Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

Today we ponder the question: If a walk-off occurs and no one is there to see it, does it really happen? That's kind of how I felt watching the ninth inning of Thursday's loss to the Marlins, in a game in which the attendance wasn't announced because it wouldn't jive with the reality of the paltry crowd at Shea Stadium. In the original Summer of False Hope that was 1980, the crowds dwindled significantly at the conclusion of the season. The finish to the campaign was miserable and heading into the final series against Pittsburgh, the Flushing 9 had won just 8 of their last 43 games. This was in the day in which crowds were counted by turnstile clicks rather than tickets sold, so the tally was only 1,787 on September 29, an all-time Shea Stadium low that stood until the next day when 1,754 made it through the gates. Particularly poor weather, the kind more typical than that seen at Shea Stadium this September, didn't help matters much. Anyhow, there was still basebal...

Donn Clendenon's timing for big hits was one of his best traits as a New York Met. Clendenon died a few days ago, after a long battle with leukemia, at age 70. He is best remembered for his play during the 1969 season as a valuable midseason acquisition who starred during the World Series upset of the Baltimore Orioles. In the fifth and deciding game, his home run, with the Mets trailing, 3-0, helped the Mets rally to a victory and a world championship. The next season, Clendenon was terrific, driving in a club-record 97 runs. His skills eroded quickly however and the 1971 season turned out to be his last as a Met. The slump that marked the end of Clendenon's run of success began in May and carried over the course of a month. In the midst of a 2-for-36 funk, he ended up benched, used as a pinch hitter and defensive replacement, which was his role on June 19, 1971 when the Mets hosted the Phillies on Helmet Day. The thought that this would be a pitchers duel between Tom Seaver a...

Ibid. See previous post. OK, I've awakened and I still like that line, which is borrowed from a story about the "Boston Massacre" series between the Yankees and Red Sox in 1978. The Miggy Poo reference in the headline is a play on a nickname given by Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas when reliever Mitch Williams (aka "Mitchy Poo") got a walk-off hit at 4 am a few years back. Many Mets fans think of Miguel Cairo as "Miggy Poop" for his late-season struggles, but perhaps the expectations raised when the Mets won the first seven games in which he started, were just too great. As for original content, I can tell you that... After Wednesday's triumph, the Mets now have eight walk-off wins this season, matching their 2004 total. The Mets had walk-off hits in back-to-back games for the first time since...June 18 and 19 2004 when Mike Cameron beat the Tigers on back-to-back days. It's the first time they've had back-to-back walk-off wins in Septembe...

There wasn't much of a race for the NL East flag through the summer of 1976 because the Philadelphia Phillies pulled away from the competition with ease. By the last week of August, their lead over second place Pittsburgh had stretched to 15 1/2 games. This would be a coast to the finish, much like it was supposed to be for the 2005 White Sox in the AL Central. Not quite. Things weren't so hunky-dory in Philadelphia after the Phillies dropped 14 of 17, including two of three to the Mets. Some of the losses were quite torturous, like back-to-back 1-0 defeats and a 15-inning loss to the Reds in which the Phillies couldn't close out leads in the ninth or 13th innings. Meanwhile the Pirates got red-hot, much like the Cleveland Indians have this season. They won 15 of 17 games, including a three-game sweep of the floundering Phillies. On the morning of September 13, Pittsburgh was within a very reasonable four games, with 21 to play, including a couple shortly against Philadelph...

September 20 marks the 32nd anniversary of one of the most famous walk-off wins in Mets history. During the 1973 pennant race, the turning point came in a Mets-Pirates game at Shea Stadium. As I was not born until 16 months afterwards, I didn't feel I could do the game justice by rewriting the details. So I've brought in a guestwriter today. Barry Federovitch is a sportswriter/copy editor at the Trenton Times. This game has a special meaning for him, and I'll let him explain... Thirty-two years later, Met Nation is beaten down. Another September of Atlanta supremacy, of Yankee backpages. Another fall without the postseason, of autumn fades and bullpen implosions. How long must it go on? Whose soul was sold and for what to suffer this fate? They are called Amazin's, but what does that mean? Is it a joke for a tortured fandom? Static-filled WFAN programs fill depressed nights and then we remember when those Met flags on the pole were earned. They were not just pennants, b...

Part IV of a continuing series on Game 6 of the 1986 World Series I went to work for my dad at a baseball card show on Sunday, October 26, 1986, and since we had to get up early to head to New Jersey, I didn't get to go through the newspaper as thoroughly as I would. Nowadays, if there's a big baseball event, I like to read about it from as many different perspectives as possible. That wasn't something that was as easily accessible back then as it is today, with the magic of the internet allowing the ability to surf a dozen newspapers within a few minutes. Thankfully now, we have the capability to flash back, and when I was given the opportunity to test a newspaper database a few years ago, I checked its thoroughness by compiling the different stories written about Game 6 of the World Series. The cool thing about going through the various pieces is how clever some of the writing could be, particularly at such a late hour with deadline pressures looming in many cities. What ...

The memories of the 1992 Mets season are ones best forgotten. That year is a story of bad, ill-timed decisions with no sense of logic, history, or appropriate behavior. I'm not even talking about the squad itself. I'm referencing what that took place in the Simon residence on August 30, 1992. The Mets were playing the Reds that evening on "Sunday Night Baseball." The Flushing 9 were a hot team at the moment, having won six straight, though they were languishing at an ugly 60-67, while the Reds were in second place, five games back of the lead in the NL West. My dad tends to lose patience when his teams are sub .500 and facing a double-digit deficit after the All-Star Break and since he has been watching baseball for 50+ years, I guess that's understandable. August 30 wasn't just any night. It was the night of the Emmy Awards, those given to the best television performers of the day. I was reminded of this because this year's Emmys are being awarded on Sund...

"You can't win. You can't beat me. That's why I'm here and you're there. Because I'm a winner. I'll always be a winner and you'll always be a loser." I harken back to television again, since it's Emmy weekend and reference a line from an episode of the best written television show of all-time, Seinfeld (aptly titled "The Revenge"), because it was one of the first things I thought of after the Braves swept the Mets out of Atlanta, effectively ending the Summer of False Hope. Watching some of the camera shots of the Braves in the ninth and 10th inning of the series finale, you almost got the impression that some of the players were mocking the Mets, laughing like George Costanza's boss, Mr. Levitan when George tried to slip back into work after quitting in anger a week before. It was pretty evident that the 1995 season wasn't going to be worth the wait for the New York Mets, particularly the way Opening Day ended, with Dante...

I can remember several occasions when, as a little boy, I fell in the playground and scraped my knees. The pain usually stung and lingered for a few days and the reminders of what happened came in the form of scabs and scars, both physical and mental. Mets fans are probably feeling like that little boy who scraped his knees, based on the recent occurrences combining a long road trip, some bad fortune and a dash of incompetent play. We tried to remedy the wounds with stories from a quarter-century ago but I don't know if those did the trick. Band-aids can cover up the wounds, but there's always the temptation to pull them off too soon, before the healing is completed. The best cure I know for scraped knees came from Grandma Sophie, played so well by Marion Ross on the television show "Brooklyn Bridge." When Sophie's young grandson, Nathaniel Silver, scrapes his knees while playing ball in the street, she comes quick to the rescue, with some yummy desserts. Nathanie...

Things were going so swimmingly in the week that was one of glory for the 1980 New York Mets (see the previous two entries) that they even made a trade to bolster their lineup, sending a minor leaguer to the White Sox for outfielder Claudell Washington. It was a good move at a good time, considering the Mets were in one of their hottest streaks in four years, as Frank Cashen sent a message to the Flushing Faithful that the team would try to improve itself. Washington wasn't a superstar by any means, but it was unusual to see the Mets make a nothing-for-something kind of trade. So it was with 11 wins in 17 games that the Mets went into their June 11 game with the Los Angeles Dodgers, one day after rallying from a 4-0 deficit to win. They had confidence, and they had their ace on the mound, starting pitcher Craig Swan, whose ERA entering the game was 2.27. The Mets seized a 2-0 lead against Jerry Reuss, unusual because scoring first in this run of success was a rarity. That was all t...

New York Times writers are very picky when it comes to choosing words, so when the three-year embargo was finally lifted, allowing the words "rousing" and Mets to be used in the same sentence, it must have caught the attention of a lot of readers picking up their Sunday editions on June 8, 1980. This was in reference to the story of the game the day before, a nationally televised contest on a Saturday afternoon at Shea against the defending champion Pittsburgh Pirates. After winning in walk-off fashion on Thursday, the Mets carried that momentum into a nice victory on Friday, a 9-4 triumph featuring an eight-run second inning against Bert Blyleven and a long shutout relief stint from Tom Hausman. The Pirates had drubbed them by the combined tally of 18-3 in their prior two meetings, so this was a nice way to turn the tables. Saturday, the Mets started John Pacella, whose major-league tenure is best known for his pitching motion, which caused his cap to fly off on every follow...

I have been disparaged by some of my colleagues, family members and friends over the past three months, because I had the gall (John Gall?) to refer to this year's Mets tease as "The Summer of False Hope" (SOFH to some). The term was not meant in a derogatory fashion but rather what could serve as the title for the 2005 highlight film, were there to be one. Admit that your hopes were raised by some of these wins. Cliff Floyd's walk-off home run on June 11 probably sucked in a few fans and the four-game sweep in Arizona put a lot of those folks into a euphoric state that preceded the cliff-falling road trip through Florida, Atlanta, and St. Louis. Sure, it's not over yet (was it an omen that upon flipping to a radio station after one loss, I heard the lyrics "Don't stop....believing"?), but barring an unlikely run (16-3, 17-2?) in these last 19 games, it's likely the 2005 season will end in disappointing fashion. This is not the first time that M...

For those discouraged by the recent prospects of the Flushing 9, it is important to remember that a lot of good things can happen to a baseball team in a rather short period of time. It was 36 years ago Saturday that the Mets had one of their most significant regular-season victories and conveniently for us, it happened in walk-off fashion. The Mets entered September 10, 1969 on the precipice of great things, just 1/2 game out of first place after beating the first-place Cubs twice at Shea Stadium. Chicago travelled to Philadelphia afterwards while the Mets caught a scheduling break, with a doubleheader against the expansion Expos. The first game started in twilight and the Mets, winners of four straight, put Jim McAndrew on the mound against rookie Mike Wegener. Neither a first nor second inning run by the Expos dampened the Mets spirits, as they responded with unearned runs in the first and fifth to knot the game at two apiece. The game evolved into a pitchers duel, albeit a rather o...

The Braves 86'd the Mets out of town and on to St. Louis on Wednesday night, laughing merrily as they did so on Wednesday night as the Flushing 9 gagged up some good ole' southern tomahawk slop. The good game giveth and the good game taketh away and this was one of those occasions where the latter came to fruition in a manner that most fans probably found ugly and disgusting. We told you on Tuesday that it wasn't always this way, of how the Braves were once the punchline to their own baseball joke. Today we'll tell you to feel better because baseball tends to be cyclical. What goes around, comes around. How appropriate then that we reminisce about a game about which Joseph Durso of the New York Times wrote "In another chapter of their life and struggles against the Atlanta Braves..." The date was Saturday May 22, 1971 and the meeting of the two squads at Shea Stadium turned into one of those crazy see-saw flip-flops that feel awfully good when you win and awfu...

Do you remember the days when the Braves were just an insignificant piece of dust on the windowsill of baseball life? There have been these mini-eras in the history of the game in which the Braves were the team at which everyone poked fun. Two of them have actually occurred in my lifetime and I shall speak of the first one on this occasion. The 1975-1979 Braves were a rather pathetic bunch They were a joke of a squad, with players whose names rang with mediocrity and good humor, such as Rowland Office, Pat Rockett, Biff Pocaroba and Pepe Frias. Yes, they were able to add the likes of Bob Horner and Dale Murphy to the squad, but this was the time before they made a significant impact. The most notable thing about the team was its biggest fan, an Indian mascot named Chief Noc-a-homa. The owner, Ted Turner, tried to manage the team, but even that didn't work. Bobby Cox, version 1.0, came around at the end of this run to turn things around a little bit, but even he suffered through th...

No, I don't have a story of a walk-off that made Chipper Jones cry...Perhaps tomorrow. Instead, I digress slightly... Some Mets fans may get confused if you tell them that you saw Bob Gibson, John Sullivan, Frank Thomas, or Billy Baldwin play for the Mets. But they all did. Ok, so Gibson was a former Brewer and not the Cardinals Hall of Famer (who did serve as the team's pitching coach), Sullivan was a catcher, John P. and not John L. the heavyweight champ, Thomas was 6-foot-3, 205 pounds, big for his time, but not sized like the 6-foot-5, 260-pound White Sox slugger and Baldwin had an Oscar Gamble-style afro, and at least to my knowledge, doesn't have any brothers as colleagues. Baldwin, an outfielder who came to the team in the Rusty Staub for Mickey Lolich swap, is our subject of choice for flashback today, as he fits what we were looking for- a September call-up who earned his way into our database. Baldwin's Mets career lasted a grand total of nine games and he mus...

By my calculations, the Mets have only one Labor Day walk-off win in their illustrious history, and for good measure, it came exactly 22 years prior to Labor Day 2005 The NL East was a bit of a mishmash on this date in 1983, similar to how the race for the NL wild card looks this season. The Mets weren't among the teams battling for the top spot, as the Pirates, Expos, Phillies and Cardinals duked it out, with no team seeming to want to take control (similar to this year's NL West). The Pirates, at 70-65, had a one-game edge on the Phillies, who happened to be the Mets opponents that day. Fewer than 8,500 were on hand for this one as most Mets fans had lost interest at this point, with the team 22 games under .500, even though the lineup featured some excitement in the form of first baseman Keith Hernandez and rookie rightfielder Darryl Strawberry. That's too bad because they missed a dandy of a finish to this contest. Perfectly willing to play the spoiler role, the Mets st...

OK, so you liked "The Tidrow List," and there seemed to be enough clamoring for a "hitters version" to make doing one worthwhile. The Mets have certainly had their share of mediocre position players, historically speaking. Many a good player has donned the jersey only to have his skills turn to jello. Many a bad player has shown off his wares, or lack thereof, while donning a Mets jersey. You may have read my bashing the play of Brian McRae, whom I dubbed "The Rally Killer" for his ability to turn good situations into bad ones (witness wandering off first base during a game-winning sacrifice fly against the Yankees and his stumbling around third base as the potential winning run in the 14th inning on Opening Day, 1998) and his inability to come through in clutch situations (statistical evidence lacking at the moment, but anecdotal evidence remains in the memory banks). It is in his honor that I have compiled this list, one that isn't necessarily of the...

Howdy folks...next post is slightly delayed due to other obligations. We should have something interesting up over the weekend. I'm contemplating doing a hitters' version of "The Tidrow List" in honor, perhaps, of anonymous backup catchers (Ronn Reynolds, Junior Ortiz, Mike DiFelice) or below-average batsmen (same guys make the list) but am still figuring out some of the particulars. Feel free to comment on any suggestions you may have. In the meantime, why not check out an old post via the Table of Contents

Part III of an ongoing series regarding Game 6 of the 1986 World Series Some people believe that signs exist that a team is going to win a particular game. On October 25, it was kind of hard to miss. They were everywhere. Signs have been a ballpark staple at the Polo Grounds and Shea Stadium since the Mets played their first game in 1962. There's something about this team that makes them so prevalent. One fan, Karl Ehrhardt, even became known as "Sign Man" because his work became quite popular. There were 55,078 people in the stands that night and it seems like a lot of them felt the need to express their feelings in writing on what some might call 'Placards.' Banner Day was never a favorite of mine, but I've always had an eye out for creative endeavors and there were plenty on display. There was bedlam on the field that night and bedsheets off the field, mostly hanging from the facing that separates the loge from the box seats. I paused my VCR for one crowd s...