New Book Celebrates Mets History

There may not be much to celebrate with the Mets these days, but as the team heads into its fiftieth anniversary year, the New York Daily News has put out a new book that reminds us that, throughout its history, the team has had many memorable moments and characters.

The Mets: A 50^th Anniversary Celebration was written by current Daily News Met beat writer Andy Martino and Daily News sportswriter Anthony McCarron. (Disclosure: Squawker Lisa and I used to work at the Daily News on the website, but we did not know either of the writers.)

The book is in hardcover and is arranged decade by decade, offering a running narrative of the Mets' story. The most famous years in Mets history, 1969 and 1986, get thorough coverage, but do not get their own chapters. However, that's just as well – most Met fans are quite familiar with those seasons and might even own books devoted just to them. This book takes a wider view.

The book includes over 200 images from the Daily News, from photos to front and back covers of the newspaper. The images set this book apart from other histories of the Mets. Along with numerous shots of Met players in action, there are other photos that offer a unique look into the world of the Mets.

I consider myself a very knowledgeable Met fan, but I had no idea that Olympic legend Jesse Owens worked for the Mets as a running instructor in spring training in 1965. But there's a picture in this book of Owens, wearing a Mets shirt, hurdling a bat held up by George Weiss, Mets GM at the time, and none other than Yogi Berra, who finished up his playing career that year with the Mets.

Another tidbit new to me was that the host of the Mets pre- and postgame radio shows in the mid-1960s was Howard Cosell, not yet a national figure but already outspoken enough to refer to Mets manager Casey Stengel as old and racist.

Other photos from the Mets’ early days include Stengel giving instructions to Shea Stadium "usherettes" in 1964 and Bud Harrelson playing guitar in the Mets clubhouse in the early 1970s.

Speaking of the Mets’ shortstop, one of the most memorable shots in the book comes from his famous fight with Pete Rose during the 1973 NLCS. Rose, his face contorted in rage, heads toward Harrelson, his left hand already forming a fist. There are two followup photos as well of Rose and Harrelson going at it.

Along with the numerous shots of the 1986 Mets, there is one of Fred Wilpon presenting President Reagan with a Mets warmup jacket as Lee Mazzilli and Dwight Gooden stand behind Reagan on either side.

The book also includes the Daily News front page when Gooden was suspended at the start of the 1987 season. GOODEN K’D BY COCAINE was the headline, with a somber cartoon by Bill Gallo.

The Daily News factored in another dark day in Mets history – the infamous Tom Seaver trade on June 15, 1977. Daily News columnist Dick Young's vicious attacks on Seaver played a role in the Franchise's bitter departure. The book details how Young went after Seaver and how the Daily News switchboard lit up with calls from fans angry at Young after Seaver was traded. Pete Hamill wrote a column in the News ripping Young for being "a hit man for Mets management."

One of the later photos in the book looks a lot different to me now than when it was taken. It shows Jose Reyes and Angel Pagan leaping in the air together to celebrate a Mets victory.

As the book heads toward the present, there is currently no happy ending. But there’s fifty years of history, some of it good, some of it bad, and all of it compelling to the diehard Met fan.

Did Derek Jeter's Booty Calls Get Gift Baskets With Autographed Swag?

There hasn't been much news in Yankeeland these days. But today, the New York Post has a gossipy piece about how Derek Jeter is "bedding a bevy of beauties in his Trump World Tower bachelor pad — and then coldly sending them home alone with gift baskets of autographed memorabila." Heh.

And according to the Post, the story came to light after he pulled the same stunt on the same girl twice:

“Derek has girls stay with him at his apartment in New York, and then he gets them a car to take them home the next day. Waiting in his car is a gift basket containing signed Jeter memorabilia, usually a signed baseball,” the friend dished.

“This summer, he ended up hooking up with a girl who he had hooked up with once before, but Jeter seemed to have forgotten about the first time and gave her the same identical parting gift, a gift basket with a signed Derek Jeter baseball,” the pal said. 

Now I'm wondering if Steiner Sports is going to have a new category for "date-used memorabilia."

Personally, I think giving a one-night stand an autographed baseball in exchange for the evening is kind of tacky, and if it were Alex Rodriguez doing such a thing, he would be pilloried from coast to coast.

But this is Derek Jeter we're talking about, so almost all the comments on the New York Post article are about how cool Jeter is, and how this is great. I swear, Jeter could start a dogfighting ring, and there would be fans talking about how those dogs had it coming to them. He really is Teflon.

Squawker Jon and I were arguing over whether giving the one-night stand a gift basket was tacky. Jon sez it depends what else was in it!

So that got me wondering what other treats were in the gift basket. Is there an "I slept with Derek Jeter and all I got is this lousy t-shirt" in there? Is there one of those Christian Lopez autographed baseballs in there as well? Or how about a box of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat, the way they always used to have that as a parting gift on game shows back in the day.

Come to think of it, I wonder if the driver plays this music when presenting the one-night stand with her farewell gift:

The Mets Are Not Like a Box of Chocolates

Sandy Alderson joked Wednesday that he should have sent Jose Reyes a box of chocolates. Forrest Gump's mother compared life to a box of chocolates because you never knew what you were going to get. But with the Mets, we now know what we're going to get. And it's not good.

Earlier today, the David Wright trade speculation was interrupted by a rumor that the Mets were shopping Ike Davis. Are Met faces of the franchise turning into Spinal Tap drummers?

Now Jon Heyman is tweeting that Jon Niese is on the block. If Niese goes, he could set a record for shortest tenure as one of the players pictured at the start of SNY telecasts. (Then again, considering that Jason Bay has also joined the opening montage, maybe SNY should just open their Mets programming with pictures of Shake Shack.)

Last week, ESPN's Keith Law ranked the top 50 players age 25 or under. No Mets made the list. But one Met was mentioned among those who just missed being in the list - Niese.

Supposedly, the Mets are getting younger and building for the future with a focus on pitching. One would think that they would want to hold on to a well-regarded homegrown young lefthander who has already shown that he can pitch in New York.

This is not to say that Niese should be untouchable. But if it turns out that the Mets are trading him for even younger players just to avoid having to go to arbitration with him in a year means the Mets are turning into the Oakland A's, who are desperately trying to trade young pitchers like Gio Gonzalez because they can't afford to keep anybody. Not what we thought we were getting with Moneyball East.

Meanwhile, Matthew Cerrone talked to an agent who speculated that the Marlins would trade Reyes to the Yankees once Derek Jeter's contract is up. And the Post's Kevin Kernan speculated that David Wright could eventually replace Alex Rodriguez at third for the Yankees.

I remember when Met and Yankee fans debated over which team had the best left side of the infield. It would be intolerable to see both Reyes and Wright reunited in the Bronx.

Sure, it's a worst-case scenario, but who would have thought that Darryl and Doc would win more rings with the Yankees than with the Mets?

Despite it all, I'll continue to root for the Mets. But I'm beginning to wonder if that's because, to use another quote from Forrest Gump's mother, stupid is as stupid does.

Why Jose Reyes Leaving the Mets Is Bad for the Squawkers

When I heard that Jose Reyes was going to be a Miami Marlin, I was just as irate as Squawker Jon was. In fact, I wrote this article for a business publication talking about how Jose Reyes is Bernie Madoff's most recent victim. It's ridiculous that a team in the biggest market in the country, with a successful cable network, is acting like somebody in line at the dollar store, thanks to all the money they invested in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.

It's long past time for Frugal Freddy Wilpon and his idiot son Jeff to be on their merry way, and have to sell the team and let the Mets have a real owner. Heck, as problematic as George Steinbrenner could be at times, there was no doubt that he loved the New York Yankees. I don't know if Fred Wilpon has ever been a Mets fan. From making Citi Field into the new Ebbets Field, to his derogatory comments to Jeffrey Toobin in that New Yorker interview, Wilpon is the embedded Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

You know, people say that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel, or Microsoft, but I say that rooting for the Mets is like being the frog in the Scorpion and the Frog allegory. You may know the story -- the scorpion begs the frog for a ride on his back across the lake. The frog is afraid to take this passenger, but the scorpion says that he wouldn't sting him, because it would doom him both. Then the scorpion stings him anyway, they both start to drown, and when the dying frog asks him why he did it, the scorpion says that doing so is his nature. That's the Mets for you. How dare any fan expect them to re-sign their homegrown hero after they cut payroll this year. It's in their nature to sabotage their own team, and decrease attendance and fan interest, by letting Reyes walk. Good grief.

Anyhow, when Squawker Jon and I started writing this blog, way back in 2006, the Yankees and Mets looked to be close to being on even footing. And in fact, the Mets went further than the Yankees did that year, nearly making it to the World Series. Ever since then, the Metropolitans are on a downward spiral. And it was all fun and games to make fun of the Mets 2007 collapse, and 2008 collapse, and the Castillo dropped pop-up, now it's getting just plain sad.

And it's taken an important trash talk dynamic out of Subway Squawkers. I have had to pull my punches bigtime, because I didn't want to look like a bully beating up on Squawker Jon's Mets. For example, I had a great trash talk line prepared tonight, about how the Mets ditched a closer named Francisco with anger-management issues, only to pick up another closer named Francisco with anger-management issues. But if I really unleashed it, I would look like I was part of the 1% beating up on the 99%. Bummer.

So I actually want the Mets to get better, so mocking them won't make me look like a big meanie. It's up to you, Bud Selig. Time to do what you did to Frank McCourt to your buddies, Fred and Jeff Wilpon. They have to go.  The future of the Squawkers depends on it!


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The Jose Reyes Debacle: Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining

The Mets have allowed a homegrown superstar to leave in the prime of his career. It's one of the darkest days in the history of the franchise, and yet the rationalizing has begun:

The Marlins overpaid for Reyes. So what? Big-market teams keep their superstars. Big-market teams laugh at the notion of the Marlins outbidding them. But the Mets are no longer functioning as a big-market team.

Besides, it’s debatable just how much Reyes is being overpaid. For all the talk about “Carl Crawford money,” Reyes came nowhere near the Red Sox outfielder’s $142 million deal. Yes, six years is a long contract to give Reyes, but if you’re willing to give him five, and an extra year gets it done, a big-market team gets it done. Sure, you have to stagger your potentially bad contracts in a way the Mets have not done up to now, but if the front office is as smart as everyone says they are, that’s certainly doable.

Reyes can’t stay healthy. Some people treat Reyes as if he’s Fernando Martinez – someone who has never been able to stay on the field. Yet from 2005-8, Reyes was practically an ironman. He led the majors in at-bats in 2005 and 2008 and finished second in 2007. In the other year, 2006, Reyes played in 153 games and had 647 AB.

After losing most of 2009 to injury, Reyes played in 133 games in 2010 and 126 in 2011, making the All-Star team both years.

Yes, Reyes comes with injury risk, but that risk was factored into his new contract. A completely healthy Reyes might well have gotten Carl Crawford money. If you project Reyes to miss a month every year and offer him 1/6 dollars less as a result, you end up with around what the Marlins gave him.

Mets management has a good long-term plan. Last year, all we heard was how the Mets needed to get out from under the $60 million in payroll that was coming off the books after 2011 from the expiring contracts of Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Francisco Rodriguez, Oliver Perez, and Luis Castillo. I praised Sandy Alderson for cutting his losses with Perez and Castillo, getting out of K-Rod’s 2012 vesting option and landing Zack Wheeler for Beltran. I also praised him for not trading Reyes at the deadline, which I took as a sign that the Mets planned to make a good-faith effort to keep him.

But during the season, the payroll estimates for 2012 kept going down. Now Alderson is talking about a $100 million payroll. Yes, teams can succeed with that size payroll, but not with Johan Santana and Jason Bay taking up 40% of it.

So now we’ll probably be told we have to wait until Santana and Bay are off the books. And, just like this year, rather than offer a chance to reinvest in the franchise, it will produce an even lower payroll. $80 million? $60 million?

Alderson says he wants to build a strong business model. He says the Mets must cut payroll because they lost $70 million last year. He also says the Mets’ woes have nothing to do with Bernie Madoff.

But how exactly did the Mets lose $70 million last year? How is it that other teams such as the Marlins are able to increase payroll as a result of moving into a new stadium, while the Mets end up hemorrhaging profits and attendance?

What sort of business model has you devaluing your product and discarding your top gate attraction?

*

Meanwhile, the Mets have just put holiday five-game ticket packs on sale. These discounted tickets mostly feature games during the week with teams that are not big draws. You won’t find Opening Day or the Subway Series here.

But the marketing department's thankless task just got a little easier. One pack includes the first visit of the new-look Miami Marlins. The other two games in the late April series turn up in other packs.

Wonder how long it will take the Mets to realize that they are offering discounts on games that are likely to produce three of the few big crowds they can expect to draw next year.

On Joe Paterno, Responsibility, and Hero Worship

I'm gonna switch Squawker gears here today and talk about the whole Joe Paterno/Penn State issue, because I think the whole thing says a lot about what it means to be a fan.

Some people think Wednesday, the day when Penn State fired Joe Paterno after he announced that he would resign after the end of the season, was a sad day. I don't. I think it was a good day. I was glad to see that JoePa did not get to go out on his own terms, and that he was fired for what he allowed to happen on his watch. As somebody who went to Catholic schools from K to 12, I am glad to see somebody who enabled pedophilia finally get a little punishment, even if it pales in comparison to what the victims went through.

My brothers went to a Catholic high school where the priest molested a slew of young boys over many years. He used the power of his office to get his way, and also used an RV and a beach house paid for by his parishoners as lures. When one of the families, who was from Colombia, complained and threatened to go to the police over the priest molesting their young son, the school's principal, who was also a nun, threatened to have the family deported if they told the cops. The bishop in charge eventually moved the priest to another parish, where he got to have another 20 years of being a sexual predator before he finally got forced out of the priesthood. So yeah, I feel pretty strongly about this issue, and about what I think of those who enable pedophiles.

Anyhow, I really have been fired up on the whole Paterno story, as those who follow me on Facebook know! Here's the thing -- growing up in New Jersey, where Penn State was even more of a huge deal than the rest of the country, I've been hearing literally my whole life about how Joe Paterno wasn't just a great college coach, but a great human being. How, as New York Times writer Jonathan Mahler notes, Paterno's "Grand Experiment" put a premium on character and education, and believed in "Success With Honor. How Paterno was a leader of men. How he was Penn State. How he was so powerful that he could tell the school president and the athletic director and the board of trustees that he would stay as coach as long as he wanted to. How he controlled the school and the area with an iron fist.

And now we are supposed to believe, according to his sycophants, that the great Joe Paterno is really just like some mid-level bureaucrat who was only following the chain of command when it came to reporting sexual abuse? Whose hands were tied when it came to protecting children from being anally raped in his own locker room? Are you flipping kidding me? Paterno was the most powerful man not just in college sports, but one of the most powerful men in the country. He counted presidents as personal friends. All he literally had to do was make one phone call to the cops about Jerry Sandusky, and his old coach would have been in handcuffs a decade ago, instead of going on to be in a position to molest many more children.

Paterno's story that he only knew of one incident involving Sandusky also defies credulity. You don't get to the top of the food chain -- and stay there -- without knowing everything going on around you. Besides, I cannot believe that it is just a coincidence that in 1999, the year after police investigated Sandusky for the first time he was reported for groping a young boy in the shower, that Paterno told his protege and would-be successor that he would never be head coach. Why did Sandusky then retire at the age of 55, and never work for another college football program again? And no, I don't believe Scott Paterno's story that his father told Sandusky he could never be head coach because he was too devoted to his foundation. Oh, please!

Anyhow, even if want to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that Paterno only knew about one case, the 2002 anal rape of a 10-year-old in Paterno's athletic center's shower, and that his graduate assistant supposedly downplayed the graphic details of what actually happened, the fact is, as Paterno admitted to the grand jury, that he knew that "something of a sexual nature" happened with his old coach and a young boy. And that Paterno, other than some perfunctory mention up the chain of command, never called the police, never asked his graduate assistant for more details, never asked Sandusky what happened, and never even attempted to find out who the boy was.

For the next decade, Paterno went to bed every night knowing that his old coach was around young boys all the time, at Sandusky's foundation for at-risk boys, at his home, with the children he adopted, at schools, at his coaching camps, run on Penn State satellite campus. He also let Sandusky himself have an office on the Penn State campus, and his old coach was seen in his locker room working out just last week. If you knew for a fact, as Paterno did, that somebody you knew was a child molestor, and you had the power to stop them, would you be okay with letting them be around children?

Not to mention that Jerry Sandusky was able to get so much access to children precisely because he was connected to Paterno's Penn State program. He took his victims to Penn State games and events, for goodness sake! And JoePa was okay with that?

I just don't understand the Penn State students rioting over Paterno being fired, or the sycophants defending him. Because when it comes down to it, it ultimately doesn't matter how good a coach Paterno was, or how many young men he did help in his career. He didn't help the vulnerable boys who needed his help the most. How many children were molested because Joe Paterno chose not to act on what he knew? One is too many.

As much as I root for A-Rod, and as much as I admire and appreciate Vince Young and Mack Brown for bringing my Texas Longhorns their first national championship in 35 years, you'd better believe I would be marching in the street against them if they did anything to enable a pedophile.

Real life should come before sports. And the lives of young boys should come before Joe Paterno's career. He didn't deserve to get a flipping victory lap after what he did -- make that didn't -- do. 
 
Put aside the hero worship, or the appreciation for Joe Paterno as a coach. When it comes down to it, he is a man who enabled a pedophile to wreak havoc on countless boys' lives. He is no better than those bishops and nuns who looked the other way when priests took away the innocence of young children. Paterno has had a great 84 years of life. How great have the lives been of all the young boys who were sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky, his old coach? And how many of those acts of abuse could have been prevented, if only the great Joe Paterno had made one phone call? Think about it.


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Oh, Great. Brian Cashman Is Back for More

Now that Brian Cashman has been re-signed as Yankees GM, shortly after making a deal with CC Sabatahia, I have one request for him: To shut up about how oh-so-tough it is to be general manager of the New York Yankees. Boo bleeding hoo. Enough already. If the job is sooooo much for poor Brian to handle, then he should have taken his talents to St. Louis, or to Anaheim, or to Boston, or to Chicago. Oh, wait, he was never actually in the running for the Cubs job, now held by Theo Epstein. The talk that he was in the running there, like the talk that the Red Sox were considering him, was just media-driven fluff to make him see like he was in demand. Sheesh.

At any rate, I don't think I can bear to hear another three years of Cashman talk about how stressful and difficult his job is. So I really hope he quits his whining.

You know what's really stressful? Being unemployed. Trying to figure out how to pay your bills when you have too much month left at the end of your money. Being outsourced. There are millions of Americans suffering right now in this country's poor economic state. I have empathy for them. For Brian Cashman, who is the 1% when it comes to MLB management, not so much.

And by the way, can we please, please get rid of the myth that working for the Yankees is infinitely tougher than any other team, because every season is supposedly considered a failure if the Yankees don't win it all? Our enemies in Boston actually stick to that more than the Yankees do -- Terry Francona was essentially shown the door, and Theo Epstein was given a strong hint to take his own talents to Chi-Town, only after they brought two World Series titles to a team waiting since 1918 for another World Series championship. The team's September collapse this year made heads roll, the way heads should have rolled in the Bronx after the 2004 collapse.

Meanwhile, back in the Bronx, the franchise that claims that any season without a title is a failure just re-signed a GM who has brought the team exactly one ring since 2000.

The email I got from Yankees.com regardng bringing Cashman back emphasizes how the Yankees "have earned a postseason berth in 13 of his 14 seasons as GM," and notes that Cashman's "feat of reaching the playoffs in each of his first 10 seasons (1998-2007) remains unmatched in Baseball history." But, but, aren't those seasons all failures if there's not a ring involved?

Look, as I noted after the Yankees lost in the postseason this year, I thought it was ridiculous for fans to flip out over it, given that the Yanks won the World Series just two years ago, and I also thought Randy Levine's "failure" rhetoric was obnoxious. But at the same time, I really want to see this franchise stop with that myth that anything short of a title is a failure. Because it's inconsistent, given that Levine still has a job, and Lonn Trost, and, yes, Brian Cashman. And you can't have it both ways -- bragging about making it to the postseason each year, at the same time you're calling those years failures. Which one is it?

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