centerfield maz

Friday June 4th, 1976: One month before America was to celebrate its 200-year birthday on July 4th, the craze across the nation was celebrating the bicentennial.  Joe Frazier's third place Mets (25-27) had lost four straight & 11 of their last 13. In that time two of the teams stars, Tom Seaver & Dave Kingman had been struggling. In his last ten games, Dave Kingman had just one HR & was batting .200. In the previous series with the Cubs Kingman came to bat with twelve men on base failing to drive any of them in. After ending the last game striking out with the winning runs on base, he trashed his locker & the surroundings of the clubhouse. After starting the year at 4-0, Tom Seaver the NL's reigning Cy Young Award winner had lost four straight starts. On this Friday night, a big Dodger Stadium crowd of 52,516 came to see their own knuckleballer Burt Hooton take on Tom Seaver.  USC Trivia:  In the crowd on this evening, was legendary USC baseball coach, Rod...

Tuesday June 3rd, 1975:    In 1975, Yogi Berra's New York Mets were hoping for a comeback season. It was just two seasons earlier that the Mets were the NL Champions but  in 1974 they fell to a disappointing fifth place finish. In the off season they brought in players Dave Kingman, Joe Torre,  Del Unser & Gene Clines. Veteran Joe Torre  was the 1971 NL MVP but at age 34 was entering the twilight of his career. Unser was a solid centerfielder who would hit .294 in his only full Mets season. Clines had speed & was good backup outfielder but struggled in New York. Dave Kingman provided the Mets with power, he would hit long HRs that entertained the crowd. Nicknamed "Kong" he would be the first Mets player to have 30 plus back-to-back HR seasons. He would come in second place in the NL to Mike Schmidt both times. On the downside Kingman struck out often & hit for low averages. The Mets  traded away Tug McGraw for young catcher John Stearns who wou...

Friday night June 1st, 2012: At first it seemed like any other New York night. Terry Collins' New York Mets were playing well & surprising everyone with a 29-23 record, just one game out of first place. 27,069 fans came to Citi Field to see the Mets go up against the reigning World Champion, St Louis Cardinals (27-25). The Mets sent Johan Santana to the mound, 2-2 with a 2.75 ERA. Santana had missed all of 2011 due to injury, he had an impressive Opening Day win, pitching five scoreless innings then struggled. In his last start he threw a complete game four hit shutout at Citi Field, beating the San Diego Padres. On this night he was even better, he went out & made Mets history. After a quiet 1st inning, Johan started out the 2nd getting Allen Craig to fly out. He then walked two batters but struck out Matt Adams & Tyler Green to end the inning.  In the 3rd he got an easy ground ball out, a weak pop up & soft liner to short, as the Cards went down 1-2-3. Sa...

After Bobby Valentine's playing career ended in 1979, he became a highly sought-after coach. Coach :  In 1980 Valentine began his coaching career as a minor league infield instructor for the San Diego Padres (1980-1981). The Padres had been the last team Bobby had played for, just the past year. In 1982, the Mets hired the Stamford, Connecticut native, high school baseball star as a coach. Bobby was thrilled to be close to home & back with his old team in the New York metro area.  In 1983 he became the team’s third base coach. He would also handle the infielders and base-running instructions. As a Mets coach he worked under three Mets managers; George Bamberger (1982) Frank Howard (1983) and Davey Johnson (1984). Bobby quickly became a popular figure as a Mets coach, and a fan favorite. His coaching talents & baseball knowledge as well as a natural feel for the game, was recognized throughout the league. There was talk all over MLB...