Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

I hope that whoever designed the Shawn Green "Yom Kippur Clipper" t-shirts that were being hawked in Grand Central prior to Game 7 of the NLCS have the capability for another artistic creation. With utility man David Newhan in the fold, the Mets now have two Jewish players on the roster. T-shirt designers want to make note than Newhan's nickname is "Son of Scribe." Newhan is the son of a Hall of Fame honoree, Los Angeles Times baseball writer Ross Newhan. The elder Newhan has been known to get rather emotional when following his son. When in 2004, the younger Newhan homered in his first at bat back in the majors after nearly three years and two shoulder surgeries, the elder Newhan let out a yelp that columnist Bill Plaschke described as "Howard Dean-esque" (Ross was following his son's Orioles-Rockies game on the internet while covering the Dodgers) That hit was part of a magical 2004 campaign for Newhan, one that the Mets hope he can duplicate af...

We've had a couple of walk-off finishes in these meaningless exhibitions known as college football bowl games and the one that really seems to have this country buzzing is Boise State's crazy victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. I had an inkling to write something about walk-off trickery, like the kind used by Boise State to tie late in regulation and then win in overtime, but I haven't been able to find an example of such to provide a worthy story If you want to talk about the gutsiest decision made in a Mets walk-off win, you should probably read this posting, about the daring nature of Tommie Agee, who would have been a perfect fit for that Boise squad. http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/07/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go.html My tribute to Boise State comes in talking about it's most noteworthy baseball alumnus (there have only been two to make the majors. That would be Larry Jackson. Larry Jackson plays an important role in Mets history, that of Mets-killer. F...

Part of a continuing series of essays within this blog related to Game 6 of the 1986 World Series There was a brief discussion the other day, when I told the story of a Mets loss on the night of Richard Nixon's resignation announcement, of other significant events to take place on the date of momentous Mets victories. Loyal reader Barry Federovitch pointed out that the famous "Ball on the Wall" victory over the Pirates took place the same day as the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Fellow blogger Greg from "Faith and Fear in Flushing" noted how Matt Franco's game-winning hit against Mariano Rivera in 1999 took place the same day of Brandi Chastain's goal that gave the United States women's soccer team victory in the championship game of the World Cup. While I haven't been able to find many events of historical or sporting significance, I did come across one of particular importance to some. If...

On December 31, many will congregate in Times Square to witness the ball-dropping and begin the celebration of a New Year. There have been a few instances on which Mets walk-off fans have had the opportunity to celebrate a ball-beyond the one taking place at the start of a year. And though the festivities may be lacking in champagne and confetti, they are just as Metmorable. The most thrilling may have taken place on June 2, 1963, when fans not only got a ball-dropping, but they received two victories for the price of one. That was the date for a home doubleheader against the Pirates. The season was about one-third complete and the cuteness of the Mets mediocrity of 1962 seemed to be wearing off, so the fans were in need of games like these. The opening game was a pitchers duel between Mets "ace" Roger Craig and Pirates moundsman Vernon Law. A Duke Snider home run in the 4th brought the fans to their feet and provided the Mets with the game's only run, until the 9th innin...

So I'm eavesdropping on a conversation between two people the other day, one famous and one not, and the celebrity says to the non-celeb that the greatest relief of his career is that he never had a "Bill Buckner moment." But others have. I did a number of googlings to try to find references and wasn't particularly satisfied when I searched for "Bill Buckner moment" or "Bucknerian." The best results came from trying to find Bill Buckner equivalents, ie: "The Bill Buckner of..." Here's what I found. *When 1996 Team USA Olympic softball player Dani Tyler was called out for failing to touch home plate after hitting a home run, Peter King's story in Sports Illustrated said "She may go down as the Bill Buckner of fast-pitch softball." * Television reporter Andrew Gilligan has been called "The Bill Buckner of the BBC" due to some unsual blunder of which I'm not aware. * A Massachusetts News headline regarding go...

I don't really have any memories of Gerald Ford's presidency, since for the portion of it for which I was alive, I was a toddler. So I can't reminisce like others might today, the day after his death. I do know that Gerald Ford was both sportsman (he aspired to be a pro baseball player but was better in football) and sports fan (he used to take his future wife on dates to see All-American Girls Professional Baseball League games, and his presidential library once hosted a baseball-themed exhibit), so I don't feel it inappropriate to share how his life and this blog intertwine. So I shall tell, in brief, the tale of August 8, 1974. The Mets were playing the Pirates in Pittsburgh, but of extraordinarily greater significance, the reign of President Richard Nixon was coming to an end. More than 130 million people watched on television as Nixon announced his resignation. WOR-TV interrupted its telecast of the Mets game in the sixth inning because it felt this news was of gre...

I remember regularly watching the TV show Kate & Allie, which used to air Monday night's on CBS, in combination with Newhart and it made for a good hour of family viewing. Kate & Allie was the story of two 30/40-something women raising three kids together. I bring this up because other than that, I can't recall an encounter with someone named Chip, which was the name of Allie's son, until now, with the Mets having signed former Royals outfielder Chip Ambres to a minor league deal. Ambres is a former first-round pick of the Marlins, who has shown both a little power and a little speed in his pro career, but has yet to make a significant impact. He hit .241 with the 2005 Royals in a 53-game stint with four home runs and three stolen bases. Ambres has previously made the most of fresh opportunities, as some may recollect from August 24, 2005. On that date, the Royals and Red Sox were knotted in a 3-3 deadlock in the last of the ninth. With the bases loaded and one out ...

Cubs broadcaster Ron Santo is the patron saint of all walk-off broadcasters because he has the ability to express the feelings of all those who have suffered the agony of a walk-off defeat in just one cry of anguish... "OHHHH NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! While there is no need to get into the horrors that befell the Mets in the final days of the 1998 baseball season, we must at least acknowledge them to provide the context for this story. The chase for the NL's wild card spot bore down to the last week of September, as the Cubs and Mets dueled, and the Giants made a quick, last-ditch uphill chase. The Cubs and Mets entered September 23rd tied, with the not-so-relevant Giants 2 1/2 back, with 4 games left to play. The Cubs and Brewers were wrapping up a series in Milwaukee that afternoon, prior to the Mets game with the Expos. The Cubs were sputtering a bit, but they had won the previous day and took a comfortable early lead with St...

So the Knicks did it again on Wednesday night, winning at the buzzer on David Lee's tip-in of Jamal Crawford's inbounds pass in a rather improbable double-overtime ending. It's that time of year in which the Knicks have historically had a lot of success winning games in this fashion. For most, it brought back memories of one particular game, though for our purposes, we'll reference three such contests. The first is the obvious one, the Knicks victory over the Bulls on January 15, 1990, when Trent Tucker took an inbounds pass with 0.1 seconds remaining and flipped in a 3-pointer at the buzzer for the win. The laws of mathematics, as well as common sense dictate this kind of play to be an impossibility, but the NBA was not prepared for this kind of dispute in it's first season using tenths-of-a-second to measure the final minute. The basket led to the creation of what's known as the "Tucker Rule" which states that the only way that you can score in such ...

It feels the slightest bit appropos, on a night in which there is Knickerbocker jubilation (James Dolan is said to be dancing in the streets) thanks to a walk-off buzzer beating finger roll by Stephon Marbury over Jazz center Mehmut Okur (translation of which is "My Ogre"), that we find some sort of Mets tie in. Wouldn'tcha know, I found one? I suppose it would make sense to use this space to find a Metsian equivalent to this Knicks victory, but I choose not to write about the 26 instances in which the Flushing 9 went from a 1-run deficit to a 1-run win on one swing of the bat, or the subset of 16 occurrences in which they accomplished that down to the final out (closest thing to a clock winding down we've got). One of the reasons for that is because I've already penned essays on nearly all of them already. It would also seem logical for me to use this space at some point for one of my rant-and-rave sessions about the Knicks president/general manager/coach/waterbo...

I'm in the mood to wish a Happy Hanukkah to someone and since I've already written about the likes of Shawn Green , Elliott Maddox , and Norm Sherry , I thought I'd offer a friendly shout-out to former Mets catcher Greg Goossen, since obscurity seems to be our specialty here. Goossen appeared in 99 Mets games from 1965 to 1968, serving as a third-string catcher behind Jerry Grote his first three seasons and a backup first baseman in his last Mets campaign. That he not well remembered (other than for Casey Stengel saying "He's a 20-year-old kid. In 10 years, he has a chance to be 30.") may have something to do with the fact that in those 99 games, the Mets only won 28 times (they lost 70 and tied once). In 1967, his appearance virtually assured a Mets defeat, as he played in 37 games and the New Yorkers were victors only thrice. The next year, Goossen had a little bit more good fortune. In a season bereft of walk-off victories, Goossen had the opportunity to pa...

All I want this holiday season is a B&W. No, not the root beer. B&W are the initials for a player best known for his exploits for another New York baseball team, that oft leaves him feeling unwanted at this time of year. I'm talking about possibly soon-to-be ex-Yankee Bernie Williams, whom I feel would be a good fit for the 2007 Mets. If you work off the presumption that the Mets will carry 11 pitchers, that leaves room for 14 position players. The eight starters are pretty well defined at this point, and the bench as comprised at this moment (Msrs Chavez, Johnson Easley, Castro, and Franco) leaves room for one more batsman. Now, that spot could be filled by Lastings Milledge, but it seems a waste of a roster spot to have Milledge on the team if he's not playing every day (let's also factor in Milledge's potential as a trade chip). It could be filled by Anderson Hernandez, but his usefulness is limited by his inability to swing a consistent bat. I prefer it be f...

I don't know how many of you read the piece about Andy Fogel's Mets memorabilia collection in the New York Times a few months ago, but I can tell you that the story, as good as it was, does not do the visuals justice. I had the chance last Friday to check out Fogel's collection and it was well worth the 90-minute trip to the New York suburbs. It was the Metsian equivalent of making a pilgramage to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Fogel's Metssession takes up a good chunk of his basement and an upstairs bedroom around which we had to tiptoe gently because the amount of memorabilia was overflowing. The best way to describe Fogel's method of collection is completionist. He has every Met yearbook (including every revised edition), a full set of team-signed baseballs, and a comprehensive accumulation of trinkets, like lighters, trinkets and bobbleheads. There are dozens of pennants taped to the ceilings. He just purchased a "couple hundred" ticket stubs from Tom Seav...

I was sad to hear that former Giants shortstop Jose Uribe died on Friday and that went beyond the sadness that comes with the hearing that someone died too young. During my time in college, I was very involved with the campus radio station as its sports director and play-by-play announcer. During one of our weekly board of director meetings, it was announced that one of our board members would have the name of his title changed slightly. As we went around the table, each director congratulated the board member on the title change in a humorous manner. When it got to my turn, I knew I had to trump those who previously came before me. So I said something to the effect of "There was once a major league baseball player in the 80s named Jose Gonzalez who got frustrated because it seemed that there were many baseball players with that name. So he changed his name to Jose Uribe (Uribe being his mom's maiden name). I hope you have better luck with your name change than he did with his...

I've written about new first base coach Howard Johnson several times, such as... http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2006/06/hitting-in-pinch.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2006/01/bad-for-goose-bad-for-gander.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/08/stars-in-alignment.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/06/inspired-by-charles-schulz.html

Considering how bad Ambiorix Burgos has been over the past two years, it was actually somewhat surprising to me that he'd only allowed one walk-off hit. Albeit this one was a doozy, a three-run triple to Indians centerfielder Grady Sizemore this past August 11, which turned a 3-1 lead into a 4-3 defeat. You might remember from past readings that I was very much in favor of keeping Brian Bannister , but I don't really have any qualms about this deal. To get a young power arm for the bullpen, you have to give up something of value, and if Bannister is going to be starting on Opening Day, better that he do it for the Royals than the new Mets Triple-A franchise in New Orleans. Bannister was slated to be behind young arms Mike Pelfrey and Phil Humber, among others, in the Mets pitching plans for 2006. Bannister was also likely behind Clint Nageotte, who was recently signed to the Jose Lima Exemption (oops sorry, wrong sport) and, in a best case scenario could morph into a righthande...

My first encounter with Barry Zito pitching in New York took place, albeit in indirect fashion, on August 8, 2000. I don't recall the occasion, but I was in the city, visiting my family that day. I took a New Jersey Transit train back towards my then-home in Yardley, Pa. (right on the NJ border, near Trenton) sometime around 10:30pm. At some point, either on the train, or just before bording, I saw a group of folks who were obviously Yankees fans, based on their attire. I asked them who won the game that they had clearly attended, between the Yankees and Oakland Athletics. "I don't know," one said. "We left in the 9th inning and they were losing. But when we were leaving, we heard the crowd get real loud, twice, so I'm thinking the Yankees might have won, and we missed it." If you've read this blog before, you know that one of my biggest pet peeves is people who leave baseball games early. Would you depart a Broadway show before viewing the ending? O...

The hubbub surrounding Tom Glavine's re-signing failed to intrigue me enough to cure my case of blogger's block and in search of inspiration, I went to my freshly purchased 1986 World Series DVD set. My viewing of choice was Game 7 and the "Extras" bonus collection that adds some fresh perspective to the memories. The most entertaining viewing on the latter came in the form of a discussion between Mike Piazza and Mookie Wilson in which Piazza asks Mookie just what it was like to be a part of the most memorable moment in Mets history. Mookie recounts the usual stories and mentions that he and Buckner chat about their most significant encounter and tells how Buckner has made good money by turning a negative situation into a positive one. I wonder if they ever got around to discussing their come-togethers in Game 7, lesser appreciated than that in Game 6, but each bearing some significance on the final outcome. For those who forget, the first came in the second inning, a...

Little busy these next few days. Will try to weigh in if something significant happens... In the meantime, if you're in the mood for reading about Giants baseball collapses (rather than the football one that took place on Sunday), check out a couple of old links... http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/06/hendu-can-do.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/06/hendu-part-ii.html or http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/06/fatherson-walk-off-memory.html or http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/08/stars-in-alignment.html

Answers to the Turk Wendell quiz of November 23, 2007 (the day after Thanksgiving) Questions here: http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2007/11/our-special-bonds-turk-keys-questions.html 1- The former Met 1B with the highest career BA vs Wendell: Not John Olerud, but Rico Brogna , who hit .714 (5-for-7 with 3 walks) 2- The ex-Met 2B and SS who hit walk-off HR vs Wendell in 2000: Jeff Kent and Kevin Elster. Those were 2 of 8 walk-off HR allowed by Wendell in his career. 3- Who gave up Turk Wendell's last hit? Former Met (and Rockie) Masato Yoshii. 4- Losing pitcher in Wendell's first win, a former Met: Congratulations and welcome to ultiMet geekhood if you knew the answer was Wally Whitehurst . 5- 0-for-8 with 6 K vs Wendell. Mark (50 HR at Shea) McGwire. 6- 1-for-24 vs Wendell. Wendell was originally drafted by the Braves, and thus the answer to the question is Andruw Jones .