Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

Traffic on this blog tends to be weakest during weekends. So, rather than do a writeup of a Mets walk-off win, I once again treat you to the second part in a series of ramblings on how walk-offs have affected my life. Regular blog programming should resume Monday... One of the key moments in my life as a baseball fan came for my 13th birthday, when, as a bar mitzvah gift, my cousins, John and Deanna bought me a Laser 128 computer. A Laser 128, in case you didn't know, was a cheap Apple clone (affordably priced at $399) that was perfectly sufficient at the time for someone who didn't know any better. In other words, it was great for game playing. To that point, I had grown up on Strat-O-Matic Baseball, an excellent baseball simulation, that taught me about the likes of big-eared Tigers pitcher Don Mossi (whom I had to know more about...Mossi came within 2 outs of a Strat perfect game before 1983-84 Mariners catcher Orlando Mercado broke it up with a triple) and more importantly ...

Got an e-mail yesterday from a fellow fan, about 20 minutes after the Mets-Nationals game ended asking "Can't they ever do anything the easy way???" in reference to the Flushing 9. Must I remind you that it wouldn't be as much fun if they did. I harken back to a Mets-Phillies game on May 23, 1999, one that this e-mailer and I declined to attend because the presumption of a rainout would make my three-hour commute into New York not worthwhile. There was a delay, in fact, one that lasted nearly two hours prior to first pitch, and it looked like we made a wise decision, as the Phillies scored twice in the third, once in the fourth, and tacked on an insurance run in the seventh for a 4-0 edge. The pitcher that day for the Phillies has had his name in the news the last couple of days. Turns out that Curt Schilling wants to be the Red Sox closer, at least for the next few weeks, much to the chagrin of a couple of his teammates. Schilling entered this particular game with a ...

I got into a discussion at work on Wednesday about the idea of leaving a baseball game early. Let me say that I am EXTREMELY opposed to ever doing so (Would you walk out in the middle of a Broadway show???), but have, on two occasions missed a walk-off due to early departure. In one case, staging my own walk-off was justified. It was a game that bore little significance to the standings, and I had to be at work by a certain hour. I was already on pace to be an hour late, and didn't think it appropriate to risk job status for my Mets fanhood. I have a harder time with my other memory of walking-off prior to a walk-off, because the reasons for which were never explained to me. It was June 4, 1988 a Saturday afternoon, and my Uncle Zachary and Aunt Carol took me and my friend David Cooper to see the Mets take on the Cubs. Aunt Carol used to get great seats through the company she worked for, and we were sitting in box seats, guessing maybe 15 rows off the field, on the left field line...

One of the fun things about this project is going through my visitor log each day on statcounter, to see where people are coming from geographically, how they got to my site (webographically?), and how long they're staying. With that in mind... If you link from overseas, e-mail me ...I'd love to hear from the folks in South Korea, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the Phillipines, and find out why you're reading my site. If you got to me via "Next blog" on "Blogger," at least this blog isn't an advertisement for a real estate firm To the person looking for the definition of "walk-off home run" try your Google search again without the word "define" and lastly, to the person who found my site on the 9th page of their google search for "David Wright dating girlfriend baseball," good luck to you... True Metwhackers know... The combination of "Katie Holmes" and "Rodney McCray...

It has been a regular complaint of New York Yankees fans that Alex Rodriguez doesn't get enough meaningful RBI to justify his financial compensation. Carlos Beltran has gotten booed (in Saturday's case, for lack of hustle running out a popup, rightfully so) for his lack of production in the first three months of what will be a long Flushing tenure. New York is a city of great expectations, and those who fail to fulfill them immediately(read Bobby Bonilla, Roberto Alomar and Kaz Matsui) get swallowed up by the waves of negativity. Those who can survive the initial barrage tend to do alright. Beltran's situation reminds me a little bit of what it was like for one of his current teammates, Mike Piazza, after he was traded to the Mets in May, 1998. In Piazza's first 27 games as a Met, he had hits in 22, and was batting .364. However, he only managed three home runs and 10 RBI and was not producing in big spots at the rate at which fans thought he should. The result of this ...

Basically I'm looking for a little filler material here, because I plan to write about another Mets walk-off that involves Mike Piazza, but I don't want to be accused of writing too often about recent events rather than nostalgia. That prompted a "What looks interesting here?" search through my database, and "This Date in New York Mets History" and the walk-off win that caught my eye took place on September 16, 1975. It was a 4-3, 18-inning triumph, tied in the ninth and won in the 18th, by the same man, outfielder Del Unser. Unser capped a two-out rally in the ninth with an RBI single to even the score, than won the contest nine innings later by walking on four pitches with the bases loaded and two outs. Other than that it was the year I was born, 1975 doesn't stand out in any particular way for the Mets, save for one or two statistical measurements. One was that for a stretch of three weeks or so, a rookie outfielder named Mike Vail "went DiMaggio...

Belated congratulations to Houston Astros do-everything man, Craig Biggio, for surpassing Don Baylor as the modern record-holder for most times hit by a pitch. It is a mark that is painful to think about, but admirable because it takes a heck of a lot of courage to stand in at home plate and get plunked 268 times for the good of your team. I have a feeling that Daryl Boston is aware of that because he is the holder of a significant Mets distinction. To this point, he is the only player in team history to win a game via a walk-off hit-by pitch. It took Boston more than 500 big league games and 1500 plate appearances before he was tagged for the first time, in the second game of a Mets doubleheader with the Cubs, on June 13, 1990, by pitcher Mike Harkey. Boston made up for years of lost time by getting drilled again, two days later, against the Pirates. Those are not the HBPs of which we speak. Boston would not get zinged again until nearly two years later (April 17, 1992) and it is the ...

One of my cousins, a young, Brooklyn-based chap named Matthew Sunday, thinks that my choice of vocabulary during conversation is too complex. He's not going to like this essay on clairvoyance and prognostication. Perhaps you will. Clairvoyance is a skill that millions of sports fans think they have, but only a select few do.That's one of the reasons that prognosticating for money is so popular, because so many have a clouded belief of expertise in a subject matter that is as unpredictable as any in the world. I have experienced moments of clairvoyance and take pride in my ability to selectively prognosticate with great accuracy. For example, moments after the New York Rangers lost Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals, I told my friends Daniel Gordon and David Cooper "Game 7 will be won by a captain." Let the record reflect that Vancouver captain Trevor Linden scored two goals in a losing effort and Rangers captain Mark Messier was credited (admittedly incorrectly) ...

Today I'm going to write about one of my favorite Mets walk-offs from my childhood. It happened in 1986. The Mets rallied from two runs down in the 10th inning to win, 6-5. Ray Knight scored the winning run. No, I'm not writing about October 25 and Bill Buckner, Rich Gedman, Bob Stanley and Mookie Wilson. Instead, I'm writing about July 3, 1986 and a game that served to foreshadow the team's postseason run. It was Fireworks Night at Shea Stadium and with lefty Jim Deshaies on the mound for Houston, manager Davey Johnson decided to sit one of his lefthanded bats. Inserting catcher Ed Hearn in place of Keith Hernandez (Gary Carter played first) gave the Mets an extra righthander in the lineup and the decision paid off when Hearn homered in the second inning, cutting an early deficit to 2-1. The lineup manueverings, or at least the idea of leaving Darryl Strawberry in against a southpaw, paid off again in the fifth inning when Strawberry launched a two-run shot to right-ce...

So it seems that Kenny Rogers had a little tiff with a couple of Texas tv cameramen on Wednesday and another incident that resulted in a broken pinkie earlier in the month. Mr. Rogers neighborhood hasn't been a friendly place for the media this season. He has been boycotting reporters since it was reported in the spring that he threatened retirement if he wasn't given a contract extension. Let me first say that there's no truth to the rumor that these cameramen were taunting Rogers with chants of "Ball Four!" Let me next tell you that, following the words of inspiration of "Cheers" barmaid Diane Chambers, I am a humanist. I try to find some good in everyone. And in this case, that means finding something good in a player that every Mets fan hates. So I shall harken back to October 1, 1999, a game that, in my little world, is known as "The American Beauty Game" because I went to the movies early in the evening, rather than torture myself listeni...

Today is also the anniversary of a more well-known game in Mets history...see documentation here... June 30 entry http://mets2005.myblogsite.com/blog In other news, recent events (and 2 days off) have me itching to write about a couple more walk-offs...I usually post once every 24 hours, but there may be some bonus coverage over the next 72 hours...Keep checking in...

There are 324 Mets walk-off wins in my database. There might have been one more, had things broke right on June 30, 1974, 31 years to the date of this post. Little went right for the Mets in their defense of the NL championship in 1974, starting on Opening Day, when the No. 8 hitter in the Phillies lineup (a second-year man by the name of Mike Schmidt) hit a walk-off home run off Tug McGraw. Injuries and poor play resulted in a miserable season and a final record of 71-91. The Mets were never contenders for the NL East title and limped through June at 30-42 entering a doubleheader on the final day of the month. Jerry Koosman lost the opening game of the double dip, and the Mets trailed the second game, 3-1, in the ninth inning when things suddenly got very interesting. The Mets loaded the bases on singles by Don Hahn, Ron Hodges and George Theodore, scored on a force play and subsequent RBI single by Teddy Martinez to tie the game. After Rusty Staub flied out, Cleon Jones hit a line dr...

Wednesday marks the 100th anniversary of the major-league debut of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, the player who served as the inspiration for a character bearing that name in the movie "Field of Dreams." Graham's big league career consisted of one game, but no plate appearances for the 1905 world champion Giants. He retired not long afterwards and became a highly-regarded doctor in Minnesota. Graham is the most famous of many moonlight players, whose careers consisted of one game and no plate apperances. The Associated Press did a really nice piece on the subject over the weekend and got quotes from one Mets moonlighter, Kevin Morgan, who now works as the Mets Director of Minor League Operations after a career that consisted of one plate appearance. For the purpose of that story, the definition of a "Moonlight" player was expanded slightly, to cover those players whose careers consisted of one game. We'll further broaden it to define a Mets "...

It was about 15 years ago that my dad went to Florida to meet with someone for a business deal. This person wanted to impress my dad, so he arranged for a few meetings. One was dinner with Hall of Famer Monte Irvin. Another was a quick meet-and-greet with former big leaguer Max Lanier. The third person he met was one that was larger than life- he got to spend nearly an hour talking with Ted Williams. During this conversation, the name of a rising Mets prospect came up. His swing, that's the one that most reminds me of mine, Williams said. My dad came back to New York all excited in having this knowledge and we looked forward to watching this player for a long time. For those too young to remember, think of Gregg Jefferies the rookie in basically the same way you think of David Wright. Jefferies was the subject of much hype, befitting of a player who was twice named Minor League Player of the Year by Baseball America. In 1988, he was recalled in late August and became an immediate c...

Thank you for indulging me and my Little League ramblings... Here's Monday's post, a few hours early. Steve Henderson called back on Friday! We told the story of Henderson's most noteworthy walk-off , a three-run homer to cap a five-run rally against the Giants in 1980 not long ago. "Hendu" gave us the scoop on why that was the second-most significant thing that happened that day. "I officially got engaged that day," Henderson said, talking from the road while on assignment as the Devil Rays minor league hitting coordinator. He went on to explain that he picked up his girlfriend of nearly four years (and now wife of nearly 25) Pamela at LaGuardia Airport. The two had agreed to get married, but it wasn't really official until Pamela put on the engagement ring in the car. "I didn't let the papers know about that," Henderson said. "She knew about it and it was all that mattered." Hendu went on to explain his knack for the walk-of...

WARNING: This is a long entry, has only a little to do with the Mets and is extremely self-indulgent (it is slightly humorous). Regular programming on this blog will resume on Monday...Anyway, if you read further, don't forget that you've been warned... I've taken a lot of crap at work recently because I shared a significant number of details of my Little League career with my colleagues. They laugh when I tell them that my career high batting average was .250 (4-for-16 in my career year, including a "disputed" hit), and how my biggest thrills were going 2-for-2 in a 19-0 win over the Wildcats and Carl Schurz Playground legend Tim Murphy, and turning an unassisted double play at first base on the mud field that is located under the 59th Street Bridge. I happen to have a really good memory, and I get a little carried away sometimes. It occured to me that it might be worthwhile to share my tales on paper rather than verbally, as a writing exercise, and that's wh...

Hey folks Good article on walk-offs here , by Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe. Definitely worth a look, even if he doesn't use a hyphen.

Anyone out there who knows whatever happened to Masato Yoshii? I do, now. I'm going to write about him today because I wanted to do something related to a Mets-Yankees walk-off, and my mind is still unable to comprehend the way that the Mets first regular-season walk-off win against the Yankees ended. The Mets don't have the best track record with Asian-born pitchers (see: Satoru Komiyama, Mr. Koo, Jae Seo, Hideo Nomo and Kaz Ishii), but Yoshii had a few moments of Mets glory. One of those was on June 28, 1998, when he matched up in an outstanding pitcher's duel with Orlando Hernandez on a Sunday night at Shea. Yoshii lasted seven innings, allowing just one run and two hits, striking out 10 primarily with his fastball and better-than-usual splitter. Yoshii even had a no-hitter going for 4 2/3 innings before Derek Jeter broke it up. The only Yankees run came on a Scott Brosius home run in the seventh inning, with the Mets holding a 1-0 lead (despite not managing a hit agains...

I believe it was in the winter of 1982, that for my seventh birthday, my dad gave me two books. One was called "Baseball's 100," and its author, Maury Allen, ranked the best players in baseball history to that point. The other was "This Date in New York Mets History" by Dennis D'Agostino. If you wanted to measure the impact that "This Date in New York Mets History" had on me, the closest thing I could equate it to would be that which L Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics" had on Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (except I'm not jumping up and down on Oprah Winfrey's sofa anytime soon). "This Date in Mets History" is 222 pages long and I have read every word on every page, probably 222 times. It was there that I learned such valuable lessons like that I share a birthday with Bob Apodaca (January 31), that Bill Sudakis was known to his Metsmates as "Suds," that one series sweep by the Phillies in 1980 was known as "The L...

On June 21, we remember John Stephenson as being the final out of Jim Bunning's perfect game, on that date in 1964. On all other days, we tend not to remember John Stephenson's baseball career at all. Today we do, and we reminisce about one of his two Mets walk-off moments, with a little treat for those who read all the way through. Again it's the Dodgers that we're talking about, as the Mets opponents on August 24, 1965. It's a Dodgers team that would go on to be world champs, and yet somehow the Mets took three of the four games in this matchup (with Tug McGraw outpitching Sandy Koufax in the series finale). They took this one in the same Metsian fashion in which they took the game referenced in our previous post, with a three-run rally in the ninth inning. An error and two singles loaded the bases for the pinch-hitting Stephenson, who brought home all three runners with a double to right center field. That gave reliever Dave Eilers his first major-league win. Sor...