Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

To follow up on my previous post, I had the chance to ask Gary Cohen this week if he had a favorite walk-off or two from his radio days, noting that I'd prefer he chose one that was "under-the-radar." Here's his reply. "The most unexpected Mets' walkoff I can recall was the game in May of 1999 at Shea against Curt Schilling and the Phillies. The Mets were down 4-0 going to the 9th and Schilling had been at his dominating best. They got a couple of men on, scored a couple of runs, but Terry Francona, then the Phillies' manager, steadfastly refused to go to his bullpen. And he continued to refuse until the Mets had strung together enough hits to score five and win the game. Totally unexpected. The weirdest one I can remember, and I'm a little vague as to the year and opponent, was in the early 90s. Tie game, bases loaded, Daryl Boston up. The pitch was inside, and for a moment no one knew where the ball was. For good reason. The ball went direct

Just when I was looking for a little news to inspire a blog posting comes word that SportsNet New York named Gary Cohen as its Mets television play-by-play voice. This is great news from a TV viewing perspective and rather sad news from a radio broadcasting perspective. My colleagues at " Faith and Fear in Flushing " have articulated their feelings for Gary's work on a couple of occasions and I share those sentiments . Radio baseball is losing one of its best play-by-play announcers. Whether the Mets were cellar dwellars or NL champs, winners or losers, Cohen's broadcast work was entertaining and riveting. While in college, I had my ear glued to the radio in to hear how he would call the end of Darryl Kile's no-hitter against the Flushing 9 in 1993 ("Swing and a miss, he did it!") and when the Mets won the 15 inning playoff games against the Braves in 1999, one of my first thoughts on the ride home from Shea (besides 'what was the final score?) was t

To borrow a little humor from the Shakespearian work, Seinfeld , I find the asterisk (aka "*") to be the pinky toe of symbols. It's one of those things that doesn't really have a significant use, but should be appreciated for its existence.   The role of the asterisk has been of value to some, so say the folks at Wikipedia . I have put it to use as a substitute for inappropriate language within my writing ("f**k" reads better than "bleep.") but it also has other uses in linguistics, mathematics, as well as the sport of cricket.   Baseball's usage of the "*" is an old-wives tale, one greatly exaggerated over time. When Roger Maris pursued Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961, than commissioner Ford Frick ruled that unless the record were broken within 154 games (as baseball formerly played a 154-game schedule), it should be listed separately within record books. Historians have noted that it is a myth that Frick requested that M