In 1976, Bob Myrick found out the hard way how Grote felt about losing when the Mets rookie pitcher beat his catcher in a game of Backgammon, causing Grote to explode, sending the board and its pieces across the room with a single swing of the arm.

“I just sat there staring at him – hard,” remembered Myrick. “He got up and picked up all the pieces, and we never had a cross word. He was a perfectionist.”

Grote’s desire to win led to unparalleled intensity on the field. During his 12-year career in New York, teammates labeled Grote surly, irascible, testy and moody. Then, there’s Koosman’s description: “If you looked up red-ass the dictionary, his picture would be in there. Jerry was the guy you wanted on your side, because he’d fight you tooth and nail ‘til death to win a ball game.”

Grote played with an anger and intensity that was, at times, intimidating to opponents, umpires, the media and teammates alike.

“When I came up I was scared to death of him,” said Jon Matlack, winner of the 1972 Rookie of the Year award. “If you bounced a curveball in the dirt, he’d get mad. I worried about him more than the hitter.”

“He could be trouble if you didn’t do what he said,” added former Met Craig Swan. “He wanted you to throw the pitches he called. He made it very simple. I would shake him off now and then, and he would shake his head back at me. If a guy hit a home run off of me, he wouldn’t let me hear the end of it.”

Grote had a special way of letting his pitchers know he wasn’t pleased with a pitch. “Jerry had such a great arm. He could throw with great control and handcuff you in front of your belt buckle,” remembers Koosman.

Grote would get incensed when Jim McAndrew was on the mound. “McAndrew would never challenge hitters according to where Grote wanted the ball; so Grote kept firing it back and handcuffing him in front of the belt buckle, and we would laugh, because we knew what Grote was doing,” said Koosman.

The tactic didn’t go over so well when Koosman pitched. During a game when Koosman was struggling to find his control, Grote began firing the ball at his pitcher’s belt buckle. Koosman called Grote to the mound.

“I told him, ‘If you throw the ball back at me like that one more time I am going to break your f—ing neck,’” Koosman told Peter Golenbeck in Amazin’. “I turned around and walked back to the mound, and he never threw it back at me again. We had great respect for each other after that.”

He took his frustration out on umpires too. Retired umpire Bruce Froemming claims Grote intentionally let a fastball get by him, nearly striking Froemming in the throat. Because they had spent the three previous innings in a non-stop argument, Froemming accused Grote of intentionally moving aside in hope that the pitch would hit the umpire.

“Are you going to throw me out?” snapped Grote.

“He made no attempt to stop that pitch,” Froemming thought. The home plate umpire fumed but realized he had no grounds to toss Grote from the game.

National League umpires were well aware of Grote, and his on-field demeanor. In fact, in 1975, the league was discussing physical contact between catchers and umpires. Jerry Crawford was queried about his unique style of resting a hand between a catcher’s hip and rib cage and he said, “I ask the catcher if it bothers him, and only Jerry Grote has complained.”

“The writers never respected Grote, but they guys who played with him could barely stand him,” said Ron Swoboda. “He was a red-ass Texan who loved to f— with people but who didn’t like anyone to f— with him. It was a one-way street. Grote is Grote, and we would not have been as good without him behind home plate.”

“Grote had a red-ass with the media, but he didn’t care,” added Koosman. “All he cared about was what he did on the field. If you didn’t get your story from what he did out there, you either talked to him nicely or he wasn’t going to give you any more story.”

Grote did not return calls or respond to multiple email requests for an interview for this story.

This is who Jerry Grote is – and the Mets knew it from the day they traded for him for a player to be named later in October 1965.

“When we got him, I don’t think anyone else had that big of an opinion of him,” said Bing Devine. “Jerry was withdrawn and had a negative personality, but he knew how to catch a ball game and how to handle pitchers, and maybe that very thing helped him to deal with the pitching staff. He was great. I know he surpassed our expectations.”

He was exactly what the Mets needed to manage a young, extremely talented pitching staff, but he was clearly a handful to manage too.

“If he ever learns to control himself, he might become the best catcher in baseball,” former Mets manager Wes Westrum told the media during Grote’s first season in New York.

Then, in 1968, Gil Hodges arrived. After being briefed on the Mets roster, Hodges said he “did not like some of the things I heard about Jerry. He had a habit of getting into too many arguments with umpires and getting on some of the older players on the club.”

Hodges, known for his firm, but fair, demeanor, took Grote into his office for an attitude adjustment. The Mets manager realized the importance of Grote’s talents and how it would affect the pitching staff. Hodges made his expectations clear.

“I hesitate to imagine where the New York Mets would have been the last few years without Jerry,” Hodges told Sports illustrated in 1971. “He is invaluable to us. He is intent and intense and he fights to get everything he can.”

Grote batted .256 in his 12 seasons in New York. He is a two-time All-Star (1968 and 1974). In 1969, Grote threw out 56% of baserunners. He ranks third on the Mets all-time list for games played (1235), 11th in hits (994), 15th in doubles and total bases (1413).

Grote fractured his wrist after getting hit by a pitch in May 1973. The Mets recorded three shutouts the first month with Grote behind the plate, four more shutouts over the next two months (May 12-August 11) without Grote behind the plate and eight more shutouts over the final six weeks of the season with Grote managing the staff. Grote caught every inning of every playoff and World Series game in 1969 and 1973. Here’s a statistic for you: In the 20 post season games between ’69 and ’73, the Mets used 45 pitchers and one catcher. Those were the only two post season appearances the Mets made during Grote’s 12 years in New York.

“One of the advantages of playing for New York is that the big crowds at Shea Stadium help you tremendously,” Grote said in a 1971 interview with Sports Illustrated. “They make you want to give 115% all the time. In other places it cannot be the same for the players. Like in Houston, nobody seems to applaud unless the hands on the scoreboard start to clap. Once those hands stop, so do all the others. Real enthusiasm.”

Grote loved playing in New York, and New York loved his gritty style.

Here’s what Adam Rubin of EspnNewYork reported on Davis:

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According to SNY’s Kevin Burkhardt this is what he had to say on Davis:

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And finally, Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated who pointed it that this work will help the Mets and Davis determine whether season ending surgery can be avoided or not:

[blackbirdpie id="89449027363545088"]

Going forward this may not mean much at all, but this will certainly be a positive factor on deciding whether or not the 2^nd year talent will need season ending ankle surgery or not.

This could be the first step in a line a few steps in getting the services of Davis back at some point in 2011. If the Mets can continue to remain in the National League’s Wildcard race somehow, someway, imagine the lineup the Mets could throw out there every day down the stretch.

Combined with a return of a healthy David Wright and Jose Reyes, the Mets would no doubt boast one of the National League’s most feared lineups.

A lineup that would consist of leadoff man Jose Reyes, Angel Pagan, Carlos Beltran, Ike Davis, David Wright and Jason Bay would certainly be as formidable as any in the game, something the Mets environed early on in the season.

In just 36 games played this year, Davis is batting .302 with seven home runs and 25 RBI. Those seven home runs are still second on the team, despite Davis being out nearly two months.

Finch wasn’t just an ordinary phenom, far from it… More like other worldly… I mean what else do you call a kid who can blaze a 150 mph fastball by your head?

As Sports Illustrated wrote in it’s sub-heading: 

“He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga — and his future in baseball.”

Only the sharpest of minds would have noticed that the first letter in each word spelled out “Happy April Fools Day.”

After Sports Illustrated ran “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch” in its April 1, 1985 issue, all of baseball was a buzz with curiosity; phones were ringing off the hook, reporters scrambled to get a bead on the story, and the baseball commissioner had to field complaints from concerned general managers who were up in arms over the Mets newest fire-balling weapon. Literally thousands of letters poured into Sports Illustrated’s George Plimpton who wrote the article.

Here is the first part of that classic April Fools Day prank, that Sports Illustrated perpetrated on the entire sports world.

The secret cannot be kept much longer. Questions are being asked, and sooner rather than later the New York Mets management will have to produce a statement. It may have started unraveling in St. Petersburg, Florida two weeks ago, on March 14th, to be exact, when Mel Stottelmyre, the Met pitching coach, walked over to the 40-odd Met players doing their morning calisthenics at the Payson Field Complex not far from the golf of Mexico, a solitary figure among the pulsation of jumping jacks, and motioned three Mets to step out of the exercise. The three, all good prospects, were John Christensen, a 24-year-old outfielder; Dave Cochrane, a square but muscular switch-hitting third baseman; and Lenny Dykstra, a swift centerfielder who may be the Mets’ leading man of the future.

Ordering the three to collect their bats and batting helmets, Stottelmyre led the players to the north end of the complex where a large canvas enclosure had been constructed two weeks before. The rumor was that some irrigation machinery was being installed in an underground pit.

Standing outside the enclosure, Stottelmyre explained what he wanted. “First of all,” the coach said, “the club’s got kind of a delicate situation here, and it would help if you keep reasonably quiet about it, O.K.?” The three nodded. Stottelmyre said, “We’ve got a young pitcher we’re looking at. We want to see what he’ll do with a batter standing in the box. We’ll do this alphabetically. John, go on in there, stand at the plate and gave the pitcher a target. That’s all you have to do.”

“Do you want me to take a cut?” Christensen asked.”

Stottelmyre produced a dry chuckle. “You can do anything you want.”

Christensen pulled aside a canvas flap and found himself inside a rectangular area about 90 feet long and 30 feet wide, open to the sky, with a home plate set in the ground just in front of him, and down at the far end a pitcher’s mound, with a small group of Met front-office personnel standing behind it, facing home plate.

Christensen recognized Nelson Doubleday, the owner of the Mets, and Frank Cashen, wearing a long-billed fishing cap. He had never seen Doubleday at the training facility before.

Christensen bats right-handed. As he stepped around the plate he nodded to Ronn Reynolds, the stocky reserve catcher who had been with the Mets organization since 1980. Reynolds whispered up to him from his crouch, “Kid, you won’t believe what you’re about to see.”

A second flap down by the pitcher’s end was drawn open, and a tall, gawky player walked in and stepped up onto the pitcher’s mound. He was wearing a small, black fielder’s glove on his left hand and was holding a baseball in his right. Christensen had never seen him before. He had blue eyes, Christensen remembers, and a pale, youthful face, with facial muscles that were motionless, like a mask. “You notice it,” Christensen explained later, “when a pitcher’s jaw isn’t working on a chaw or a piece of gum.” Then to Christensen’s astonishment he saw that the pitcher, pawing at the dirt of the mound to get it smoothed out properly and to his liking, was wearing a heavy hiking boot on his right foot.

Christensen had since been persuaded to describe that first confrontation:

“I’m standing in there to give this guy a target, just waving the bat once or twice out over the plate. He starts his windup. He sways way back, like Juan Marichal, this hiking boot comes clomping over-I thought maybe he was wearing it for balance or something-and he suddenly rears upright like a catapult. The ball is launched from an arm completely straight up and stiff. Before you can blink, the ball is in the catcher’s mitt. You hear it crack, and then there’s this little bleat from Reynolds.”

Christensen said the motion reminded him of the extraordinary contortions that he remembered of Goofy’s pitching in one of Walt Disney’s cartoon classics.

“I never dreamed a baseball could be thrown that fast. The wrist must have a lot to do with it, and all that leverage. You can hardly see the blur of it as it goes by. As for hitting the thing, frankly, I just don’t think it’s humanly possible. You could send a blind man up there, and maybe he’d do better hitting at the sound of the thing.”

Read the rest of the article here, and a Happy April Fools Day to all of you…

Article number 1 deals with the most special of all the Met teams, the 1969 World Champions. In the article there is a picture of Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan wearing Mets jackets (Ryan even has a Met on). Maybe I’m just a sentimental old fool, but there’s something about seeing the Franchise wearing Mets blue and orange that gives my the goose bumps. The article gives brief accounts on what players like Art Shamsky, Ed Kranepool, Bud Harrelson, Ray Charles, and coach Joe Pignataro are up to now.

What the 1969 Mets did was nothing short of a miracle. This was a team that in 1962 set a record for the most loses in a season. From 1962-1968 the Mets averaged 105 loses per season. They won 100 games in 1969. They had a great blend of young and old players, and some really great pitching arms. Most importantly they had a true leader as their manager in Gil Hodges.

When you hear Seaver, the most important player in franchise history say how Gil Hodges was like a father figure to him, the man who had the most impact on his career, you realize how much of a true leader Hodges was. Bud Harrelson is the only Met from 1969 that still wears a uniform. He is part owner and first base coach for the Independent League Long Island Ducks. In the changing room at Citibank Park, home of the Ducks, Harrelson has a picture of Gil Hodges hanging up in the changing room. Gil managed the Mets to a championship 40 years ago, and his picture hangs in the changing room of the Ducks. I bet he sure had a huge influence on Bud Harrelson’s career too.

When the Mets went down to Baltimore earlier this season, I wrote here about how the Orioles were a team to be reckoned with back in the late 1960′s and 1970′s. I wrongfully skimmed over the contributions of their field manager Earl Weaver.

The second good article in S.I. this week gives a really interesting look at Earl Weaver. I remember how good those 1970′s Orioles teams were, and a lot of that success was due to their manager. Weaver believed that his team was given 27 outs, and each out was precious. He didn’t believe in wasting outs, ie. bunting, and hit run. Weaver believed in pitching, defense and the three run home run.

When Weaver first became manager of the O’s he asked the public relations director to provide him the stats of how the Orioles players did against the opposition and vice versa. Before each game Earl was given a hand written list of the match-ups (remember this was well before the computer era). Weaver would use this match-up information to set his starting line-up. He truly was so far ahead of the rest of the pack.

Weaver wanted to win more than anything else. So much so that he never shook hands with a winning pitcher after the game. He didn’t want anything to do with emotion or friendship, he just wanted to win games.

This is really just a brief summary of two worthy articles to be read, in this week’s S.I. The articles were so good in fact, that I almost forgot S.I. had the Mets listed under the “NOT HOT” section this week.