Dipping Into The Archives Vol. 11

1982

1982 was yet another one of many Mets seasons that did not quite live up to its promise. The cover of the yearbook featured the 2 new Georges, with George Bamberger replacing Joe Torre as manager and 1977 MVP George Foster arriving in a splashy trade. Alas, Foster went on to have a terrible season and 1982 produced yet another last place finish in the NL East.

In retrospect, Foster’s collapse should not have come as a huge surprise. Despite the fact that he nearly led the league in RBIs in the strike shortened 1981 season, the signs of a decline were right there. He was 33 years old, and the trade happened at the exact moment his bat began to slow down. It had gotten difficult for him to catch up to a good fastball, and sliders just ate him alive. His production plummeted, and the boos rained down. To be fair, he rebounded slightly in his subsequent years. He was never a star player with the Mets, but as the club added additional pieces he was a perfectly adequate #6 hitter. But that was certainly not what the Mets expected when they made that trade.

A more consequential trade took place at the very end of spring training. Following an unproductive 1981 season the team realized it was the right time to part ways with Lee Mazzilli and dealt him to Texas for 2 minor league pitchers. I admit I was furious when that trade happened. Dealing a star player after 1 bad season? For a couple of pitchers I never heard of? Shows how much I know. Mazzilli was already in the decline phase of his career, and one of the return pieces was none other than Ron Darling. It’s safe to say that trade turned out well.

The most unusual event from the 1982 season also involved a trade. The Mets dealt Joel Youngblood to Montreal in August. The Mets were playing in Chicago at the time, and it was of course a day game in the days before Wrigley Field had lights. Youngblood started, got a hit, and then was pulled midgame once the trade was completed. The Expos were on a road trip in Philadelphia, so Youngblood immediately traveled from Chicago to Philly and arrived in time to be in uniform for the late innings of that night’s game. He came in to pinch hit, and got a base hit, which meant that he tallied up base hits for 2 separate teams in 2 separate cities on the same date.

Otherwise 1982 was a fairly unmemorable year. The roster was yet again filled with once-productive veteran players now on the downsides of their careers. There was a bit too much Randy Jones and Ellis Valentine to be seen. It’s hard to image that a World Series title was only 4 years away. The construction of the champs was still in its infancy; only 4 members of the ‘86 squad appeared in the majors this year - Wally Backman, Jesse Orosco, Doug Sisk, and most notably Mookie Wilson. And slowly but surely the minor league pipeline was beginning to improve. As you can see the organization was not only developing future ‘86ers, but also prospects that would be traded for key veteran players that would greatly contribute to the title.

It’s worth mentioning a couple of pitchers from this era. Because he largely played in the dark era of the franchise, Craig Swan has been somewhat lost to history. He frequently struggled with injuries, including a quintessential “can only happen to a Met” malady. He was actually struck by a throw from the catcher on a stolen base attempt. Swan led the NL in ERA in 1978, and remained solid when healthy enough to pitch. 1982 was his last decent year, he wasn’t able to stick around long enough to enjoy the glory.

And while on the topic of pitcher injuries, look no further than Tim Leary. The Mets had a tendency to hype every rookie pitcher as The New Seaver, and Leary might have been the most heavily hyped of any of them. The #2 pick of the 1979 draft, he zoomed up the minor league ladder and reached the majors in 1981. Mets fans of a certain age always worry whenever a young hurler pitches in a cold rainy game as it brings back harsh memories of Leary’s truncated rookie campaign. His major league debut came in a classic early April windy day in Wrigley. He was pulled after only 2 innings with an elbow injury, which was serious enough to cause him to miss the rest of the year. Despite the optimism displayed on his yearbook page, he missed the entire 1982 season and most of 1983 as well. He would go on to have a couple of decent seasons with the Dodgers, but he never came close to living up to his promise, and all told he only tallied 66 innings pitched as a Met.

Let’s close 1982 with a look at the staff photo. Even when he was young, Jay Horwitz looked like an old guy. It’s always been a paradox that Horwitz was long regarded as one of the premier PR guys in the game, yet the Mets dealt with an endless number of self-imposed public relations disasters over the years. No wonder he aged so rapidly.

SNL Season 6 Recap - Season Finale

Although technically the final episode of season 6, this week’s episode was essentially a sneak preview of season 7. After a month off to retool, the show returned with 3 new cast members, and among the sketches were intros of a couple of bits that would recur in the later seasons.

The cold open served as a way to remind the audience of the show’s past glory, as well as to reassure all that the show was back in good hands. Chevy Chase entered a storage closet which was filled with old costumes from the glory years. After putting on the land shark head for a moment, Chase found Mr. Bill stuffed in a trash can. The two lamented how bad the show had gotten, and the bit closed with a Chase fall.

There was no host this week, in lieu of a monologue Joe Piscopo came on stage as Frank Sinatra in a bit encouraging people to buy American cars. It was an ugly, mean spirited piece that was filled with ethnic slurs at the expense of Japanese people. It was very uncomfortable to sit through.

The spotlight sketch was the debut of the I Married A Monkey bit. It was a soap opera parody in which Tim Kazurinsky interacted with his chimpanzee bride. (Technically an ape, not a monkey.) The humor of the bit always came from Kazurinsky’s attempt to remain in character as he interacted with an animal on live TV. It’s very impressive that he never broke - Jimmy Fallon should have been forced to watch these sketches to prove that it’s possible to appear in a sketch without laughing. Because Lorne Michaels likes to pretend that the 5 years he was away from the show never happened, non-Eddie Murphy cast members from this time often got short shrift, but Tim Kazurinsky deserves a bit of credit. If memory serves, he had a bit of a Chris Parnell vibe about him.

Chevy Chase stuck around to sit in the Update chair. Two problems: first, time has been unkind to Chevy Chase. His mannerisms, which seemed charming at the time, have aged very poorly with the knowledge of how intensely people hate the guy. Second, the episode aired as a WGA strike began. The show was written before the strike was called, but that meant that there couldn’t be any late breaking news on Update. A couple of times he used the “this just in” joke while holding up a blank page. He did take the time to give us an update on Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s condition.

Update introduced Eddie Murphy’s Shareef Abdul Muhammad film critic character, and it also featured Laurie Metcalf’s one and only appearance as a featured player, in a pre filmed man on the street piece. (Side note - Murphy also did his Cosby impersonation this week, in a sketch that has not aged well. It was a beer commercial parody, with Cos giving beer to young children, rationalized by the fact that it was light beer, so how much harm could it really do? Oof.) Finally, Al Franken returned in one of his Al Franken Decade pieces. He also promoted what was supposed to have been his return to co-host with Tom Davis the following week. They even went so far as to pre write the show script and mail it to themselves so that the postmark would prove they had not violated any strike laws by writing during a work stoppage. NBC and Dick Ebersol eventually thought better of that idea and postponed the episode, which meant that season 6 ended prematurely.

Which is just as well. It’s one thing to shut down the show for a month; they could only do so much rebooting in that small of an amount of time. Now they had an opportunity to spend an entire summer to fix the show. Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius would get fired to complete the cast overhaul. When the show returned in the fall it was almost completely focused on Eddie Murphy. More than in any other time in the show’s history it centered on one singular star rather than the ensemble. I’m not going to continue my rewatch, but I will sample the season 7 premiere so that I can end my revisit of the show’s past with a better taste in my mouth.

Randy Meisner 1946-2023

Randy Meisner’s standing in the big picture has suffered a bit from recency bias. When people think of the Eagles, they immediately picture the 4 members from the post-Hell Freezes Over era. All due respect to Timothy B. Schmitt, but if anyone tries to compose a list of their 15 favorite Eagles tunes, there will be significantly more tracks that Meisner performed on than Schmitt did.

A well-regarded bass player in the Los Angeles music scene, Meisner initially emerged as one of the original members of Poco, although he left the band before their debut album was released. Following a stint in Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band he became one of the musicians in Linda Ronstadt’s backing band, a group of musicians who went on to become the Eagles. With his country rock background and his exquisite harmonizing he was crucial to the development of their distinctive sound which helped them become a major commercial force throughout the 1970s. Although most often confined to backup singing, one of his rare turns as the lead vocalist came with Take It To The Limit, and he absolutely nailed that one.

He left the band following Hotel California, and had a run of success as a solo artist. Years before Don Henley and Glenn Frey hit the charts on their own, Meisner scored a trio of hits on the Billboard Top 40. Not counting Joe Walsh, who was already an established artist when he joined the band, Meisner was the most successful Eagle as a solo artist until the band’s breakup and the starts of Henley’s and Frey’s solo careers.

He eventually faded from the public eye. When the Eagles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 it was the first time I had seen him in years and his appearance somewhat shocked me. It was clear that he was not doing well. Over the years many bleak stories emerged about his decline. No need to list his physical and mental health issues, but it was once again sad to see someone who brought so much joy to so many people suffering so terribly.

Get Mulder & Scully On The Case, Stat!

Perhaps as a result of watching too many episodes of In Search Of I have mixed feelings about the congressional hearing held last week concerning UFOs. Part of me is certain that there is extraterrestrial life out there, and I won’t discount the possibility that we have had visitors. What I still have a hard time believing is that not only has there been actual contact but that we also have alien vessels stored away somewhere. It’s implausible enough that so many people are capable of holding a secret that large for so many years. But don’t forget who was recently in the White House for 4 years. If we were actually in possession of alien technology, not only would Trump have bragged about it but he would have brought photos to Mar-a-Lago to show off to all his friends. It will take a lot more than one whistleblower to convince me that Mork actually landed in Boulder. Shazbot!

I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together

If I’m wrong about the above, I welcome our alien overlords and invite them to subscribe to Tending The Herd. You will learn so much about earthlings by reading this. Thanks to all for reading and let’s talk again on Wednesday.