Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

In 2009, I did a project for my website, Mets Walk-Offs and Other Minutiae, celebrating the best home runs in Mets history. I selected the top 60 regular season home runs and the top 15 postseason home runs. The reason I picked 60 was because it represented the top 1% of home runs in Mets history (and 15 just felt right for postseason). This was fun to do, but it was imperfect. I had one egregious omission. I tended to favor oddities. It’s time to give that project an update. And why not do it as a top 100? The Mets have hit 7,671 regular season home runs. The top 80 represent about the top 1%. And the top 20 postseason home runs get us to an even 100 to celebrate. Come along for the ride. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the reminiscing. Hopefully you’ll find it Amazin’. No. 76 to 80 can be found  here No. 71 to 75 can be found  here   No. 66 to 70 can be found here 65. Walt Terrell hits two against a Hall of Famer  (August 6, 1983 vs Cubs) I...

In 2009, I did a project for my website, Mets Walk-Offs and Other Minutiae, celebrating the best home runs in Mets history. I selected the top 60 regular season home runs and the top 15 postseason home runs. The reason I picked 60 was because it represented the top 1% of home runs in Mets history (and 15 just felt right for postseason). This was fun to do, but it was imperfect. I had one egregious omission. I tended to favor oddities. It’s time to give that project an update. And why not do it as a top 100? The Mets have hit 7,671 regular season home runs. The top 80 represent about the top 1%. And the top 20 postseason home runs get us to an even 100 to celebrate. Come along for the ride. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the reminiscing. Hopefully you’ll find it Amazin’. No. 76 to 80 can be found here 75. Darryl Strawberry’s debut goes bonkers!  (May 6, 1983 vs Reds) Darryl Strawberry’s Mets debut was a HUGE deal. I can remember the Daily News begging him to ...

Regardless of whether it's spring training, a Mayor's Trophy exhibition, a regular season interleague game, or a Subway Series matchup, every game against the Yankees is significant. The proof of that comes from page 470 of this year's media guide, which lists the Flushing 9's all-time record against the Bronx Bombers as 63-92-1 (the tie came in a Mayor's Trophy match) and offers a thorough breakdown of the win-loss mark. The first meeting was significant enough that it warranted nine lines of mention in "The Complete Year-by-Year N.Y. Mets Fan's Almanac" from which we learned it deserves mention on this site. It was March 22, 1962 that New York's rivals first met in an exhibition game at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, where more than 6,000 came to watch. The Mets treated this contest more seriously than the Yankees, as both the almanac and newspaper stories indicate how manager Casey Stengel and president George Weiss was angry at their former e...

There's no truth to the rumor that Saturday's Knicks hero, 5-foot-7 guard Nate Robinson, grew up a member of the "Midget Mets" Booster Club. Robinson put himself into Knicks walk-off lore with his buzzer-beating 3-pointer against the 76ers at Madison Square Garden. The littlest Knick has already put his stamp on the game, and drawn the ire of head coach Larry Brown for being too much of a human highlight film. The littlest Met to hit a walk-off home run also was the recipient of commentary from his skipper, Casey Stengel, as being a good "low-ball catcher," which wasn't meant so much as praise but as a commentary that the rest of his game wasn't too nifty. Clarence Coleman, best known to Mets fans by the nickname "Choo Choo" (source of which is unverified) is listed at 5-foot-9, two inches taller than Robinson, but still rather small for a ballplayer who wasn't a good glove. Anyways, Coleman was known for being a little quiet and innoc...

Trace the lineage of Mets cult heroes and you must begin with the man whose initials were M-E-T: Marvin Eugene Throneberry. If you're a regular reader of this site, you probably know of the legend of the man known as "Marvelous Marv," who according to multiple sources, looked like Mickey Mantle. They failed to mention that he hit like Mickey Klutts . The last word of the previous sentence was a good way to describe Throneberry, whose foibles as a member of the 1962 Mets were legendary. The stories have been sourced in many places before, so I don't object too much to repeating them. Throneberry once was called out after an apparent triple. In his haste to race around the basepaths, he failed to touch first base. When manager Casey Stengel came out to argue, he was told not to bother. Throneberry had missed second as well. Throneberry made Mo Vaughn look like a Gold Glove at first base. In 97 games, he made 17 errors. Frank Thomas told a story on "The Miracle Mets...

Hobie Landrith holds a handful of distinctions in baseball history 1- He is the only person to play in the major leagues named "Hobie." 2- He was the Mets first pick in the expansion draft, prompting the famous quote from Casey Stengel. "You gotta have a catcher or you're gonna have a lot of passed balls." (The Mets used seven catchers in 1962 and had 26 passed balls) Most importantly to us... He is responsible for the first walk-off win in Mets history... Landrith's pinch-hit two-run home run off Hall of Famer Warren Spahn enabled the Mets to beat the Milwaukee Braves 3-2, at the Polo Grounds, in Game 1 of a doubleheader on May 12, 1962. The book "The Complete Year-By-Year New York Mets Fan's Almanac" describes Landrith as laughing as he rounded the bases, because the distance on his homer was barely more than 250 feet, in the horseshoe-shaped stadium. Approximately four hours later, Gil Hodges launched the second walk-off home run in Mets his...