Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

In TV, they call it a tease. When you see a news update during a commercial break in the tv show that you're watching, the goal is to entice you with just enough information to make you watch the news. Teases are well planned out, from the video you're watching to the description of what you can see, IF you tune in later. Sometimes the teases work. Sometimes they're a little too good. Monday nights in 1984 were CBS nights in our household, particularly from 9 to 11 pm. There was a sitcom with family appeal Kate and Allie , a humorously written comedy from a proven talent, Newhart, followed by an hour-long crime drama, Cagney and Lacey. On December 10, Emma McCardle developed a crush on her piano teacher, Dick Loudon got sued for plagarism, and Chris Cagney worried that Sgt. McKenna had given in to his cocaine addiction. Sometime between Dick's courtroom appearance and Cagney's confrontation with her police colleague, real news took over. CBS's New York affilate ...

Next blog post will likely be Friday morning. In the meantime...In case you missed it, Bill Buckner was in New York to help market a beer commercial that has the theme of "Second Chances." Apparently in said commercial, Mighty Casey gets another turn at bat and hits a home run. Buckner did the media tour on Tuesday and here are a few of the stories that were written. I will have something to say on the subject in a "Didja ever notice?" post (part of my series on 1986 WS Game 6) that will run either this weekend or next week. Newsday story http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--billbuckner1011oct11,0,6519370.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork New York Post http://www.nypost.com/sports/yankees/29386.htm NY Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/354875p-302501c.html AP Story http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2187744 Lastly, here's a link to "Elias Says" on ESPN.com. They had an unbelievable nugget linking Hideki Matsui...

Awhile back I was granted a unique perspective on Len Dykstra's walk-off home run that won Game 3 of the 1986 NLCS. A colleague of mine showed me some footage from a camera positioned in, of all places, the upper deck in right field. When given the chance to peek at this discovery, I took careful notes, such that I can almost tell you what it was like to be there (even though I wasn't). Here's some of what I jotted down in the form of both suggestions and observations. Why is it that the No. 7 train still looks exactly the same as it did nearly 20 years ago? (the footage opened with a shot of a train passing just prior to the start of the last of the ninth) They should bring back "Let's Go Mets!" as the ninth-inning rally theme music. It works much better than "I Need a Hero" or the theme from "Rocky." Speaking of which, whatever happened to "The Curly Shuffle?" On that note, bringing back the Rally Cap might be something fun and ...

So I started to write a blog about Game 3 of the 2000 NLDS, but I got bored rather quickly. My thinking was that rehashing this game wasn't going to be anything special, because it is such a well-known contest in Mets history. I don't have a particularly good story about watching the game, other than that I was at work, and when the Mets won, a Phillies fan termed their post-game celebration excessive. Then I discovered something. In the beginning of my writing, I had misspelled the last name of the man who hit the walk-off home run that won that particular game. My initial spelling of his name was "Agbyani," which thus was missing an "a" As someone who works in sports media (and was 5th grade class spelling champ at PS 190), I know the value of spelling . I have had a number of spelling encounters (though none with Aaron or Tori) over the years. When I was 12, I pointed out a flea-market forgery to my dad when I noticed someone selling a photo signed "...

Forgive me if I've shared some of these stories before, but thinking about Todd Pratt's playoff-winning home run gets me going on a bad tangent... When Pratt hit his walk-off home run on October 9, 1999, I was in the middle of a football broadcast in Schenecteday. I had access to tickets for both Game 3 and 4 of the NLDS, chose to go to Game 3, and fulfill a work commitment, both for a local radio station and a newspaper, the next day. I received nary a scoring update during the course of the game and didn't find out until I got to the SID's office that the Mets had won the game. I was pretty groggy that day, from not having gotten home from Shea until 2:30am and than awakened five hours later to catch a ride to Schenectady (Union 20, College of New Jersey 3. The Union SID gave me a high-five when I shared the Mets score.). Craig Brazell's walk-off home run against the Cubs on September 25, is also a memory missed due to a football broadcast (St. Lawrence 34, Coast ...