Playoff Brothers.

       Hey, we're back. That last few weeks of silence was Marcel Marceau's newest hit single, "Walkin' In The Wind." And now, here are the playoffs.  I am sure you are all sitting on the edge of your seat wondering who I am going to support this October.  The last couple of years, my choices have been the kiss of death, but I would feel remiss if I didn't share my usual insane thought processes.  This year, three of the teams that made the AL playoffs also happen to be the three teams who won the three World Series directly before the Mets did in 1986 and, much like the Amazin's, haven't won it since.  This wonderful bit of convolution is the key to my choices.

The Kansas City Royals won the Series in 1985 and sadly, stupefyingly, and horrifyingly haven't even been to the playoffs since.

That team starred a veteran George Brett at third and first base.  After winning the AL west like a million times between 1976 and 1984, the Royals the shocked the Cardinals in 1985 - with a little help from Don Denkinger, of course.  It is a long shot, but I would love to see KC take the title after a 29 year drought.

Everyone remembers the 1984 Detroit Tigers.

They were the team that just steamrolled everyone through the whole year, kind of like a baseball version of the '85 Bears.  They led wire to wire in the regular season and then lost only one game in the playoffs while taking the title.  Everyone remembers Jack Morris and Kirk Gibson from that team but no one ever remembers Lou Whitaker.  1984 was just another in a long line of gold glove silver slugger all star seasons from their second baseman.  Everyone has spent the last decade arguing about whether Jack Morris should be in Cooperstown when the real travesty is the fact that Whitaker got less than 5% of the vote early and dropped off the ballot when he (and Alan Trammell) should be in the Hall - probably more so than Morris.  Detroit has since seen a few horrible teams and a few playoff teams, even going to the Series in 2006, but they haven't won it all since that magical 1984 season.

Then in 1983, you had the Baltimore Orioles.

The Orioles in '83 were led by a young MVP shortstop named Cal Ripken.  You may have heard of him.  The 31 years since that title have seen more dark times than not for Baltimore.  The mid 90's team was a juggernaut that never quite got to the Series and since then, it has been all dark.  But this year they finally won the AL East title for the first time in 17 years.   I jumped on the O's bandwagon two years ago - mostly to stick it to the Yankees - and they immediately tanked.  So this time around I am putting them third on my love list, hoping that a little reverse psychology will help them out.  Of course, now that I have mentioned that out loud, it is a certain jinx.  I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.

The Curse of WFAN.

       You wouldn't know it by watching them for the last five years, but the New York Mets won a World Series in my lifetime.  It's true!

On October 27, 1986 at Shea Stadium in Queens, Jesse Orosco struck out Marty Barrett of the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets were world champions.

That was an amazing team stacked with veterans and young players.  11 year old Max expected to watch title after title roll in for the orange and blue.

They won one other division title in 1988 but that one World Series was all the Mets had to show for that great team.  Was it injuries and age and drugs or were there darker forces at work?

After the Red Sox blew the series in such ignominious fashion, The Curse of the Bambino was born (or at least widely perpetuated).  Mostly an angle for a sportswriter to sell books, nevertheless it became a larger than life theory. If you have lived with your head in a hole in the ground for the last 30 years or so, the curse basically said that when Babe Ruth was sold by the Red Sox to the Yankees, he put a curse on the team that they wouldn't win another World Series. If you were a fan of the team in 1946, 1967, 1975, 1986, and 2003, this seemed as logical a theory as any. 

I mean, it couldn't possibly have been a combination of institutional racism and inept management.  Nope, it was a terrifying hex on the Olde Towne Team from Fenway that kept them from a championship for for 86 years.  That's the nice thing about curses, they don't need any reasons other than belief. 

The Mets also won a Series in 1969 in what some call a Miracle. 

That means the Mets won two World Series in 17 years, not too shabby in the overall scope of things.

That 1969 team was loaded with young pitching and if they had ever developed and/or kept some good hitters, that team should have won more. Sound familiar?

As it was, the Mets also made the Series in 1973 in what was probably what some folks look at as a fluke, but hell, Ya Gotta Believe!

That team took the dynastic A's to a 3-2 lead but then let it all slip away.  Still, the '73 team is held in high regard in Mets fan circles.  And as I was saying before, three World Series in 17 years is nothing to sneeze at especially when you win a couple of them. Ask Cub fans if you think I'm wrong. 

On July 1, 1987, the Mets flagship broadcast station, radio station 1050 WHN, changed its call letters and the wildly popular all sports radio format was born as WFAN.

The New York Mets were on WFAN from that very day.  They have not won the World Series since.

Oh sure, they have come kinda close.  I mean hey, they made the Series against the Yankees in 2000 but were quickly dispatched in five games.  Man, that late 20th century team was a lot of fun to watch.

They also had a great team in the mid '00s, although they never quite made it to the series - and they came about as close as you can without making it.  Carlos Beltran stared at strike three during the bottom of the 9th in game seven of the 2006 NLCS (with the bases loaded even) and the Mets haven't made the playoffs since, painfully so.  They haven't even had so much as a winning season in the last 5 years.  If you are keeping track, that means the Mets made 3 World Series and won 2 in their first 25 years and then made one and won zero in the next 27. 

On April 1, 2014 WFAN began broadcasting the games of the New York Yankees. 

After the 2013 season, future hall of famer and renowned "best closer of all time" Mariano Rivera retired.

Also after the 2013 season, Andy Pettitte retired.

After the 2011 season, Jorge Posada retired.

These three men are 3/4 of the famous Core Four that helped the Yankees win five World Series (and make 2 others beside) from 1996 to 2009.

As an aside, Bernie Williams should have some fucking issues with the whole "Core Four" concept.  He is a much better ballplayer than Posada and Pettitte could ever imagine being and while he might not be a hall of famer, he is closer than they are.  Bernie came up to the Yankees in 1989 and retired in 2006, so he saw four of those five Series titles.  Most teams would be very happy to develop a player the caliber of Bernie.  End Bernie rant.

Back in February, future hall of famer and "class act" Derek Jeter announced that 2014 would be his final season.

These five players - Jeter, Rivera, Williams, Posada, Pettitte - represent a terrific phase of Yankee history when they eschewed big money free agents and developed star players from within.  Back in the late 1970s and all through the 1980s, the Yankees never met a free agent they didn't want to sign.  This worked well in '77 and '78 but not so much through the 1980's when they went the whole decade without a Series title.   Since the turn of the 21st century, this philosophy seems to have returned. 

Right now, the Yankees fans are rooting for formerly great players like CC Sabathia. 

CC is literally and figuratively half the man he used to be.  The Yankees will be paying him $25 million a year through 2017.

Over at first base is the corpse of Mark Teixeira.

Once a great hitter, Teixeira has slowly morphed into a .230 pull hitter who has been overly tempted by the short porch at new Yankees Stadium.  He's also been hurt.  A lot.  To the point where you have to wonder if his family tree includes paper mâché.  The Yankees will be paying him $22.5 million through 2016.  Teixeira was signed because the first baseman they overpayed to get before him, Jason Giambi, didn't work out.  I could also mention Alex Rodriguez, but the less said about him the better. 

Also this year, the Yankees decided to dive into the international free agent pool and sign Masahiro Tanaka.  They paid him the GDP of a small nation to be their ace for the next seven years.

Oh hey!  Look what magazine Tanaka was on for their baseball preview.  Wanna talk about curses...

Sure, he might be another Yu Darvish, but he also might be Hideki Irabu 2: Electric Boogaloo.  Lucky for them, he already has more career wins than Kei Igawa.

The Yankees have slowly become what they were all through the 1980s, a chemistry-less mercenary squad with very little home grown talent.  Think Steve Kemp, Dave Collins, Lamar Hoyt, Eddie Whitson, etc.  The Mets have slowly become what they were in the early 1980s, loaded with great young pitching.  Think Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Noah Syndergaard,  Rafael Montero, etc.   There is no rhyme nor reason to how a curse starts, but I am going to pinpoint April 1, 2014 as the official bellwether of The Curse of WFAN.  If billy goats, Lions quarterbacks, KFC spokesmen, Video Game sponsors, and the existence of the city of Cleveland can all be the impetus for curses, why not an all-sports radio station? 

Oh, and who else did the Yankees signed in the twilight of his career?  And who made his first Yankee at bat in that very first WFAN Yankee game on April Fools Day?  Yup...

It'll all make more sense in 27 years, trust me.

Meet the Mets.

       I was going to start doing Monday Metropolitans, but multiple day-of-the-week posts (and alliteration) seem like the lazy way out to me, so I will stick with my one weekly post on Sunday and just wing it the rest of the time.  Just like I do in real life.  Besides, I have over 10,000 different Mets cards, I could do the Mets everyday for decades.

       My post about how I became a Saints fan seem to resonate with some of you, so I thought I would share the more amusing story of how I became a Mets fan.  My immediate family are all long time Yankees fans.  My grandfather, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, all big Yankees fans.  Well, all except one small enclave - there is one set of cousins who are all rabid, season ticket holding, dyed-in-the-wool Mets fans.

        So because of the larger influence of the majority of my family, for the first six years of my life, I was a Yankees fan.  I sat and listened to stories of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio et al and ate them up.  My first baseball memory is watching the 1978 World Series, eating Reggie bars, and watching Mr. October smack three homers in game six.  I became a Reggie Jackson junkie after that.  I loved the Yankees and I loved Reggie.  There is no accounting for the taste of a toddler, but that is not important right now.  In fact, I even dressed as a Yankee for Halloween one year; my mother sewed a #7 on back for Mickey Mantle but believe me, in my mind's eye, I was #44.  Fast forward a couple years to 1981, Reggie left the Yankees (more specifically, George Steinbrenner) as a free agent for the greener pastures of Anaheim, Disneyland, and the California Angels.  Now, my six year old brain could not quite grasp the concept of free agency, in my world, the Yankees had traded Reggie Jackson!!!! I was livid, practically inconsolable.

       Enter that enclave of Mets fan cousins.  There are six of them, all of them older than me.  The last two were boys only slightly older than me, but when you are six and they are 10 and 12, it makes all the difference in the world.  One time, during a visit to their house shortly after the Reggie betrayal, we were playing.  Well, I was playing, they were tormenting me while I played, as the older are wont to do to the younger.  Somehow, the issue of baseball fandom came up and I expressed my anger at the Yankees and their lack of Reggieness.  My cousins, seeing their opportunity to inflict more torture into my life, decided to brainwash me.  They took me to the top of the stairs and held me over the bannister and threatened to drop me unless I pledged allegiance to the Mets.  Being an impressionable child with a good sense of honor and a healthy fear of gravity, I promised to be a Mets fan and have been to this very day.  If you think about it,  that story is kind of an allegory for the whole experience of being a Mets fan.

I kept my word and gave being a Mets fan a try and it started out painful, but there was hope.

First there was Darryl Strawberry in 1983...

...that year also showed me a little bit of the Franchise:

Then the Doctor in 1984:

The 1985 team gave me Gary Carter, who I had liked in Montreal and loved in blue and orange.

And finally, 1986 gave me euphoria:




The team was on top of the world.  My cousins had made me a Mets fan by force and then this legendary team had made me a fan for life.   There was no stopping us now...

If only I could go back in time and tell 11-year old Max, "Enjoy this little dude, you won't see it again for at least 30 years..."

Metropolitans.

  

        As you may have gathered from the color scheme, borders, name plate, or maybe if you aren't very observant and just know me so well, I am a huge Mets fan.  My family moved into a new home when I was 12 and I was allowed to choose the colors of my new bedroom walls.  My choices: blue with orange borders.  If I were allowed to paint any of the walls of my house now, I doubt my choices would be any different.  There was a time in the 1980's when being a Mets fan carried clout, cachet even.  Alas, these are dark times to be a fan of the Nine from Flushing, but as with any marriage, I will root for them in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part (even if I am incarcerated for murdering Fred Wilpon).  Anyway, when I was going through the "Great Purge" of cards, I could not part with my Metsies, so I decided they would get special dispensation.  I have over 10,000 Mets cards spread over 2 monster boxes, a top loader-laden shoe box and several binders.  I did part with about 3,000 or so doubles, but as in any streamlining process, redundancies must be eliminated. 

      My Mets binders (one of which is featured at the very top of this blog with a brand new mascot courtesy of card blogging's best bronie, dayf from Cardboard Junkie) are some of my most eclectic and meticulously kept.  Choosing 800 or so cards out of 10,000 is not an easy task.  Then, picking a couple pages from all those is even tougher, so this will no doubt be a series on my beloved team.

       I do like to keep pages on current star players.  This page of Johan Santana features some of the many many incarnations of his 2011 Topps card.  I picked up a few from bloggers and then decided to augment that with some from COMC to complete the effect.  Parallels are here to stay, so instead of complaining, I embrace the concept with a tight squeeze:


Keeping with the parallel theme, here are some Topps Gold Mets in all their serial numbered glory:


And some late, great Fleer Gold Medallion:


Want to know why the Mets are so awful?  Because of pages like this:

I follow the Mets closer than my own family and I have never heard of any of those guys.

These are some longwise game-used cards and a Fan of the Game insert that seems to have wandered in from another page.  I can be a slave to my own aesthetics and ruin the whole thing at the same time:


I do like to me some faux-retro vintage,


and actual vintage vintage.


And finally a page that is a reminder that at one time, the Mets actually played in (and won!) World Series.  Heck, we were once the most hated and feared team in the league, rather than the most reviled and pitied. 
  
 Ahhh, the good old days, may they return.