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Our Special Bonds: All-Star Stuff (Answers)

Answers to the trivia quiz posted on July 3
http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2007/07/our-special-bonds-all-star-stuff.html

1) As per usual with most of these questions, the hint is in the wording. The answer is Bob (The Steamer) Stanley.

2) Duke Snider was the Mets only All-Star rep in 1963.

3) This is a hard one. How soon we forget Chan Ho Park.

4) Felix Millan is remembered fondly by most, including me, because at one baseball card show, he took the time to ask my name and chat with me briefly while we posed for a photo. I've never met Jim Fregosi but I know that most Mets fans would not recall him with any fondness whatsoever.

5) I was trying to come up with a list of players who you wouldn't think of as All-Stars from their Mets days, but who could have had one or two seasons that maybe merited selection. Rick Cerone could have been an All-Star in 1980 (.277 BA, 14 HR) but was not picked, the only one from that list never to make the All-Star team.

6) David Wright struck a blow for all Metkind when he homered off Kenny Rogers in last seson's All-Star Game. Mike Piazza was not yet a Met when he homered off Rogers in the 1995 contest, but his contribution is still much appreciated.

7) I remember that as a little kid that I was fascinated that you could trade for somebody and then trade them again before they even played a game for you. That's how I remember Jim Kern as I'm too young to recollect the 1979 All-Star Game. Kern was traded to the Mets for Doug Flynn and Dan Boitano in December, 1981, then subsequently shipped to the Reds as part of the package for George Foster in 1982.

8) My hope was that people would narrow it down to Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, John Candelaria, and Tug McGraw and kudos to you if you did. The answer from that foursome is Seaver, of whom one person I tested this question on said "I didn't think there was a chance you'd go for the obvious choice."

9) Bill Buckner was a 1-time All-Star (1981). Amazingly, Rich Gedman was a 2-time All-Star. Mookie Wilson thus never was an All-Star.

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