Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

The Dodgers put the Mets to bed at a rather late hour on Friday night/Saturday morning. It might be of consolation to weary-eyed Mets fans today to know that the Mets have given the Dodgers their fair share of sleepless nights. Lets take August 1 and 3, 1977, shall we? Sure, Los Angeles was well ahead in the NL West and the Mets were a hopeless last-place team, but the games fit our purpose of today's entry anyway. That August 1 game was one of those that the team that bats last was destined to win. Even facing future Hall of Famer Don Sutton and company, the Mets were undaunted by deficits of 1-0, 3-1, 6-3, and 7-6. Steve Henderson's two-run home run in the sixth inning evened things at six and ended Sutton's night, and when the Dodgers subsequently left the bases loaded in the seventh, there must have been a feeling in the air that good things were going to happen for the Mets this day. This one went extra frames and the Dodgers pulled ahead in the 11th inning on a home r...

Jim Hickman is the answer to about a million good trivia questions, Mets related and otherwise. For example: Q: Who was the first Mets player to hit for the cycle? Jim Hickman, August 7, 1963 Q: Who hit the last home run at the Polo Grounds? Jim Hickman, September 18, 1963 Q: Who was the first Mets player to hit 3 HR in a game? Jim Hickman, September 3, 1965 Q: Who had the winning walk-off hit in the 1970 All-Star Game, the one most remembered for Pete Rose knocking over catcher Ray Fosse to score the winning run? Jim Hickman and then there's this one... Q: Whose walk-off grand slam, one that broke Roger Craig's 18-game losing streak, did this blogger forget to enter into his walk-off database, thus throwing all his data out of whack? Jim Hickman, of course, August 9, 1963 . I'd tell you more, but I'm in the midst of an elusive game of phone tag with Mr. Hickman, who still works in professional baseball, and I don't want to spoil the fun of any future posts. True Me...

Someone mentioned autographs in the comments section regarding the Neil Allen posts, and how Allen was the first autograph he ever got. My first baseball autograph was Dave Kingman. If I remember right, the circumstances were such that they used to hold baseball card shows at Shea Stadium. This was sometime during the spring/summer of 1982/83 and to that point, my collection of baseball cards consisted primarily of packs that my dad used to bring home from his candy store. But apparently the decision was made that we would take up card collecting as a more serious hobby. At this Shea show, each attendee had the chance to get a ticket to get an autograph of a current Met. Ours happened to be for Dave Kingman. Kingman had two stints as a Met and both were rather unpleasant. Yes, he was a giant, who could hit the ball higher and farther than anyone else in the majors, but the price paid for that was an embarassingly low batting average and a lot of strikeouts. Kingman played parts of six ...

Continuing along with the Neil Allen-lovefest, there's a good story behind his first major-league victory. It occurred on May 20, 1979, against the St. Louis Cardinals in a season so pathetic that the highlight video was called "Fireworks" (I'm told by fellow bloggers that this was the first year the Mets had Fireworks Night) and the team had to win its final six games to avoid a 100-loss season. It was not the type of game you'd expect them to win, but then you remember, these are the Mets . The Mets only beat the Cardinals once in nine meetings at Shea that season, and for all intents, they should have gone 0-for-9. What started as a topsy turvy matchup pitting Mets ace Craig Swan against Bob Sykes (later traded for Willie McGee) turned into what appeared to be a Cardinals extra-inning win, after St. Louis scored three times in the top of the 10th to go ahead, 7-4. Allen stranded a pair of baserunners in relief of Dale Murray, who yielded all three runs. The Car...

I was on the No. 7 train coming back from Flushing a couple weeks ago and my uncle Richard told the story of how his son, my cousin Michael, cried the day that the Mets traded Todd Zeile in January, 2002. I don't remember how I reacted the day that my favorite Met was dealt, and I don't have any recollection of why I picked this player as my favorite, but I do have a neat story to tell about him, and I can tie it in to walk-offs, if you'll indulge. Neil Allen (middle name Patrick) was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on January 24, 1958. That part I know by heart, as his birthday was a week before mine (the January 24, part, not 1958). He was drafted in the 11th round in 1976, made his Mets debut in 1979 as a starter but was moved to the bullpen shortly after recall. His chronology of pictures his Topps cards are rather oddly sequenced. His 1980 rookie card shows him in mid-delivery, ball in hand. The 1981 card has him just about to plant his front leg and the back reveals he ...

We had a walk-off grand slam on Sunday in major-league baseball, off the unlikely bat of Cardinals shortstop David Eckstein, helping the Cardinals beat the Braves en route to their inevitable NL Central title. A walk-off grand slam is a quasi-rare occurrence. There were four in the majors last season, and in the typical year, you'll see about that many, though Eckstein's was the first of 2005. A walk-off slam is a lot of fun. Except when you realize that you forgot to list one in your database. As I learned on Sunday, the Mets have had at least 327 walk-off wins, not the previously referenced 326. But that's okay. I never proclaimed to have perfect maintenance of my walk-off list, and I'm glad I found a flaw. It makes for a good story anyway, one that we'll wait until the anniversary of the moment to tell, since that comes up this week. Instead, today we'll tell the tale of the first walk-off grand slam in Mets history, which works out well, since I have a clip ...

I'll put up a real post by monday morning...working on a couple ideas at the moment. In the meantime Ok...I've gotten too many intriguing hits in the last week not to bring this up. Can the following clickers on this site please ID themselves via e-mail ? The 2 people who looked up "Joe Foy" on google The person from Massachusetts who was looking for "Carl Yastrzemski and Al Moran" on google The person from Houston looking for a picture of Charlie Kerfeld The person who logs on regularly from "Premiere Radio" The person who logged on from Random House two days in a row The person who logged on from Google headquarters The person who logged on from "Sterling Mets" and anyone else with an interesting background, or who found me through an odd search engine request...So help me, I'm curious. Sorry to those of you who might see this update on their "My Yahoo" page and think that I wrote something new. We'll have some good st...

For the first 80 or so games of the 1987 season, the Mets were the kind of one-step-forward, one-step-back team that they've been throughout the 2005 season. A combination of injuries, Doc Gooden's drug rehab, and a few hideous losses were the cause, forcing the team to play catch-up into a September in which they came oh-so close to the division lead, but were unable to muster the necessary victories down the stretch (don't worry, I'm not writing about the Terry Pendleton home run). June 7th of that season was Banner Day, which meant a doubleheader, this one with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who hadn't won a game at Shea Stadium since September of 1985. The Mets had taken the first two games of the series and entered with a chance for their first Shea Stadium series sweep of the season. The opener pitted 21-year-old Mets rookie John Mitchell against 38-year-old crusty veteran Rick Reuschel and for six innings, the youngster got the better of things, holding a 1-0 edge i...

In the summer of 1999, in my previous life as a sportswriter for the Trenton (NJ) Times, I wrote a lengthy feature collecting memories from people about their first baseball gloves. The idea was to compile stories from local, everyday baseball fans, and quasi-celebrities such as the mayor of the city. My goal was to get one current major-league player and our beat writer covering the Phillies suggested that I come out and talk to Rico Brogna. My specialty then was scholastic and collegiate sports, so a trip to Veterans Stadium to write was rare, but I was there in time for batting practice, at least until I learned that our beat writer had neglected to get me the day credential he had promised. By the time I talked my way into the ballpark, BP was just about done and I caught Brogna on his way back to the clubhouse. "Rico," I asked. "Do you remember your first baseball glove." His face brightened, but only for a second. "Oh yeah," he said, "but get me...

and boy, it seems like there are a lot of you...Please don't forget to e-mail me and let me know what you think of these essays...

Alrighty, so what light can we shed on walk-off win #326 (since discovered to be at least #327)? Mike Piazza's first walk-off walk with the Mets was the 15th walk-off walk in team history It was the first walk-off walk since Jay Payton drew one against the Marlins on May 24, 2002. It is not the first time Mike Piazza had significant involvement in a walk-off without swinging the bat. Piazza, you may recall, was the batter when Brad Clontz's wild pitch brought in the winning run in Game 162 of the 1999 season, setting up the Mets-Reds one-game playoff. It was the sixth Mets walk-off to end with a 9-8 final score, the third of those to go extra innings and the second to go 11 innings (the other one of those, on August 27, 1997 against the Padres also ended on a walk-off walk (Carlos Baerga), following a ninth inning game-tying home run (Todd Hundley) The last 9-8 Mets walk-off win was on July 10, 1999 against the Yankees. That's the game in which Matt Franco's two-run two...

The Mets have had a lot of pinch-hit success in 2005, including Mike Piazza's pinch-hit walk-off walk on Tuesday night against the Brewers (more on that later in the day). They had a similar amount of success in 1983, though in somewhat of a different manner. 1983 is best remembered as the year that Tom Seaver returned, Keith Hernandez arrived, Jesse Orosco emerged, and manager George Bamberger departed, but statistically speaking, the best thing the last-place, 68-94 squad could point to was that it tied a major-league record with 12 pinch-hit home runs (a mark previously held by the 1957 Reds). The team's pinch-hit batting average was only .226, which pales in comparison to the 2005 squad, but there were a good number of timely hits that show that you have to look beyond the statistics. The 1983 Mets were good (or maybe the better word is mediocre) to the very last batter, who happened to be the best pinch-hitter in Mets history, Rusty Staub. We'll surely be writing more ...

This is a vent that I've been wanting to get off my chest for a little while now, but never really had the appropriate forum to present it. I take the Mets Hall of Fame pretty seriously (almost as seriously as the Baseball Hall of Fame) and it appears that, for the third straight season, there is going to be no inductee. I have a slight quibble with the Mets last Hall of Fame inductee, centerfielder Tommie Agee. My problem isn't with his selection but rather the manner in which he was selected. The Mets have had their own Hall of Fame since 1981, when it inaugurated original owner Joan Payson and original manager Casey Stengel. Since then, a voting panel, which I believe is comprised of team officials and longtime media members has voted in 19 other members. Here's the full list of inductees. 1981- Joan Payson & Casey Stengel 1982- Gil Hodges & George Weiss 1983- Bill Shea & Johnny Murphy 1984- Lindsay Nelson, Bob Murphy & Ralph Kiner 1986- Bud Harrelson ...

We wrote earlier about "The Walk-off that wasn't" and it turns out that game has a counterpart in Mets annals. On May 25, 1979, the Mets hosted the eventual world champion Pittsburgh Pirates in what amounted to a rather bizarre contest in which the Mets invoked the doctrine of fair play in lieu of a potential victory. The 1979 season was a rather ugly one for the Mets and this happened to be a particularly ugly night weather-wise, such that barely more than 6,600 bought a ticket. The weather worked well for the two pitchers, Jim Rooker for the Pirates and Craig Swan for the Mets Rooker allowed only one run on three hits through seven innings and Swan, the staff ace, entered the eighth with a two-hit shutout, but that would fall apart rather abruptly. With a runner on first and two outs, Mike Easler cracked his second home run of the season, both in a pinch-hitting role and both against the Mets (his only two homers of the season), to give the Pirates the lead. They woul...

I'm going to interrupt my Mets-related chatter to tell a brief story and perhaps it explains my interest in all things walk-off and buzzer beater. Basketball is a hot topic in New York City with the Knicks hiring Larry Brown as their head coach earlier this week, so we'll tell a hoops-related tale for this weekends entry. The date was January 30, 1975 and the Knicks were on the road, taking on the Atlanta Hawks. My mom and dad were big basketball fans during the glory days of New York's basketball franchise. My dad was at Madison Square Garden when Willis Reed limped on to the court for Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals and not long after that he met my mom. They got married on November 8, 1970, better known as the day that a New Orleans Saints kicker named Tom Dempsey set an NFL record by kicking a 63-yard field goal to beat the Detroit Lions. My dad's job on Wall Street enabled him easy access to Knicks tickets and I've been told the story on more than one occasion of...

If we're going to talk about violent swings, as we did yesterday, former Met Tony Clark's was one that got my stamp of approval. It probably helped that I had an experience with Clark that shaped my viewpoint. During the 2002 season, I was at Fenway Park, gathering some information for my real job, and it just so happened that Clark had a terrific game. My familiarity with Clark came from his early days in the minors, with the Tigers Double-A affiliate, the Trenton Thunder, where he became famous for his long home runs. The media gathered around his locker after the game, but Clark wasn't there. Maybe he had ducked out, but that seemed unlikely since he played well. The wait got to the point where most of the other Red Sox were on their way out. Finally, Clark arrived fresh from a long shower. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said deliberately to the reporters he had kept waiting, "I would like to apologize." That was a new one for me. A player apologizing to ...

Bringing up the name Jeromy Burnitz in my family and you'll start an interesting debate between me and my dad as to whether Burnitz (who has been Mr. Walk-Off in two of the last three Cubs games,) was a quality Met. I tend to take the opposing view in this debate. I can remember plunking down a quarter for a Burnitz rookie card at a baseball card show sometime in 1993 or 1994 when Burnitz was a touted power prospect. The problem came when I initially saw him play. This author generally doesn't like violence, be it in real life, on television, or in baseball games. Jeromy Burnitz has had the most violent swing in baseball for 13 years. Yes, he played as hard as anyone, and hustle is wonderful, but the results didn't impress me in either his 1993 or 1994 tenure, or his stint with the team in 2002-2003. The high strikeout total (301 with the Mets) cost the team scoring chances in numerous key situations. Burnitz batted .237 with the Mets, and .225 with runners in scoring posit...

For easier access to archived posts...(oldest posts listed first) Links Last updated: Thru November 5, 2006 (will update again in near future, really) And so we begin (Hobie Landrith) Who's the Ross? (Ross Jones) Cliff Notes (Cliff Floyd) Hendu can Do (Steve Henderson) Hendu Part II Name in the News (Esix Snead) Inspired by Charles Schulz (Howard Johnson) Rocky Mountain High (Ron Swoboda) A Father/Son Walk-Off Memory (Dropped Popup, 1986) Dyer Straits for No-No Nolan (Duffy Dyer) Win like Flynn (Doug Flynn) His Old Friend John (John Stephenson) Let's Hear it for Mr. D'Agostino (1969/This Date in NY Mets History) Bring in Yoshii (Mets/Yankees) Walk-off Hype (Gregg Jefferies) Moonlight Mets (Rodney McCray/Kenny Greer) The Walk-Off That Wasn't (Blown umpire call) Kenny Rogers Roaster (Robin Ventura) Fireworks Knight (Ray Knight/1986) Clairvoyance, Prognostication and Walk-Offs (Predictions) Boston Bean Party (Daryl Boston) Don't Call Him Iron Mike (Mike Vail) You Gotta...

In the Mets early days, they had a willingness to bring back some of New York's baseball heroes of the past. Management had a sentimental side for people like Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, and Willie Mays, who were on the down side of their careers, but had something to offer to fans from the good ole' days of city baseball. Let's focus on 1980 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Edwin Snider, better known as "Duke," "The Duke of Flatbush" and "The Silver Fox," today. For those too young to remember him, Snider starred for the Brooklyn Dodgers, particularly during their glory years. From 1953 to 1957 Snider put up unbelievable numbers, including a career high 136 RBI in 1955 when next year finally came for the Dodgers, who beat the Yankees in the World Series. In that five-year span, Snider averaged 41 home runs and 117 RBI, hit better than .300 on three occasions and played a fine defensive centerfield. Basically he was the equivalent of ...

It is fascinating to me how "Google" and other search engines work, and how people go about finding others on the internet. My statcounter hit tracker allows me to find the hows and the wheres regarding visits to this site and it has been an interesting experience to go through that data. Within the last week, this site has been found via internet searches for Chuck Hiller, Ken Boswell, Ed Kranepool, Bruce Berenyi and Rodney McCray (!). I've also been visited by people searching for my longtime friend David Cooper (alas someone looking for one based in Michigan) and even Luke Linder (referenced in my Little League walk-off story...unfortunately, that person hasn't written with the answer in regards to the questions about my final Little League game). I've been visited by folks from Alabaster, Alabama, Oxford Ohio and Castaic, California, three allitterative cities I never would have known the existence of otherwise. And once again, I've been targetted by some...