Dipping Into The Archives Vol. 12

1983

At first glance, 1983 looks like yet another of the many drab seasons from this part of the franchise history. Last place finish? Check. A mid-season managerial firing? Check. Poor seasons from past-their-prime veterans? Welcome to the club, Mike Torrez. Little did we know that the budding talent in the minor league system would shortly pay dividends. 1983 would be the last bad season for several years.

The yearbook’s cover montage didn’t leave much hint of the future success to come, as most of the featured players would soon be gone. Neil Allen wouldn’t last the season, he would be traded at the deadline for a first baseman of some renown. As a result, 1983 would be Dave Kingman’s final season as a Met - with a new first baseman in town Kingman was superfluous. Unfortunately, John Stearns’ career was in its final stages. Due to injuries he was limited to only 4 appearances as a pinch runner, and he was only available to briefly appear in his final major league season in 1984. That’s a perfect indication of what an outstanding athlete he was. An elbow injury may have prevented him from being able to hit, but he could still make a contribution on the base paths even though he was a catcher. Stearns was probably the prime example of a player who represented the team well in its worst era, but wasn’t able to stick around long enough to take part in the glory.

But I’ve buried the lede here. Take a look at the lower left hand corner. Tom Seaver was back! In his age 38 season he was longer the great pitcher he had been; his role was to anchor the staff, provide quality innings, mentor the young pitchers, and pick up his 300th career victory wearing the blue and orange. He accomplished all of that except for the last one, as the Mets made a crucial error the following offseason. At the time there was a free agent compensation system in place. If a team lost a top player in free agency, they could select a player from a pool of candidates as compensation. It was not a requirement that the selection come from the team that had poached your own player. Each team could protect a certain number of players from the organization, and would leave exposed players that they either didn’t want or didn’t believe would be snatched up. The Mets took the calculated gamble that no club would select Seaver, so he was left unprotected. The White Sox lost LaMarr Hoyt to San Diego, and selected Seaver from the pool. Boy, was Seaver livid. I remember his press conference after that happened, he was blasting the Mets organization for leaving him exposed. It took years to repair that relationship, it wasn’t until a couple of years after his retirement that the team retired his number. As the final insult, Seaver did pick up career win #300 in 1985 in New York, but it was against the Yankees while pitching for the White Sox. That didn’t feel right; I suppose Tom Glavine picking up #300 years later as a Met was similar, but with all due respect to Glavine he was no Tom Seaver.

4 members of the ‘86 championship squad made their Mets debuts in 1983. The first was Danny Heep, who arrived from Houston via an offseason trade. He was a fairly solid contributor, acting as a 4th outfielder, pinch hitter, and backup first baseman in addition to DHing in the World Series. More notable is who the Mets shipped out to obtain him. Mike Scott was one of the many young pitchers the team trotted out in the early part of the decade who was never able to put it all together. It wasn’t until his arrival in Houston that he developed his *cough* hard slider that transformed him into a dominant pitcher and a thorn in the Mets’ side in the 1986 NLCS.

Two rookies and future champs made their MLB debuts this season. Ron Darling made a few starts at season’s end, but his impact would not come until the following year. More significant was the long-awaited arrival of Darryl Strawberry. From the moment he was selected with the first overall pick in the 1980 draft, fans kept close watch on his progress. He was promoted to the majors early in the season to much hype. That hype hurt him in the long run. All the “black Ted Williams” references meant that whatever he did it would never be good enough for some people. But he was the most productive power hitter the franchise had ever seen up to that point and a perennial All-Star. I’ll take that.

As far as impact goes, nothing tops the Keith Hernandez trade. If June 15, 1977 (the Seaver trade) was the worst day in franchise history, then June 15, 1983 was one of the best. The trade was improbable; he was the #3 hitter and leading run producer for the team that had just won the World Series. Whitey Herzog didn’t seem to like him - there were whispers over the fact that he liked doing crossword puzzles in the clubhouse. The horror!

Hernandez’s acquisition came with a sense of drama. At the time a veteran player traded in the middle of a multi year contract had the right to void the remaining years and declare free agency next offseason, so the team had to persuade Hernandez to make the commitment to stick around. To this day he talks about how unhappy he felt at the time over having been sent to a losing team. He was no Richie Hebner, however, as he quickly learned to love New York and the Mets. The front office showed him how deep the supply of promising prospects was in the organization and that was enough to sell him on the idea of remaining a Met. Hernandez of course went on to become one of the greatest leaders the team has ever had and cemented his standing as arguably the most brilliant defensive first baseman in baseball history. He was the first truly transformative trade acquisition of the Frank Cashen era; he would not be the last.

Now is as good a time as any to take one last look at Ron Hodges. The two easiest ways to guarantee a long major league career are to become either a left handed relief pitcher or a backup catcher. Hodges wound up appearing in a total of 12 major league seasons, and 1983 was the only year in which he played more than 100 games. His specific career path is difficult to replicate these days. A modern day backup is more likely to bounce around from team to team. (Pro tip, try to think of catchers if you want a good rarity score whilst playing Immaculate Grid. You can rarely go wrong by guessing John Buck if you get stuck.) Back then it was more common for a guy such as Bob Montgomery or Ron Hodges to find a home and stay there. Hodges’ career ran from 1973-1984, so he made his debut on a pennant winner, suffered through the bad years, and stuck around long enough to at least see the start of the turnaround.

Another new face joined the Mets family as changes were made to the broadcast crew. After handling both radio & TV duties since the inaugural 1962 season, Bob Murphy moved over to radio full time, and he provided the happy recaps until the end of his Ford Frick Award winning career. But another Frick winner would step into the TV booth, as 1983 was Tim McCarver’s first season as a Mets broadcaster. And let’s not ignore Steve Zabriskie. He was no Gary Cohen, but after years of forgettable play-by-play men (Lorn Brown?) he proved to be a solid broadcaster and meshed very well with McCarver and Ralph Kiner.

I’ll close my look back at the 1983 season with a photo of the minor league managers and coaches. The Mets would promote from within when hiring a new skipper for 1984. That proved to be a smart move, as an innovative manager eager to give playing time to the youngsters with whom he became familiar would prove to be a winning strategy in the years to come.

SNL Season 7 Peek

I’m going to end my SNL rewatch here, but I figured it would be a good idea to take a look at the premiere episode of season 7 to see how the show began to slowly improve upon the catastrophic season 6. As a sign of how my brain works, I can barely remember anything I learned in an economics class but I have clear memories of an episode of a sketch show that aired 42 years ago. I’m not joking, either. There were multiple times in which I not only thought to myself “I remember this one” but some of the lines were popping up in my head.

Dick Ebersol made a few subtle, yet notable changes to the format starting with the fact that Don Pardo was temporarily replaced as the announcer. Weekend Update was now renamed SNL Newsbreak, and Ebersol not only increased the amount of pre-taped pieces, but he often added standup comics to the mix. I recall appearances by both a pre-MST3K Joel Hodgson, and a pre-fame Harry Anderson as well. There also wouldn’t automatically be a monologue from the host. More often than not the show would begin with the host briefly standing on stage with the cast before immediately proceeding to the opening sketch. Finally, IIRC they temporarily put the “Live From New York!” line on ice; the cold open would simply lead directly into the opening credit sequence. I couldn’t tell if that was the case this week as the cold open was one of the sketches cut out of the Peacock stream due to the cost of musical rights.

Which is a shame because the episode, and the season began with Eddie Murphy’s Little Richard Simmons sketch. As I have mentioned previously, I was a faithful viewer of the show’s initial run as soon as I was old enough that my parents allowed me to stay up that late to watch it. I found the premiere episode of season 6 so awful that I stopped watching but after months of hearing how good Murphy was I decided to give it another chance. The Simmons sketch was such a tour de force that they reeled me right back in. It’s also true, however, that this particular sketch may not have aged very well. An impersonation that mashes together two effeminate celebrities would likely be an uncomfortable watch today.

The showcase sketch was a filmed piece parodying Norman Mailer’s promotion of convicted killer and best-selling author John Henry Abbott. The piece was a news doc stating that new literary talent was emerging from prisons. Those of us old enough can remember Eddie Murphy’s introduction of the Tyrone Green character reciting his poem entitled Images. Yes, that was the “kill my landlord” poem.

Joe Piscopo added two new impersonations to his repertoire, as he appeared as both Andy Rooney and Tom Snyder. I also liked the standup set from comic juggler Michael Davis. I had seen him perform the same act on the Tonight Show, so this was another instance in which I heard the lines in my head before he actually spoke. The set consisted of a buildup to his juggling of an axe, a machete, and a cleaver. I’m not sure how much he’s changed his act over the years, but it looks like he’s still performing to this day.

Overall, this was a fairly solid palate cleanse following the horrors of season 6. I’m not going to continue my rewatch, there’s only so much old SNL I can watch. I haven’t decided yet if I want to follow through on this, but I’m toying with the idea of sampling each season. I’ll watch the season premiere and then the episode from the midpoint of the season to see how well that year’s cast has been gelling. In the meantime, I have some thoughts on the show’s legacy that I’ll save for next week.

#48 & The Rest

NASCAR established its Hall Of Fame in 2010. By that point the circuit was already more than a half century old, so there was an immediate backlog of deserving candidates. The original bylaws called for inductions of the top 5 vote getters from each ballot, with the understanding that it would eventually be reduced to 3 per year. Beginning with the 2021 election, that reduction began with 2 inductees from the contemporary ballot and the third coming from a pioneers ballot.

I think that reduction was a little premature; there are still plenty of deserving candidates awaiting their chance that it’s still possible to induct classes larger than 3 per year while still maintaining the exclusivity of the honor. There are mitigating factors that make it even worse. It’s officially the NASCAR Hall Of Fame, not the Cup Series Hall Of Fame, which means that inductees have come from all of the assorted divisions. As a result, some drivers from lower division series have cut ahead of successful Cup drivers in the line. In addition, drivers compete with crew chiefs and team owners on the same ballot. It was made worse because no ceremony was held in 2021 due to COVID. Instead of making up for that by holding a double ceremony the following year, they simply held the inductions of that year’s inductees up one year without conducting the following year’s regularly scheduled election. So with a year skipped the bottleneck got even more clogged.

The Class Of 2024 honorees were announced last week and there was zero suspense. Jimmie Johnson was an easy choice along with his long time crew chief Chad Knaus. It’s fitting that the two will enter simultaneously, but as I say limiting it to only two selections from the contemporary ballot forces the likes of Ricky Rudd or Harry Gant to continue to impatiently await their turns. There’s nothing wrong with keeping an exclusive club, I just wish they had made up for the skipped year by adding an additional inductee for a 3 year period to make up for that gap year. Donnie Allison is the inductee in the pioneer category. Congrats to all.

Until Next Time

Hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend. Thanks as always for spending a few minutes of your day with my newsletter. Let’s do this again on Wednesday.