Dipping Into The Archives Volume 2

1972

1972 was a significant year in Mets history as two events occurred in that offseason which had major ramifications for the franchise - one tragic, and one farcical. The tragedy, of course, was the fatal heart attack Gil Hodges suffered near the end of spring training. I can’t conceive how much of a shock that was to the players. The team chose continuity, promoting first base coach Yogi Berra to manage. (Side note, that year was when I understood what the Hall Of Fame is. As spring training games aired on TV, the team broadcasters mentioned that Yogi would be going into the Hall Of Fame later that summer. I couldn’t figure out how he could manage the team if he was going to a hall, until it was explained to me.) There are still long-time observers who insist the smart move would have been to promote the club’s minor league director to the managerial seat - a man named Whitey Herzog. That’s ironic, the Mets/Cardinals rivalry in the 80s got so heated that Herzog became one of the all-time Mets villains.

1972 was 3 years removed from the 1969 miracle season, and standard roster churn meant that players from the championship squad were gradually departing. The first couple of years it was mostly spare parts leaving the team; Ron Swoboda was traded away by this point but otherwise the team was shedding the likes of Bobby Pfeil or J.C. Martin. 1972 saw a big change, as more of the major players were going away. Art Shamsky was traded, World Series MVP Donn Clendenon was released. Oh, and there was one other trade, which I’ll get to.

One of the big recurring plot lines of the team’s first quarter century was the inability to find a third baseman. The search led to several ill advised trades for aging veterans. Two years earlier the club swapped Amos Otis for Joe Foy. But that was a precursor to the pre-1972 deal. The team traded Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi. You have to feel bad for poor Fregosi. He was an outstanding player, making 6 All-Star teams (and those were legitimate selections, not “we need to include an Angel” choices) yet he is mostly remembered for being on the wrong side of an historically terrible trade. You have to wonder how differently the franchise’s history would have gone had they tried different tactics to fill that third base hole. Had Otis remained in the organization they would have had a perfect center fielder to replace Tommie Agee as he aged out of the position rather than having to settle for the likes of Don Hahn and Del Unser. And can you imagine a starting rotation of Seaver/Koosman/Ryan/Matlack? We could have been looking at a perennial contender throughout the decade - a Seaver trade in 1977 seems very unlikely.

Speaking of Jon Matlack, he was featured on the prospect page, and he went on to win the NL Rookie Of The Year Award. Buzz Capra didn’t make a huge splash with the Mets, but he went on to lead the league in ERA with the Braves in 1974 before injuries curtailed his career. And while we’re on the topic of pitcher injuries, Brent Strom is best known these days as one of the top pitching coaches in the game, but he is also the answer to a trivia question as the second man to undergo Tommy John surgery. John Milner was a fine player in his own right; he wound up finishing third in that year’s Rookie of the Year vote. 72 was Bob Rauch’s sole minor league season; he was a standard back of the bullpen reliever.

In these years the Mets would publish 2 yearbooks; a revised edition would come out later in the season. I’ve got both editions most of these years, but the only 1972 version I have is the opening day one. So what I have only reflects what they were able to quickly sneak in after most of the content had already been prepared. In other words, the Hodges death is acknowledged, but he’s still in the team photo and there are a couple of Yogi pages that appear to have been quickly slapped together. Similarly the major on field development - the trade for Rusty Staub - took place late in spring training, so there was only time to add a photo and a bio page.

There would be another significant player acquisition during the 1972 season - the team traded for Willie Mays. I’ll have to wait until 1973 to see him appear in a Mets yearbook.

SNL Season 6 Recap

SNL hosting gigs can often serve as a snapshot in time, as there is the occasional host whose gig made sense at the time but whose fame didn’t last long enough to resonate with later generations. Such is the case with Ray Sharkey, who hosted episode 6, the first episode of 1981. At the time he appeared to be on the verge of major stardom, with his role in the film The Idolmaker earning a Golden Globe award. Unfortunately he sabotaged his career due to chronic substance abuse. He had a brief resurgence with his portrayal of Sonny Stealgrave in the initial arc of Wiseguy, but he soon fell back into his bad habits and eventually succumbed to AIDS in the early 90s.

He threw himself fully into the sketches here, but for fear of sounding like a broken record, the material was substandard. It’s a bad sign that I stopped counting the number of times he said “fuhgettaboutit” in the monologue once it reached 5. The showcase sketch found him portraying a translator for an uptight WASP couple who would argue with each other in a heavily repressed passive-aggressive manner. He was really playing to the rafters, and while I admire the effort, it just was not funny.

Once again not funny, the Rocket Report went live this week as he stood outside at the stroke of midnight as a crowd counted down to January 11. I don’t know why the show continued to go with these man on the street pieces; Rocket was not good at it. This week he got some help at the Update desk, as Gail Matthius joined in as co-anchor. So we had the pleasure of watching two different people have to suffer through their tellings of poor jokes.

If there was a silver lining to this week’s episode it’s that it provided increasing showcases for Eddie Murphy. It’s clear that the producers were beginning to understand what they had and Murphy’s self confidence was growing. He had an Update piece discussing draft registration in which he said he didn’t want to be drafted because if he were the show would be without a token black guy. Harsh, but fair. To prove his value to the show he briefly did his Stevie Wonder and Bill Cosby impersonations. At the end of the show in what looked to be a time filler he did a brief standup bit in which he demonstrated the ways in which black people fight. Neither piece was all that strong, but you could see the signs of the greatness that would soon come.

The musical guest this week (as always, edited out of the Peacock stream) was Jack Bruce. Next week’s host is Karen Black in her second and final stint as host. And that will already move us into the second half of the season.

It’s Taylor’s World, We’re Just Living In It

It was Taylor Swift weekend here in the New York area, as her massively successful Eras Tour made its stop in Met Life Stadium. She’s been a major star for half of her life at this point, and I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that she has reached the point of her career where that stardom will last for the entirety of her career, even after her record sales and radio play wane. (I’m not being a hater here, an eventual drop in popularity happens to everyone.) I think there is an ideal point of comparison which illustrates my argument. (I also pause to acknowledge that I’m showing my age when I use record sales and radio play as a metric. Substitute streaming numbers and my point holds.)

Bruce Springsteen hasn’t had a major hit in years, yet every time he tours it’s a major event. A large reason is that his songwriting has always reflected his current stage in life. The guy who wrote Rosalita became the guy who wrote The River became the guy who wrote Tunnel Of Love and so on and so on. Similarly the fans that were with him from the beginning matured at the same rate that he did and could feel that an aging Springsteen has been going through the same life changes as they had. At the same time, the emotions conveyed in his early songwriting are universal, so new generations constantly discover his music and go through the same process.

Taylor Swift’s creative evolution has followed a similar pattern. The woman who wrote Teardrops On My Guitar became the woman who wrote Love Story became the woman who wrote All Too Well and so on. In the same way her earliest fans have grown up with her and followed a similar personal evolution. And I think the key moment in her career was when Ryan Adams did a song-by-song cover of her 1989 album. I know it’s not cool to say anything positive about Adams, but the album was a clear example of game recognize game. He recognized skilled songwriting and didn’t feel too cool for school. And the album proved that people who underestimated her songwriting talent due to her youth were sorely mistaken.

Indy

The first 75% or so of the Indy 500 was a fairly standard race but it took a turn as the race developed and is likely to go down as one of the more memorable. It’s worth noting that some if it was a product of race officials making key decisions to maximize drama. Unlike NASCAR, IndyCar does not have an overtime. If there is a yellow flag situation at the end of a race, that unfortunately means that it ends under caution, which is unsatisfying. But this year 3 separate crashes occurred in the closing laps, so in each case officials chose to throw a red flag, stopping the race and setting things up for a green flag finish.

And so, as an accident took place on lap 198, a red flag meant that the green flag would fly on lap 199, creating a one lap shootout for the victory. Josef Newgarden played it perfectly, making a well-timed pass on race leader and defending champ Marcus Ericsson and then holding him off to win. Before this weekend Newgarden was arguably the most accomplished active driver who had yet to win Indy, so the victory celebration was predictably joyful. He took Helio Castroneves’s signature fence climb a step further by actually going through a fence opening and exchanging high fives and hugs with some of the fans. (On Monday in NASCAR Ryan Blaney won the rain-delayed Coca-Cola 600 and duplicated Newgarden’s celebration.)

It should also be mentioned that this was the final race for one of the most popular drivers in the sport’s history, as 2013 winner Tony Kanaan took his final ride at the brickyard. He received a worthy sendoff from both the fans and his fellow drivers. Kanaan was a great champion; he will be missed.

No Game Today?

I’m not going to go completely “old man shakes fist at cloud” on this topic, but it’s still worth noting. Yesterday a total of 8 teams had an off day on Memorial Day. I fully understand that constructing a 162 game schedule for 30 teams is a complex endeavor, but it doesn’t seem right for any team not to have a game on such a major holiday. Once again, it’s sometimes unavoidable. For example, the Mets completed a road trip on Sunday and are flying home from Colorado. Of course they are going to get the day off the following day.

The days in which most clubs would have doubleheaders scheduled on holidays is long gone, but I really think the schedule makers need to make it a priority to insure that every team has a scheduled game on Memorial Day. That means tweaking dates and locations of road trips to make it feasible, but it’s worth the effort. I’ll try to avoid making the same complaint come Labor Day, as this year the schedule for that holiday also calls for 8 teams getting the day off.

We’re Doing This Again Tomorrow

Hope everyone had a relaxing holiday weekend. Thanks for reading and we’ll be back on the regular schedule with a new newsletter tomorrow. See you then.