy who had to rev it up in September to hit .218. But that’s why we’re Mets fans. Phillips joins the Dodgers on the heels of his induction into the Stephanie Prince Hall of Backup Catcher Favorites, which previously enshrined straphanging Brent Mayne and mellifluous Orrrrlando Merrrrcado. As long as we’re on the subject of better halves, we’ve officially reached the upper reaches of The Hundred Greatest Mets Of The First Forty Years.

50. John Milner: On the Tigers or the Reds or someplace where they’ve hit home runs as a matter of course for generations, John Milner would be an afterthought if thought about at all. On the Mets, he was power personified for quite a few seasons. Between 1972 and 1977, he led all Mets in home runs four separate times. Only Strawberry and Piazza, at five apiece, have surpassed this feat. None of Milner’s home-run-king years yielded more than 23 dingers, but he made an impression. His highest total, featuring two grand slams, came in the ’73 pennant year. Three years later, he mashed the ungodly sum of three grand slams, an unheard of salami accumulation in those pre-Ventura days. By the time John was traded to Pittsburgh, he trailed only Endless Eddie Kranepool on the all-time Met homer list. As Hammers went, Milner barely showed, finishing well off the pace set by Henry Aaron and Stanley Burrell, but as mid-’70s Mets went, U Couldn’t Touch Him.

49. Al Weis: Al Weis hit two homers in the 1969 regular season. Both were launched in the heat of summer at Wrigley Field. Al Weis never hit a home run at Shea Stadium before he went deep to lead off the seventh inning of the fifth game of the 1969 World Series, tying the score at three. He never hit another at Shea. Al Weis, in 1,577 at-bats across 800 Major League games, was a career .219 hitter. In five 1969 World Series games, he came to bat eleven times and registered five hits, good for a .455 average. Al Weis knew from timing.

48. Kevin McReynolds: For a couple of years there, Kevin McReynolds had no serious flaws as a ballplayer. The term “five-tool” wasn’t applied to him, but he hit better than .280, homered almost 30 times annually and was good for close to a hundred RBIs. His left-field defense was above average (led the league’s LFs in assists more than once) and he stole 35 bases in 36 attempts in 1987 and 1988. Darryl Strawberry and not Kirk Gibson might have won the NL MVP in ’88 had Darryl’s less famous teammate not siphoned off support — Straw finished a close second, Mac third — but a case could be made that McReynolds was the key man for the Eastern Division champions. Indeed, he hit two homers in the NLCS against the Dodgers. All the tangible evidence applied fairly will reasonably lead one to conclude that Kevin McReynolds was, during the period of  his employment by New York’s National League representative, an all-around very good to excellent ballplayer. But when you get right down to it, he made for a lousy Met.

47. Doug Flynn: “Ground ball to second. Doug Flynn looks it into his glove and fires to first. Side retired.” Not “happy recap,” not “he could’ve hit that in a silo,” not even “brought to you by Manufacturers Hanover Trust” were likely uttered as much by Bob Murphy as the words above were between June 1977 and October 1981 while Doug Flynn anchored the Met infield. No better than the third piece of silver wrung from the Reds for Tom Seaver at the time of the four-for-one debacle, Dougie emerged as a Gold Glove second baseman in 1980. If that doesn’t sound like much, consider what it takes to win a Gold Glove: reputation and repetition. The other National League winners that year were Phil Niekro, Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez, Mike Schmidt, Ozzie Smith, Andre Dawson, Garry Maddox and Dave Winfield. Most of those players were superstars at other facets of the game and all were or would become multiple Gold Glove recipients. Doug Flynn was none of these things. He earned his hardware as a power-free .255 hitter on a virtually invisible team because he was that a good fielder. He missed a solid month’s worth of games when he broke his wrist in August, but was voted the award because he was that good a fielder. A squirming Frank Cashen donned a cowboy hat to celebrate the re-signing of the Kentucky native in the winter of ’81. Flynn, you see, was moonlighting at the Lone Star Cafe, playing in his buddy Greg Austin’s country band. A picture exists of the second baseman inking the new deal on the uptight, upright Cashen’s back. Why would The Bowtie play along with such an uncharacteristic photo-op? Because Doug Flynn was that good a fielder. (On an unrelated note, Flynn mysteriously drove in 61 runs as the eighth-place hitter on the 99-loss Mets of ’79. He wasn’t nearly that good a hitter.)

46. Bobby Ojeda: On a staff that encompassed so many talented, callow, live wires, Bobby Ojeda arrived on the 1986 Mets with a left arm that must’ve been coated in leather. Betcha it had a map of the world etched into it. He was only 28, but the arm was wise beyond its years. Judged as fifth-starter insurance, Ojeda broke through as the dominating Mets’ most dominant starter early on, tossing dead fishes, going 18-5 and posting a 2.55 ERA, the second-best in the league. His presence took enormous pressure off young Gooden, Darling, Fernandez and Aguilera. Long before Art Howe made the phrase a punchline, Bobby O battled. Everything about him said business, never louder than in the two Game Sixes, the tensest baseball matches of their day. In Houston, he gave up three irritating runs in the first, wriggled out of it after a botched squeeze and hung tough for five, giving up nothing more. Against the Red Sox, he held up under the massive strain of an elimination game while competing with Clemens’ no-hit caliber stuff, and kept the Mets in it, 2-2, through six. When asked during the World Series if he had conflicting emotions facing his old club, Bobby Ojeda pointed to the NY on his jacket. This, he said, is who I work for now.

45. Benny Agbayani: If Benny Agbayani played in New York, they’d name a coffee after him. Oh wait, they did: Benny Bean Coffee. It was perfect product placement. He was instant: After a non-descript cameo in ’98 (a cold cup of coffee, if you will), Benny was called up in May ’99 and started hitting right away. He was piping hot: Benny’s ten home runs in his first 73 at-bats established a team record. He was a trendy blend: His decidedly non-jockish demeanor combined with his awesome output turned Benny into BEN-NEE! among the Shea faithful, a folk hero to go. He’d shake you of your morning drowsiness: Live from Tokyo, it was Benny’s grand slam, stroked at around 8:30 AM New York time, that secured the Mets’ first win of the 2000 season. He was stirring: With one out in the bottom of the thirteenth, Benny ended Game Three of the NLDS against the Giants with a deep-brewed shot off Aaron Fultz. He was good to the last drop: Benny’s eighth-inning double plated the run that beat the Yankees in Game Three, halting their bitter World Series winning streak and refreshing, at last, the Mets’ hopes. All in all, Benny Agbayani was no drip.

44. Randy Myers: Leave no doubt behind. Come on in the ninth and throw heat. Radiate fire to entice the fans. Seem a little off-kilter to frighten the opposition. Wear camo. Pose in it for a poster. Pump iron to make the front office nervous. Let a few stories circulate, like how you and your aunt have started your own fan club. See to it that your parents give you a middle name like Kirk so the announcers will refer to you as Randall K. Myers. Compel them to emphasize the K. Don’t nibble. Don’t mess with sliders and curves and offspeed stuff. Announce your presence with authority. Bring that heat. Do it well enough to keep your team in contention when the established closers are flailing. Do it long enough to install yourself as the new closer. Do it right into the playoffs where you should be protecting every ninth-inning lead whether the manager remembers to get you up or not. Don’t get traded for some guy who in the long run may be nominally more reliable but is never as exciting.

43. Donn Clendenon: Steve Renko, Kevin Collins, Bill Carden and Dave Colon turned eternally into trivia answers on June 15, 1969. The question was, “What four young players did the New York Mets trade the very first time they stopped building for the future to concentrate, once and for all, on the present?” Not incidentally, the player who arrived to show the world that Baby Met was no longer a kid was 33-year-old Donn Clendenon. A real veteran. An experienced right-handed bat. A first baseman to split time with Kranepool. When the Mets dealt for Donn, they were a distant second, nine games behind the Cubs. But they decided they had matured enough to behave like adult pennant contenders. Four months and a day later, Clendenon hit his third Series homer, leading the charge that would overtake Baltimore in Game Five and capping the performance that would land him MVP honors. The Mets were fully grown.

42. John Stearns: John Stearns deserved better. No Met who played on so many bad teams — he showed up a bit too late for ’73 and was forced to leave a little shy of ’86 — ever looked like he ached to win so badly. John Stearns played so hard on so many losers that it hurt to watch. He parlayed his effort into four All-Star selections. He showed no mercy to runners — regardless of their size — who thought they had a right to home plate, a piece of real estate that belonged to him. He didn’t suffer the hijinks of clowns professional (Chief Noc-A-Homa comes to mind) or amateur (pity the fool who jumped the rail and entered the field of play where the Dude earned his pay). Sure it would’ve been wonderful if John Stearns could’ve sprayed a little bubbly as a player. But anyone can give it his all when things are going well. It takes a special man to throw his body, his soul and whatever minimal caution he bothered with to the wind when the only reward is the likelihood of disappointment and the chance to feel it again tomorrow.

41. Turk Wendell: Middle relief is so overlooked in baseball that even in this stat-happy age, there is no definitive data used to verify success in the role. Holds? What’s a hold? Nobody cares. Inherited runners? Fine, but what about entering at the start of the inning? Things go wrong there, too. The middle reliever’s lot is tougher than that of the closer. The closer gets loads of blame if he blows a game, but he also has the chance to pile up saves and cash in on them. Middle relievers are just as easily booed off the mound for their transgressions in the sixth or seventh as their fireman counterparts are in the eighth or ninth. But they’re deemed far more readily replaced, and often are. In this climate — particularly on a staff that had starters give out with troubling regularity after five innings — Turk Wendell may have been the most vital cog in Bobby Valentine’s wobbly Mets machine. The whomping of the rosin bag, the extracted animal teeth dangling from his neck, the impertinent remarks toward Vlad Guerrero (suggesting he should go back to the Dominican if he didn’t like being pitched close), the Turkishness of his being…none of it should detract from the fact that for the better part of three seasons and two post-seasons, Turk Wendell entered a gaggle of games that were on the line and, more often than not, kept them in line. Nobody keeps stats on it, but he was the best middle reliever the Mets ever had.

Some bits of business before resuming the G(r)eek Chorus for the Fabulous 50s.

Francisco Campos, whom I never actually sighted, is no more.

Jason Phillips is soon to be no more — though apparently the deal for Ishii can't be formalized until tomorrow because the commissioner's office isn't open on the weekend.

Wha? This can't be right. When teams make a trade involving money, they

don't send Selig & Co. an e-mail that says something like “Jason

for Kaz, and oh the Dodgers have to pay us a bunch of money, please

figure out how much.” I assume they work all that out themselves, and

leave it for some lawyer to eyeball and hit with an “OK” stamp. If so,

you're telling me some lawyer can't receive a fax on a Sunday morning?

Ridiculous.

As for the deal itself, the last two days of Always Amazin' offer a nice rundown

of reasons to be fearful. What worries me is everyone seems to be

forgetting that Mike Piazza is old and has broken down repeatedly the

last two seasons, making this not your typical backup-catcher

situation. If Piazza's [insert body part here] explodes on Memorial

Day, Ramon Castro or Joe Hietpas are not names you want to see in the

lineup for months at a stretch.

In ex-Met news, Roberto Alomar hung 'em up, saying that “I played a lot of games and I said I would never embarrass myself on

the field. I had a long career, but I can't play at

the level I want to play, so it's time to retire.”

Now, if he'd said that in March 2003, refunding our money and

apologizing to our fans that hey, it didn't work out, I might wish him

well. We all know that in our uniform, he wasn't the superb baseball

player he'd been. OK, at a certain point that happens. The spitting

thing will be remembered more than it should be — if John Hirschbeck

forgave him, good enough for me. Put those two things aside and you're

still left with the fact that as a Met, Alomar was a bad teammate who

didn't play hard. On the first score, there was the unforgiveable day

in San Juan when he and his little friend Rey Sanchez blamed Jae Seo (a

rookie!) for a play they blew. On the latter, there were the endless

lollipop throws on the pivot, costing us far too many double plays.

Then, when word came Robbie might become a White Sock, he miraculously

started hanging in there on the pivot instead of tiptoeing into

left-center. Incredible!

Robbie will make the Hall of Fame. But he'll never get that 3,000th

hit. And no one will ever discuss him for more than a minute in New

York City without noting that on baseball's biggest stage he was

revealed a backstabber and a jaker and a quitter.

60. Hubie Brooks: It is, sadly, the human condition to lock in one’s perception of a situation even when faced with evidence to the contrary. For example, the New York Mets have never been able to do anything with that nettlesome (or Nettlesless) third-base position. We all know that throughout their entire history it’s been one disaster after another, from Cliff Cook to Joe Moock to, god help us, Joe Foy. It’s a charming enough storyline to have inspired the ditty about the Seventy-Nine Mets Who Played Third on An Amazin’ Era, the team’s 25th anniversary video. Yessir, playing third for the New York Mets is like drumming for Spinal Tap: Sooner or later, you’re bound to blow up, and not in the way the kids mean. Except that by 1986, the third-base curse was, for all practical purposes, reversed and buried by Hubie Brooks. The organization did its best to perpetuate the tepid image of the hot corner even when confronted with a competent practitioner. Called up in September 1980, Hubie was handed No. 62, as if to say, third base will eat you alive, kid, don’t even bother. After acquitting himself reasonably in his trial (and working his way down from 62 to 39 to 7), Hubie showed up to spring training 1981 to find Joe Torre handing the job to outfielder Joel Youngblood, who didn’t want it, and then catcher John Stearns, who stepped on a ball and couldn’t play it. Left with only a third baseman to play third base, Torre had no choice but to pencil in Hubie Brooks at the 5-slot, and Hubie Brooks stayed there for the better part of the next four seasons. He didn’t move off of third until, team man that he was, he shifted to short to make room for Ray Knight in the late summer of ’84. Hubie was shortly thereafter packaged for Gary Carter, a trade nobody could rationally dispute. He left two legacies in his wake: 1) Brooks was followed at third by, roughly, Knight, HoJo, Magadan, Bonilla, Kent, Alfonzo, Ventura, Alfonzo again, Wigginton and Wright. Sure there were some gaps and yeah, the total’s grown from 79 when that song was recorded to 129 through 2004 (including exactly one inning of one game played by Kevin Morgan in 1997, the only inning of the only game he ever played in the Majors), but the position’s been held down by reasonably able men for decent stretches of time; 2) When Mike Piazza hit safely in 24 straight games in 1999, it was Hubie Brooks’ 15-year-old mark that he matched with an eighth-inning homer off Vic Darensbourg. Gary Cohen announced it with something like “Move Over Hubie!” It’s not so bad to root for a team on which Hubie Brooks could endure so long as an aspirational figure, even for the greatest-hitting catcher of all time.

59. Todd Zeile: Put aside the inconvenient fact that Todd Zeile never should have been a Met. Forget that Todd Zeile never would have been a Met if Steve Phillips had negotiated with John Olerud instead of recklessly and casually allowing him to walk to Seattle. And ignore that replacing Olerud with Zeile in 2000 weakened what had been The Best Infield Ever and destroyed the L-R-L-R symmetry that was the heart of the 1999 order. If you can do that, you can appreciate what Todd Zeile meant to the last Mets team to win a pennant. Not so much the .368 average and 8 RBIs in the NLCS (though that wasn’t cotton candy) or the .400 clip he hit for in the Series. Todd Zeile proved the living embodiment of that Stengel-period banner, TO ERR IS HUMAN, TO FORGIVE A METS FAN. Todd Zeile was human, as human as they came, and those 2000 Mets were, collectively, extraordinarily human. They were, when all was boiled down, one human, Todd Zeile. He was a third baseman playing first, yet he learned. When you were sure he wouldn’t come through — BANG! — double off the wall. He was as star-crossed as they came. Interference play? Two of them? Same game? Guess who’s on the wrong end of both. His Game One shot in the Bronx was so obviously a homer (dying inches from the hands of the solitary enemy fan who knew enough not to touch it) that as Timo was trotting, even Zeile was pumping his fist. Somehow we forgave Todd, probably because all through that season and post-season, he was the quiet pro who showed up here from everywhere else and became the calm team spokesman: articulate, thoughtful, irritatingly reassuring when the division was slipping away in September, self-aware enough to enjoy everything about October. We’re about to play for the championship of the world — where’s Todd? There he is, shagging flies with his kids. There he is again, posing them with the Baha Men. He’d regularly sign autographs practically up to first pitch and fill a reporter’s notebook with the truth after the final out. When the World Series slipped into darkness, Zeile was told of the polite, preprogrammed remarks Derek Jeter had just made about what fine opponents the Mets had been. Zeile’s response was, “Is he just being patronizing?” At that moment, even the most diehard John Olerud torch-carrier was overjoyed that Todd Zeile was a New York Met.

58. Nolan Ryan: Where Nolan Ryan and the Mets are concerned, there’s what could have been and there’s what was. Under the heading of what was, Nolan Ryan pitched in three post-season games at Shea Stadium. In the first one, Game 3 of the 1969 NLCS, he replaced Gary Gentry and inherited a second-and-third, no-out scenario in the third, the Braves ahead 2-0. Nolan struck out Rico Carty, intentionally walked Orlando Cepeda, struck out Clete Boyer and induced a harmless fly ball from Bob Didier. The home team soon got to Pat Jarvis, and after seven innings of two-run, seven-strikeout ball, Nolan Ryan had pitched the Mets into their first World Series. Eight days later, Ryan pitched in his second post-season game at Shea Stadium, Game 3 of the fall classic. Again, Gentry was the starter, this time ahead 4-0. In the seventh with two out, he walked the bases loaded. Again, in came Nolan. His first batter, Paul Blair, lined a sinking drive to center. Tommie Agee dove for it, nabbed it and saved three runs. Thus rescued, Ryan pitched the eighth without incident, got the first two Orioles in the ninth and then loaded the bases on a walk, a single and a walk before facing Blair once more. Nolan struck him out to end the game. Three times across 9-1/3 innings that October, he hurled with the sacks full and allowed nobody to score. Nolan Ryan pitched his third post-season game at Shea Stadium exactly seventeen years later, Game 5 of the 1986 NLCS. He started, went nine, gave up one run, two hits, struck out twelve and departed with the score tied. It may have been the most brilliant post-season pitching performance that Shea has ever seen. The only problem was that it was performed by an Astro. When it comes to Nolan Ryan, you see, it’s impossible to wipe away what could have been.

57. Frank Viola: Mets management believed its own hype in 1989. Having commissioned a graphic, a blue and orange 1, to symbolize that their team had compiled the best winning percentage in the game over the previous five seasons, Frank Cashen’s front office was profiled in Manhattan Inc. magazine as “The IBM of Baseball”. The story opened with Joe McIlvaine and Al Harazin taking in a spring training game: Harazin needled African-American umpire Charlie Williams for calling out one of the “brothers” and McIlvaine cringed in embarrassment. Caught up in its spiffy logo and its great press, it’s no wonder that when Doc Gooden went down for the year with a tear in his right shoulder, the Mets executive braintrust decided the only pitcher worthy of replacing him was Minnesota’s Frank “Sweet Music” Viola. To obtain the reigning American League Cy Young winner, the pitching-rich New York Mets gave up five young arms, Rick Aguilera, Kevin Tapani and David West foremost among them. St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz moaned that the big, bad Mets had done it again, buzzing the Eastern Division like they always did with a Big Apple-sized acquisition sure to separate them from the small-time Cardinals, Cubs and Expos. Didn’t happen that way. Viola was ordinary down the stretch in ’89. Aguilera, Tapani and West contributed, in varying degrees, to the Twins’ 1991 world championship. Frankie V never did any such thing for the Mets. But despite three consecutive losses across three critical September starts, he did win 20 games in ’90 — the last time any Met won that many. The Mets have commissioned zero 1 logos since.

56. Richie Ashburn: Future Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn was the most valuable player of and spiritual leader to the most dreadful assemblage of talent in baseball history. A keen observer of irony, Ashburn retired the moment 1962 ended. He bats leadoff and plays center on the All-Kafkaesque Team to this day.

55. Willie Mays:In successive years in the early 1980s, the Mets traded for George Foster, then Keith Hernandez, then Gary Carter. At decade’s end, a deadline deal brought Frank Viola. The winter meetings of 1991 resulted in the arrival of Bret Saberhagen. A pleasant May afternoon in 1998 got a whole lot more pleasant when the word went forth that Mike Piazza was now a Met. And on a cold December morning in 2001, New York was awakened to the news that Roberto Alomar was on his way to Shea. MVPs, Cy Youngs, Hall of Famers in their apparent prime. Trading for every one of them at the time it happened caused waves of excitement for Mets fans. But none of those trades compared to the moment the Mets got Willie Mays. The Mets got Willie Mays! Willie Mays became a Met. More than thirty years after the fact, it’s still hard to believe that the absolute icon of baseball in post-war America was, just like that, one of ours.  It was explained clearly in the papers how it happened. Willie Mays was old, 41. His career was nearing a finish. The Giants’ owner, Horace Stoneham, needed money. The Mets owner, Joan Payson, loved Mays dating back to his days in New York. Now she would bring him home. Made sense as far as that went. But it also seemed impossible that we could come upon him because he was too great a player to fall into the hands of a team like ours. As long as we were dealing in the unfathomable, Willie’s first game as a Met came against the Giants, at Shea. He beat them with a homer. Willie played much younger than 41 in those early days — he reached base at least once in each of his first twenty games as a Met. He was a happening. To commemorate the national sensation that was his homecoming, Life printed a picture of every one of his Topps Giants cards dating back to 1952, the first several of which portrayed him in a black cap with the same NY the Mets sported. (Pretty sharp.) Come June’s Old-Timers Day, when the Mets liked to pile on the sentimental shtick, a cable car rolled down the left field line to the infield. To underscore what had taken place over the last six or so weeks, Willie Mays disembarked. In a Mets uniform. Willie Mays was a Met. Willie Mays said Goodbye to America as a Met. Willie Mays played in the 1973 World Series for the Mets. That he was only technically Willie Mays by then is beside the point.

54. Ron Hunt: “Oh yeah? Well, we have Ron Hunt! What do you mean you never heard of Ron Hunt? He finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting to Pete Rose last year. And this year he started at second for the National League in the All-Star Game, right here at brand new Shea. That’s right — Ron Hunt, not some other second baseman. Not Rose, who probably won’t even be playing second for very long. Not Mazeroski, who backed him up. Not even Tony Taylor of the Phillies. Taylor’s not so great anyway. The Phillies choked and the only thing Taylor did was lead the league in getting hit by pitches thirteen times. Hunt batted .303 and had eleven HBPs himself. Ron could get hit lots more if he wanted to. Anyway, we’re gonna get good someday soon and mark my words: Ron Hunt’s gonna lead us there.”

53. Craig Swan: Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team by Peter Golenbock is unquestionably the worst thing ever written about the New York Mets. Published on the occasion of the Mets’ fortieth anniversary, it is the living, breathing apotheosis of “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” because its cover, like its title, is beautiful. Its insides are wretched. Golenblock, who must have accepted the assignment, gone on a long vacation and returned with a week before his deadline, mindlessly cut and paste a boatload of old quotes from other works, presenting them out of context and with no discernment. He then mixed them in willy-nilly with the few new interviews he bothered to do. The essence of Amazin’ is this: Every season in Mets history between 1962 and 2001 — those first forty years ­ — included one of three players. Ed Kranepool (1962-1979), Mookie Wilson (1980-1989) and John Franco (1990-2001) covered the entire chronological spectrum of the Mets experience. Golenbock interviewed none of them. And yet, in the sense that even a blind pig finds an acorn, the book is almost redeemed by the tenth page of a ten-page chapter recording the ramblings of Craig Swan. Swannie was the ace of the late ’70s and early ’80s losing Mets. On his best days, he was a low-rent Seaver. He won the National League ERA title in 1978. By the time he was deemed obsolete, he stood fourth on the franchise’s all-time victory chart. But what you couldn’t know about Craig Swan without Amazin’ is that he went hunting with Joel Youngblood once. Blood was the experienced hunter, Swannie the novice. After Joel spied some turkeys, he told Craig, “Swannie, go behind the bush over there, work your way over, and flush those turkeys to me.” Swannie wanted no part of it: “He was treating me like I was his dog. I said, ‘I’m not flushing any turkeys to you. Go flush your own turkeys.’ And I never hunted with him again.”

52. Mike Hampton: In the One Year And One Year Only club, Mike Hampton rules. Nobody got more out of a single season in [whatever combination of team colors tickled Charlie Samuels’ fancy on any given day] than Hampton did as lead pitcher of the 2000 Mets. He struggled early in classic trying-too-hard fashion, but ran a 7-2 record over twelve starts between May 9 and July 9, culminating in the crucial-for-our-self-esteem two-zip whitewashing of the Yankees the Sunday night after that fetid cross-borough doubleheader. Hampton finished strong at 15-10 and was voted Most Valuable Player of the NLCS, the only one the Mets have ever had, in recognition of his two wins and sixteen shutout innings, nine of which came in the fifth and final game. (No MVP was awarded in ’69 and ’73, and Mike Scott stole it for the losers in ’86.) He never looked particularly comfortable as a New Yorker, so it wasn’t terribly surprising he bolted as a free agent after ’00. The business about the sterling credentials of Denver-area schools forever erased all goodwill toward him, but the record remains intact: No Mets pitcher since Mike Hampton has stood tall on the mound soaking in the euphoria of having clinched his team a pennant.

51. Todd Pratt: The good news — the very good news — is Todd Pratt hit that homer in the bottom of the tenth off Matt Mantei to win the 1999 National League Division Series, three games to one. The amazing news remains the company Todd Pratt keeps by having done so. He became the fourth player in baseball history to win a post-season series with a last-swing home run. Bill Mazeroski, Chris Chambliss and Joe Carter preceded him. Two others — Aaron Boone and David Ortiz — have followed. Of the six, the five were considered big-time players. Mazeroski’s in the Hall. Carter, Chambliss, Ortiz, even bleeping Boone were All-Stars. Todd Pratt? Tank? An All-Star? Don’t make him laugh. His whole career right up to October 9, 1999 was about caddying, first for Darren Daulton, then in a higher calling, Mike Piazza. Barely 24 hours before his at-bat against Mantei, it was reported that Mike’s elbow ached so severely that he wouldn’t be able to play against the Diamondbacks that night or the next afternoon. It was conceivable…hell, it was sensible to conclude that the great struggle to push the Mets into the playoffs was likely for naught if their biggest hitter wasn’t going to be available. Piazza hit forty home runs in 1999; Todd Pratt hit three. Fortunately, Game Three was a Met cakewalk. Game Four was another story. Leiter pitched a crisp 7-2/3 innings, but Benitez, for the first time in his Mets tenure, couldn’t hold the lead in an extraordinarily tight spot. Only a throw by Mora and a juggle by Tony Womack assured extra innings. Though the Mets enjoyed a 2-1 series cushion, this game was the one to get. Lose it and everybody piles on a plane to Phoenix where it’s Randy Johnson and the BOB’s funky late afternoon shadows versus Masato Yoshii and who knows what. Instead, Todd Pratt swung and launched Shea into hysteria. Yes, that was amazing. The potentially awful news was what happened immediately after Tank connected. It was deep all right, all the way to deepest center. Patrolling the 410 sign out there was none other than ex-Padre Steve Finley, dasher of dreams on so many late nights in San Diego. It was a staple of ’90s West Coast road trips for Finley to rob at least one Met of at least one Jack Murphy home run every visit in. Todd Pratt seemed to know this, for as he left the box, he jogged to first, watching the flight of his ball every step of the way. Steve Finley would spring into the air and catch it and Tank would be out. Or the ball would somehow elude Steve Finley and Tank would be the hero. Either way, Tank saw no reason to run. The third possibility, that the ball would not be caught but would not leave the park, never occurred to the backup catcher. From 410 feet away, Pratt could not have definitively dismissed the chance that the ball would, say, bounce off the wall and into Finley’s glove and that Finley would turn, fire and nail a fatally malingering Pratt at second. But he did dismiss it, because once Finley jumped, Tank pulled up dejectedly near first. As it turned out, a silly millimeter separated Finley’s glove from Pratt’s shot, and the ball indeed sailed over the fence. First-base ump Bruce Froemming twirled his right index finger and Tank broke into a happy sprint for home. Nobody much mentioned the disaster that could have been. The next time we noticed Todd Pratt, he was tackling Robin Ventura between first and second, costing the Mets three thankfully superfluous runs in the fifteenth inning of Game Five of the NLCS. One does not earn the nickname Tank, apparently, without a strong tendency to roll full-bore through life oblivious to the notion that for every action there is a consequence.

Calling Dr. Peterson, calling Dr. Peterson. New project possibly arriving at the emergency entrance…

Jason Phillips for Kaz Ishii? I like it and I don't like it. I like

that, if it's true, the Mets aren't settling for the Ginteriffic

choices in their midst. I don't like it because:

* Apparently Ishii's been walking the West Coast while the civilized world sleeps;

* A correspondent suggested Thursday that “there are only two kinds of

starters you can obtain in trades at this time of year: (a) injured

ones and (b) bad ones.” I don't know if he's right, but that sure

sounds like us;

* Jason Phillips is teasing us in with his monumental spring and I've been buying it;

* Next to Reyes, Jason Phillips emerged out of the muck of 2003 as my

favorite Met of the moment. That wore off last September when during

the Victor Diaz game (before it was the Victor Diaz game), the most

glacial man in the bigs — Magadan 3.0, if you will — was on third in

a bases-loaded situation. With one out, Gerald Williams lifted a deep

fly to left, the kind of ball on which even Jason Phillips can score.

Except Jason Phillips had gone halfway and was in no position to tag

up. Mets left the bags drunk. Oh, and the night before? He was tagged

out on a throw 10 feet to the right of home. I swore off Jason Phillips

once and for all after those feats of baseball inertia. But I can't

stay mad at the guy for long. Still, an established starter for a

backup catcher? Shoot, do it.

As for filling the backstop caddy void, crap, Vance Wilson's looking

pretty good right now. No, I take that back. I also take back the

thought that flashed through my head when I saw Al Leiter threw four

scoreless innings Friday. “Man, that wouldn't be too bad to have now.”

No, it would be. “Hey,

Yusmeiro! We don't listen to that stuff in The Show. Gimme that iPod

and I'll download some Ray Conniff Singers for you. Then I'll take you

to get your hair cut just like mine.” No thank you.

Not many loose ends dangling from Nos. 80-61. The moment I typed in the name Ed Charles I thought of that picture, too. In the summer of '89, Newsweek

found cause to run it. Stephanie sent it to me and it hung over my desk

for several years. And I'll bet  I know the shot of Seaver and Gentry.

They're surveying the damage done to Shea after The Big One, right? I

know a guy who was living in Arizona six years ago and was working at a

discount cigarettes outlet. One of his steadiest customers was the very

same Gary Gentry. He had a standing order for cartons of Marlboros. I hope nobody winds up surveying the damage done to Gary Gentry's lungs.

Your wife has filed an official and reasonable protest over the inclusion of Bobby Bonilla in

any list using the words “Greatest” and “Mets”. I'll tell you what I

told her: Take 668 Mets (the number of 'Ropolitans through the first

forty years) and start whittling it down to a hundred. What should

happen is that it's agonizing to pare and trim and make life-or-death

decisions. That's not what happened at all. This franchise has been

larded with Bautas and Bucheks and Boitanos. You get through crossing

those off and even a charitable reading of Mets history leaves you with

like 125 guys. From there, it was really a matter of symbolism versus

accomplishment, and as much as I liked Shinjo's wristbands and the

Stork's nickname, I couldn't really pass on a two-time All-Star even if

he was an all-time jerk.

Tsuyoshi and Theodore and everybody else whose claim to Met greatness

is they had that certain something that resonated in our tribe will

continue to be represented by M.E.T., Marvin Eugene Throneberry, the patron saint of the fairly futile but lavishly lovable.

“Think about baseball” is what they tell you you should do when your thoughts are where they shouldn't be. In those situations, Dave Magadan

leaps to mind. It may be the only leaping he's ever done. I don't mean

to downgrade his appeal off the field to others, but the only thing

about him that struck me as steamy was his bat that June.

Jason Phillips may replace him in this role if Mo Vaughn hasn't already.

Hey! It didn't rain! And we played a game! It ended in a tie, but

anything that can be managed in between downpours is cool with us right

now.

On to the 60's….

It's a shame Dave Magadan isn't

remembered more (meaning, of course, “isn't remembered more by people

other than geeks like us”). The man hit .328 in 1990 despite the fact

that he was slightly faster than continental drift, looked weirdly like

Bruce Springsteen, and hung around long enough to collect nearly 1,200

hits — Tommie Agee, by comparison, hung 'em up with 999, which always

struck me as faintly tragic. On the other hand, he owned a crappy bar

in South St. Petersburg where in 1992 I decided “Friends in Low Places”

was the greatest song in history and let my drunk pal Pete convince me

it was a good idea to let a temporarily homeless college girl 

stay in my parents' house, from which she stole a variety of small,

expensive things. (What's that? These poor decisions might have been my fault? Who profited from the beer that fueled these bad decisions, then? Huh? Huh huh huh? That's right — Dave Magadan.) Maybe Frank Cashen signed Mike Marshall after drinking seven warm Buds and scratching on the 8 ball at Magadan's.

Speaking of Ed Charles, he was

from St. Pete too, and over the years he's been called upon countless

times by local scribes needing some column inches about old times. He's

always delivered, speaking movingly of being in a crowd of black teens

who ran after Jackie Robinson's train as it headed back north and, once

it was out of sight, pressed their ears to the rails to feel its

vibration. That's love. And he'd talk of how racism marooned him in the

minors for the best years of his youth, summing it up with “Baby, that

was a hurtin' thing.” It's hard to imagine anything could

counterbalance that, but I like to think that whatever he felt as Grote

lifted Koosman into the air helped. If there's a blog running down the

100 Greatest Portraits of Pure Human Joy, the Glider dancing near the

Shea Stadium mound better be in the top 10.

Poor Gary Gentry. A picture of

him and Tom Terrific hangs in our hallway, serving as a warning, I

suppose, that there are forks in young, talented roads. (It could also

just be a cool photo.) Back when Izzy and Pulse and Wilson were being

measured for their Cooperstown plaques, the arguments among the

faithful concerned which Met they were the Second Coming of. Seaver?

Koosman? Matlack? As it turned out, all three were the Second Coming of

Gary Gentry.

I've always had a weakness for powder-keg players, so of course I loved Dennis Cook.

When things started going awry for Cook — as they did fairly often, it

must be remembered — it became a three-way race between He'll Get Out of It (#1), Bobby Will Finally Go Get Him (#2) and He'll Fly Into a Rage at an Opposing Player, an Ump, a Vendor, Etc. (#3). #3 was the winner a fair amount, which was oddly calming — Sure,

a minute ago I was beating my forehead against the coffee table and

biting myself, but Jeez, Cookie's turning purple! Shouldn't the trainer

get out there? And of course he was deaf in one ear and so

instructed each class of first basemen that they needed to scream at

him to get his attention. And as a Ranger he drove his rusting pickup

to the ballpark one February, bluetick hound and beer in the back, to

greet fans waiting in line to buy tickets. As fan relations go that's

not quite handing beers out to all comers from your Winnebago, but it's damn close. Come back, Cookie — we miss you.

Hi, I'm Casey Kasem and this is Metropolitan Top 100. You're hearing us on great radio stations like KENT-AM, your redass connection; W-AY-L, which gives up the hits 27 different ways; and Pacella-FM, where our hat's always off to you. Before we resume the countdown, it's time for our long-distance dedication.

This week's comes to us from Joe, listening to us on I-95, The All-Time Number One Utility Station in Bristol, Pennsylvania. He writes,

“Dear Casey: I'm a big fan of Metropolitan Top 100. You've made me feel a part of it from the very first broadcast. Until very recently, I had a really great job that I liked a lot and I thought everybody there liked me. True, I wasn't always that good at what I did but I always gave it my best whether I was on the clock or not. I tried to be a good friend to all the other guys at this place, particularly when they'd hire somebody new. However, when I saw they were bringing in people with the same job description I had, I could read the handwriting on the wall.

“Casey, even though I'm not there anymore, I'd really appreciate if you could dedicate the next segment of your countdown to all my former colleagues and all the folks who followed what we did. I'll always carry them in my heart.”

Thanks Joe. Here's your long-distance dedication.

70. Dave Magadan: Mags had a habit of busting out all over, which is ironic considering the guy made unassuming look ostentatious. His first moment in the spotlight came on the night of September 17, 1986 when he subbed for the flu-ridden Keith Hernandez, collected three hits and inspired the instantaneous creation of his own passionate core of acolytes (or at least the one guy who wrote DAVE MAGADAN FAN CLUB on an empty pizza box, captured forever in A Year To Remember) in the division-clinching melee at Shea. Mex pulled himself together long enough to take the field so he could be on it for the big celebration, a Met-aphor, perhaps, for the way he showed little inclination to take his eventual successor under his wing. By the time Keith was gone, Dave had to put up with Mike Marshall until he bust out all over again, this time in Chicago. Just as the 1990 Mets were finding their sealegs, Mags batted his way into the lineup, going 4-for-4 and driving in six runs on June 12, a 19-8 thumping of the Cubs. He started the game at third but poetic-justly finished it at first. Marshall was done and Magadan let Buddy Harrelson, who had clung to the washed-up Dodger for too long, know it. When one of the quiet guys is laying down the law to the manager, it probably isn't a good thing, but thank goodness someone did. Dave finished 1990 at .328, the first Met in more than 20 years to rake at that rate.

69. Rickey Henderson: When Rickey Henderson was making his first comeback with the Newark Bears in 2003, Sports Illustrated ran a nifty profile of what made Rickey run. Maybe it was in there or someplace else that Rickey defended his role on the 1999 Mets, the card-playing and the questionable hustle. One quote stood out (paraphrasing here): “I was the best player on that team.” On a club fronted by Piazza, fueled by Alfonzo and defined by Ventura, it seemed a dubious claim. But look at it from Rickey's perspective. He batted .315, highest among regulars. He stole 37 bases. He tutored Roger Cedeño to steal 66. In what we will forever refer to as the Matt Franco game, we could look up when the excitement died down (if it indeed has) and see 40-year-old Rickey Henderson had been on base five times — three hits and two walks — in five plate appearances, scoring three runs. His OPS, playing three of every four games that year, was .889, comparable to Robin's and Fonzie's. And he stole six bases in the Division Series against Arizona. But it was never all good again after Bobby replaced him for defense in the fourth game with Melvin Mora (who immediately threw out Jay Bell at home, confirming what Bobby Valentine knew: that Melvin Mora could play some ball and that Bobby Valentine was a genius). From there, he wrote his ticket out of town. Before then, Rickey wasn't as crazy as Rickey tends to come off.

68. Al Jackson: On June 29, 1969, Tom Seaver won his twelfth game of the season, the 44th of his young career. In doing so, he surpassed Al Jackson to become the winningest pitcher in Mets history. Seaver's career record to that point: 44-28. Jackson's totals for parts of six seasons as a Met, predominantly the character-building years of 1962-65: 43-80. Would have the little lefthander from Waco, Texas fared better on a better team in his salad days? Consider that in the first four years of the Mets' existence, Little Al Jackson threw 10 shutouts. In all of Metsdom, only Seaver, Koosman, Matlack, Gooden and Cone have posted more. Give the man credit, as well, for assessing the state of the team in 1962, as recorded in Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin: “Everybody here crazy.”

67. Ed Charles: He was the Poet Laureate of the 1969 Mets. That in and of itself is a ticket to Heaven.

66. Gary Gentry: So little-known were the individual Mets even as they ascended the national stage that in a pre-Series workout in '69, Tom Seaver and Gary Gentry switched uniform tops. Reporters furiously scribbled the knocks No. 41 was putting on No. 39, not realizing No. 39 was really No. 41 and vice-versa. It was an easy enough mistake to make since Gary Gentry was thought to be the next model off the assembly line of ferocious righties who would keep the Mets in pennant heat for years to come. Gentry, 22, won 13 games in '69. He never won that many again.

65. Lance Johnson: One of these seasons is not like the others: .333 BA, 50 SBs, 21 triples, 227 hits, 682 ABs. Lance Johnson's 1996 was the most cheerfully aberrational year in Mets history. No Mets centerfielder had done anything like it. No Met playing anywhere had strung together those kinds of concurrent numbers. It was one of the best campaigns in the league, too. One Dog led everybody in three-baggers, safeties and at-bats. Slugged .479 from the leadoff position. Couldn't be gotten out in September as he shattered all kinds of single-season team marks, appropriate as it turned out to be his single, solitary full season as a Met. Damn those shin splints.

64. Kevin Mitchell: His teammates called him 747 because he was jumbo. Then they called him World because his versatility was all-planet. That a high-profile act like the '86 Mets could unveil a secret weapon like Kevin Mitchell in full view of the competition was indication enough to the N.L. East that it could make other plans for the summer. Including post-season, Mitchell collected 95 hits that year. The first 94, presumably, were gathered fully equipped.

63. Dennis Cook: Tom Gorman, meet Joe Sambito. Joe Sambito, meet Randy Niemann. Randy Niemann, meet Gene Walter. Gene Walter, meet Bob McClure. Bob McClure, meet Jeff Musselman. Jeff Musselman, meet Dan Schatzeder. Dan Schatzeder, meet Doug Simons. Doug Simons, meet Rich Sauveur. Rich Sauveur, meet Paul Gibson. Paul Gibson, meet Lee Guetterman. Lee Guetterman, meet Jeff Kaiser. Jeff Kaiser, meet Eric Gunderson. Eric Gunderson, meet Don Florence. Don Florence, meet Bob MacDonald; Bob MacDonald, meet Ricardo Jordan. Ricardo Jordan, meet Yorkis Perez. Now all of you dismal left-handed relievers who clogged up the basepaths with your ineptitude for almost fifteen years, meet Dennis Cook and watch him get batters out. What? He looks so angry all the time? No wonder. Look at the mess you left him!

62. Art Shamsky: It could be said with a modicum of debate that through October 6, 1969, Art Shamsky stood alone as the greatest player in the history of the National League Championship Series, having had the benefit of being present at the creation of the it two days earlier. The left-handed half of Gil's right-field platoon apparently figured out these newfangled playoffs before anybody else did, batting .538 as the Mets swept the Braves in three. Hank Aaron batted .357 with three homers, but his team lost.

61. Rafael Santana: Shortstop is often termed the most important position on the field. The team that wins the World Series is recognized as the best team in baseball. The World Series winner that piled up more victories than any other World Series winner in its time can be considered the best baseball team of that time. Conclusion: Rafael Santana was Man of the Decade for the 1980s. Gorbachev was a distant second.