Well, I'm in midseason form — somehow I thought the season started

next week. Along with the time change. This extended winter is

destroying my brain.

Quick question: When you hear “partially herniated disk,” do you think,

“Well, that's no big deal”? Me neither. Not with Trachsel on the shelf.

Not with the ghost of Edgardo Alfonzo hovering over both of us. Some

good news on Matsui would be most welcome.

On to the 30's.

I admit to branding Bobby Jones

a cancer once he replaced Jose Vizcaino as my scapegoat for Everything

That Was Wrong With the Mets. He was so … average. Except for the

famous Steve Avery/Jose V. game, in which he was … Estesian. And, of

course, for the clincher against the Giants, in which he was …

Koufaxian? Johnsonian? Fellerite? Whatever he was, no one's timing has

ever been so good. You'd think a one-hitter to clinch a postseason

series would make even the most jaded New York fan regret saying all

those bad things, and I did regret them … until about next June. For

which I'm not as ashamed as I probably should be. I guess it's that in

my eyes, most of the time he was neither Estesian or Koufaxian, but

right exactly between them, embodying the quietly soul-killing

mediocrity one sometimes fears is the natural state of existence. By

the way, that thing with the other Bobby Jones on the roster at the

same time was just ridiculous. Once per franchise was enough, thanks.

(Memo to Pedro A. Martinez: Stay retired.)

On the other hand, I loved Todd Hundley

for so much less. All that piss and vinegar, sometimes even channeled

into the game of baseball. I loved that he was Randy's kid in the wrong

uniform as far as Chicagoans were concerned. I loved that he was blunt

to a fault, in the fine old Backman tradition, that he snuck cigarettes

like Mex, that he stayed out too late like the whole '86 squad. It

wasn't quite so cool that the other side of midnight ate up a lot of

his potential, in the not-so-fine old Elster tradition, but that's a

risk one runs liking that kind of player. And in this age of chemical

suspicion, I don't like to revisit my astonishment that the twiglike

Double-A catcher who announced himself with his shockingly unlikely

double off Dibble in '90 soon transformed into a hulking backstop.

Regardless, Hot Rod stayed Hot Rod — I saw him in Candlestick near the

end, looking bewildered and unhappy out in left field, but still egging

on the frat boys in the bleachers by cupping his hand to his ear as

they gave him the business. And when the Dodgers wound up going into

the stands at Wrigley, I immediately looked for him, confident he'd

been in the scrum throwing hands, as Lenny Harris liked to say. And

indeed he was.

I was standing next to you for Rey Ordonez's famous debut, and what sticks with me is the sound.

Remember that? It was this sort of rolling murmur that went on and on,

rising and falling, of a sort that I'd never heard 50,000-odd people

make. That's because 50,000-odd people don't generally turn to their

neighbors and quietly ask, “Did he really just do that?” Later, we'd discover

he couldn't hit at all, had a habit of collecting wives, was on a

first-name basis but not a last-name basis with his trainers, and was

too self-centered to even feign interest in his own highlight video.

But that's mostly forgotten. The memory of that sound remains.

Every team needs a Lee Mazzilli.

He was the capstone of the '86 team, the piece that made you happy in a

way anyone with a heart would be happy, because when he came back it meant that it wasn't too late for Lee Mazzilli after all

— his faith had been rewarded, his struggles would get to mean

something. “You gotta excuse me, I've been smiling for two months now,”

he told some reporter or other before the World Series, and so had we

all. When he was shipped out again, this time to Toronto, I wasn't

surprised he was done almost immediately. I liked to think he'd left

everything he had with us.

About Armando Benitez, all I

can say is this: One day in December 2001 I'd tracked in something or

other and found myself vaccuuming an annoyingly large portion of our

downstairs hall. No one else was home, and my various chores had led

me into the kind of meditative state in which you aren't 100% aware of

your own thoughts anymore. Except suddenly I realized I was fuming. Goddamn Armando, I realized I was subvocalizing repeatedly. Goddamn Armando.

And I wasn't thinking about Brian Jordan; I was thinking about Paul

O'Neill and his fatal at-bat, which had transpired 14 months ago. And had been thinking

about it, in increasing agitation, for a good 20 or 30 minutes. Goddamn Armando.

When I was an intern in New Orleans, Ron Swoboda

was a sportscaster for a local TV station. He'd occasionally come down

to Molly's at the Market, the Decatur Street hangout for journalistas,

and the woman I'd started dating knew him and spoke of him with amused

familiarity. All of this terrified me, because I seemed to be the only

one who understood that this was no local sportscaster — this was Ron

Swoboda. Ron Swoboda who made The Catch. The woman I'd started dating

didn't know anything about The Catch, which shocked and appalled me at

the time, and, come to think of it, still does. I never did meet

Swoboda that summer, for which I'm grateful, because I would have made

an idiot of myself even by the low standards of my usual behavior. I

don't know when he left broadcasting, but now he's the only

Met old-timer who looks cool on those fantasy-camp TV spots. He says

his pitch and tilts his head at the camera a little bit and kind of

smirks. If I'd made The Catch, I'd be on my 36th year of kind of

smirking and looking cool, too.

Game Four, 1988 NLCS: Nobody’s finest hour. Game 4, 2000 NLDS: Somebody’s finest hour. There are a lot of somebodies here who at one time or another appeared to be nobodies. But we knew better.

40. Bobby Jones: Underrated competitor until he got noticed (12-3 start in ’97, consecutive All-Star K’s of Griffey and McGwire), overpaid schlub thereafter, the Bobby Jones we wished he would be resurfaced in the second half of 2000, the first patient to respond to the Norfolk Miracle Cure. Asserting himself as an honest-to-goodness money pitcher, Bobby Jones was named starter for the fourth game of the division series. It wasn’t a given that he’d get the ball. Leading off the visitors’ fifth, Jeff Kent doubled just over Ventura’s glove. He advanced to third on Ellis Burks’ fly ball to right. Two unintentional intentional walks bracketed a second flyout. Three men on, two men out. The pitcher’s spot arrived. Trailing 2-0, Dusty Baker stuck with Mark Gardner, who popped to second. Inning over. Facing the kind of adversity which had eviscerated him regularly since the second half of 1997, Bobby Jones bore down and got out of a bases-loaded jam. From the first through the fourth and from the sixth through the ninth, right up to the series-clinching out, Bobby Jones allowed no Giant to reach; he was perfect. In the fifth, when he wasn’t, he was even better.

39. Jon Matlack: Mystery guest, please sign in. OK, let’s get started. Is your middle name Trumpbour? Yes. Were you the second Met to win Rookie of the Year? Yes. Were you named to the National League All-Star team twice? Yes. Did you get the win in one of those games? Yes. In your first five full seasons, did your record 75 victories? Yes. Was that the most any Met not named Seaver or Gooden ever totaled in his first five seasons? Yes. Was your ERA for those five years a mere 2.84? Yes. With the Mets trying to win a division in a five-team scramble on what was supposed to be the final day of the regular season, did you strike out nine Cubs in eight innings? Yes. Did you wind up losing that game 1-0 on a run scratched out in the eighth? Yes. Was this kind of run-support typical of what you received while you were a Met? Yes. Was the only game you pitched in a playoff series a two-hit shutout against one of the greatest-hitting teams of all time? Yes. Were those two hits collected by Andy Kosco? Yes. Not Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez or Johnny Bench, but Andy Kosco? Yes. Did you start three games in the ensuing World Series against another historically great team? Yes. Did you yield no earned runs in 14 innings over those first two starts? Yes. Did you pitch two more shutout innings in Game Seven before running out of gas in the third? Yes. Would have you avoided that situation had Yogi Berra pitched George Stone in Game Six, thereby saving Seaver for Game Seven? Yes. But you took the ball? Yes. And did you come that far in 1973 despite Marty Perez of the Braves whacking a liner off your head and fracturing your skull? Yes. Yet were you back pitching eleven days later? Yes. On June 29, 1974, did you pitch a one-hitter against the Cardinals at Shea Stadium? Yes. Was it the first win ever witnessed in person by at least one eleven-year-old Mets fan? Yes. Shouldn’t you be mentioned more often as one of the best pitchers the Mets ever had? You tell me.

38. Todd Hundley: In the summer that Todd Hundley chased his two cherished milestones, the all-time catcher’s single-season home run record and the all-time Mets’ single-season home run record, he was running second to Sammy Sosa for the NL lead. Before a Mets-Cubs game, Fran Healy rounded up the two of them and challenged them to stage their own home run derby during batting practice the next time the teams played. Hundley couldn’t wait to do it. Sosa shrugged his agreement. The authorities stepped in and put an end to it, but Todd Hundley was so brimming with confidence in 1996 that he was willing to do anything that would allow him to show off his new toy…his power. He had never hit more than 16 homers in any one season, but now he was closing in on 40 to top all Mets, 41 to be king of the catchers (tortured explanations abounded of how Johnny Bench hit 45 one year but was moonlighting at other positions just enough so they didn’t count here). Slugging his way relentlessly to No. 38 on August 21, Todd had 34 games remaining. Obviously he’d blow by those records and put newer, greater marks out of the reach of future Mets, future catchers and future Mets catchers — not that Hundley figured to be relinquishing backstop anytime soon. But like Joe Hardy or maybe Dorothy, the closer he got to his goal, the further from it he seemed. His power stroke disappeared and he almost reverted to the player who nearly lost his starting job to Kelly Stinnett two years earlier. It took him ten more games to swat No. 39 and tie Darryl Strawberry. Another five games got him to 40, breaking Straw’s back and knotting Roy Campanella. Finally, on September 14, in the 148th game of the season, Todd took Greg McMichael deep at Shea. No. 41 at last. Todd Hundley was no longer just Randy Hundley’s son or the player Dallas Green said couldn’t hit, couldn’t catch, couldn’t throw and couldn’t call a game. He was The Man. A year later he was hurt. A year after that he was a failed leftfielder and completely superfluous on what had been

his team. Mike Piazza took over as catcher and pre-empted any reason to miss his predecessor. Eventually, Javy Lopez hit 43 home runs as a catcher. But check the Mets’ record book. On at least one line, Todd Hundley remains The Man.

37. Rick Reed: John Pappas paid his way to St. Petersburg in 1962 and asked the Mets for a tryout. He told them he’d heard they needed pitchers. Pappas had been throwing under the 59th Street Bridge all winter and said he was ready to help the new team in town. Egged on by reporters, the Mets gave in to the stranger’s request. Suffice it to say John Pappas wasn’t good enough to pitch for the 1962 Mets, which says all you need to know about John Pappas’ ability and self-perception. The point is the Mets gave him a chance. That’s all anybody can ask for in baseball, it’s what everybody ideally should get. Thirty-five years later, the Mets gave a chance to another pitcher whose backstory made him, relatively speaking, almost as much of a long-shot as John Pappas. Rick Reed was 32 years old entering 1997. Across parts of eight seasons, he yo-yoed between the Majors and the minors for four different teams, never pitching in more than 19 games. Worse, he carried a scarlet S for scab after participating in the Reds’ replacement camp of ’95. Dire family circumstances drove him there, he said, but nobody wanted to listen. He spent all of 1996 as a Norfolk Tide, which wound up not so bad because his manager was Bobby Valentine, soon to assume the Met helm. And in Valentine’s first spring training, Bobby gave Rick a chance. Rick, in turn, gave the Mets a chance to win almost every time he took the mound for the next five seasons. Reed had impeccable control. They called him the mini-Maddux for a reason. He would be an All-Star in ’98 and ’01, but it was ’97 that defined Reeder as a Met: 31 starts, 208-1/3 innings, 28 starts of at least 6 innings, 16 wins, 2.89 ERA, 31 walks…from somebody nobody expected to find pitching for anybody. There was this one game on a Monday night against Atlanta and Smoltz, following an extra-inning slugfest versus the Pirates the day before. Valentine had used everybody out of the pen on Sunday. Monday, Reeder had to give his team innings. He gave them nine. The Mets won 3-2, establishing themselves once and for all as contenders. Later on, Rick Reed would give the ’99 Mets a chance to stay alive to make the playoffs. Against the Pirates in Game 161, he pitched a shutout, striking out 12. They made the playoffs. Rick Reed would give them a chance to clinch a Wild Card in 2000. He went eight. They clinched. Rick Reed would give the Mets chances to win the five post-season games he started. They won four of them, including their only victory in the 2000 World Series. John Pappas notwithstanding, it pays to give a guy a chance.

36. Rey Ordoñez: On Opening Day 1996, Howie Rose, broadcasting his first game on SportsChannel, got to describe a sequence no announcer could have possibly seen before: “Lankford gets one down the left field line. Clayton rounds second. Lankford’s going into second AND CLAYTON’S gonna try to score! ORDOÑEZ THROWING FROM HIS KNEES…AND THEY GOT HIM! There is your first look at what Rey Ordoñez is capable of doing. He was on his knees, Fran.” Down on one knee, up the third base line, receiving the relay from Gilkey, then turning and crouching and dropping to both knees to throw. To watch it is to see a play in which every other Met in the picture between third and home is rendered irrelevant once Ordoñez releases. Jose Vizcaino, the second baseman (shifted from short to make room for Rey), ducks. Rico Brogna, the first baseman, lets it fly, declining to cut it off; “it’s perfect,” he thinks. Hundley, who makes the tag, calls the throw “as good as it could be.” Clayton is indeed out. He sought the seventh St. Louis run of the day. All he got for his hustle was Ron Gant, the stranded on-deck batter, offering condolences. Royce Clayton, if he’s known for anything, will be noted as the Texas Ranger struck out by old Jim Morris, The Rookie, in the movie starring Dennis Quaid. All due respect, it was this rookie, Rey Ordoñez, who made the more cinematic debut, fired the more flamboyant throw, displayed the more amazing motion. And this was only his first game. But with that throw from his knees, Rey Ordoñez, not yet a Gold Glove winner or a defensive record setter or the star of his own highlight video (Rey O!) — wearing No. 0 of all numerals — became in an instant the greatest fielding shortstop ever. “I’d rather not compare anyone to Ozzie, he’s the best,” Gilkey said of his ex-teammate after the game. “But Rey is coming.” He was right. A little bit of Rey spoiled you forever. Mortal shortstops were a monumental comedown, and every shortstop was a mortal compared to Rey Ordoñez.

35. Lee Mazzilli: In the spring of 1979, the Sunday Daily News magazine declared on its cover that “If this team has a future, its name is MAZZILLI”. This may have been a slight overreaction to a glance at the league leaders as they stood after the games of April 18. Mazzilli, NY led all National Leaguers in batting with a .462 average. Could he keep it up? Well, no, but on a roster larded with disgruntled Hebners, itinerant Hasslers and preposterous Sergio Ferrer types, a future was hard to come by. 1979 would make Lee Mazzilli into the MAZZ of back page headlines. Mazz (not Maz) went to the All-Star Game. Mazz bested Ron Guidry with a bases-loaded walk. Mazz batted .303. Mazz got his own pin-up poster — think Tony Manero with a slightly less embarrassing pose. As for the Mets, the fruition of their future lay seven years hence. In August 1986, Lee Mazzilli, since traded and despondent from almost five years in the baseball wilderness, was called home to fill in, not star, on a Mets club headed to the post-season with him or without him. Once there, they played better with him than they would have without him. As a pinch-hitter, Lee started the rallies that tied Game Six and Game Seven of the World Series. He was the final piece of the championship puzzle, thus when this team reached its future, its last name was Mazzilli.

34. Armando Benitez: The good was 104 regular-season saves between July 1999 and September 2001 when the Mets were almost always playing must games. The good was taking to the closer role fairly seamlessly when Franco’s finger (the middle one, appropriately) went awry. The good was setting team records in ’00 and ’01, with 41 and 43 saves, respectively. The good was an uncommonly intimidating presence unlike anything the Mets had ever had in the late innings. The good was the way he established himself as a bulletproof setup man in ’99, defining the newly configured Mets bullpen — Cook, Wendell, Benitez, Franco — into a fantastically effective weapon early on, showing hitters a panoply of different looks, speeds and styles. The good was keeping the door slammed on the Pirates that all-important final Sunday of 1999 and closing out the Braves in Game Four and keeping them at bay in Game Five and saving Game Three of the 2000 World Series. There was some substantial good with the bad. On the other hand, the bad has paid for more therapists’ summer homes than all off Woody Allen’s neuroses combined.

33. Ron Darling: Of all the what-ifs that haunt Mets fans, there’s one whose implications are as tantalizing as the talent that the player at the center of the question never displayed quite enough of. What if Ron Darling doesn’t tear the ligaments in his thumb while trying to field a Vince Coleman bunt at Shea on September 11, 1987? What if that doesn’t finish him for the season? At the time, the top of the sixth, the Mets led the Cardinals 4-1. Darling had a no-hitter going. Two months earlier, the Mets were in fourth place, trailing St. Louis by 10-1/2 games. Now they were in second, 1-1/2 back. The no-hitter would have been dandy, but a healthy Darling finishing out the Cardinals and trimming the deficit to a half-game would’ve been, for all practical purposes, more important. One can only imagine the Mets, led by a lights-out Ron Darling (and not scrambling with the likes of John Candelaria), storming past their blood rivals and taking the division, the pennant and a second consecutive World Series, and the ’80s Mets being acknowledged as a dynasty instead of a disappointment. Like the Mets, Darling had scuffled for too long in ’87, spinning his wheels at 2-6, making the Goodenless void of the first two months yawn that much wider. But between July 7 and September 5, he went 10-2, remaining the only starter to not lose time to injury or drugs. He was, at last, fitting into the ace role it was assumed he could fill as needed. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thrived as the No. 2 or 3 pitcher on the staff at any given moment since coming up at the end of ’83. Twice an all-star, he won 43 games in his first three full seasons. The Mets won 26 of his 34 starts in 1986 and he pitched gems in a Game One loss and a Game Four win against the Red Sox. Yet despite compiling 99 regular-season victories as a Met, fourth most ever, Darling had his problems in the extraordinarily big games. He dug a 0-4 hole in Game Three against the Astros, saved only by Darryl and Lenny. He didn’t settle down in Game Seven versus Boston until it was almost too late. Two years later, in another Seven, he didn’t show up at all versus Hershiser, getting knocked out in the second. What became known as the Terry Pendleton game might have changed all that. Sadly, it never got to be the Ron Darling game.

32. Ron Swoboda: Casey was right. The Youth of America was on its way. There was no greater line of demarcation between what had been and what was at hand than the promotion of raw, righty slugger Ron Swoboda, all of 20, to start the 1965 season. It was the difference between importing veteran lovable characters to guffaw at and cultivating our own guys, even if they were unintentionally laughable for a while. If you’re going to watch a ballplayer stumble around helplessly, the least he can do is give you hope that he’s something to build on. Rocky Swoboda fit the mold of the old absurd Met. Attacked fly balls like they were grenades, necessitating the insertion of late-inning defensive replacements on his behalf. Celebrated on a banner as STRONGER THAN DIRT. Had a Chinese grandfather (which was considered colorful in those unenlightened days). But he could hit: Fifteen homers in the first half of his rookie year. Old-timers still talk about the three-run pinch job he blasted off the Giants’ Bill Henry in the bottom of the ninth in August ’66. It capped a comeback that had been started against one of the Mets’ most unforgiving oppressors, Juan Marichal. At 22, Swoboda was a folk hero if not a particularly well-rounded baseball player. The Mets grew unimpressed by the former while seeking more of the latter. In 1969, Ron Swoboda played less than he had in any of his previous four seasons. He says he resented Gil Hodges for it. But Hodges, who had it all over dirt in the strength department, knew how to pick spots for his players. Swoboda platooned with Shamsky in right field. In the Series, the Orioles threw lefties in four of five games, so Ron started four times. He hit .400 and drove in the winning run of Game Five. And the day before, in the ninth inning of Game Four, he was not replaced for defense, even with Seaver clinging to a 1-0 lead, even when the O’s put runners on first and third with one out, even as Brooks Robinson came to bat. Robinson lined a sure double, maybe a triple to right. Swoboda dove, lunged and stuck out his glove. When the ball got by him, it would probably go for an inside-the-parker. Except Ron Swoboda, all of 25, made the greatest catch in World Series history. Casey was right. The Youth of America had arrived.

31. Sid Fernandez: Nobody had better stuff than El Sid. That was a given. He won 98 games in ten Met seasons, yet usually left you wanting more because his stuff didn’t always translate into success. Except during Game Seven when he relieved Ron Darling in top of the fourth, the Mets down 3-0. Sid had his stuff that night. With a man on and two out, he walked Boggs then retired Barrett. In the fifth, three up and three down, two strikeouts. In the sixth, three up and three down, two more strikeouts. Sid Fernandez pitching 2-1/3 hitless innings in any given start was a commonplace occurrence. Doing it at the juncture at which he did it in Game Seven — methodically squashing the Red Sox’ momentum and holding the fort until the bottom of the sixth when the Mets would at last nick Bruce Hurst and tie the game at three — that’s the stuff that dreams are made of.

Some scouring over at Retrosheet

makes me think my flawed brain cells were trying to combine the 6th

inning with this horrible sequence, our last gasp in that dismal game:

METS 12TH: Leary replaced Stubbs (pitching); Sasser singled to

right; Darling ran for Sasser; Mazzilli batted for McDowell; Mazzilli

singled to center [Darling to second]; Jefferies flied to left; Orosco

replaced Leary (pitching); Hernandez walked [Darling to third, Mazzilli to second]; Strawberry popped to second; Hershiser replaced Orosco (pitching); McReynolds popped to center; 0 R, 2 H, 0 E, 3 LOB. Dodgers 5, Mets 4.

To which they may as well have added, Team goes in toilet for nearly a decade.

I'm glad I can't remember my 19-year-old self leaping up and down after J.O. walked Mex. I must have been very excited.

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.