If John Stephenson is remembered at all by fans of the early Mets, it’s as the last out of Jim Bunning’s perfect game. He was so overmatched in striking out, the Mets might as well have plucked a fan out of the stands at random and asked him to get a hit off Bunning. At the time, if I remember correctly, Stephenson was hitting a feeble .149 and it didn’t get much better for...
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Technically, this is not a list of the Mets’ Top 20 Prospects going into the 1964 season, but rather a list of the 20 most prominent prospects who were signed by the Mets between 1962 and 1964, before the first Amateur Draft in 1965. It does not include players drafted or acquired from other organizations. As with most prospect lists, some went on to be stars, others had some level of major...
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2014 is the 45 year anniversary of the 1969 Mets. Enjoy this special feature and welcome to Part One of my four part series entitled, How The Miracle Mets Were Built. Turn Back The Clock 46 Years – It’s the Spring of 1968. Spring training of 1968 saw the Mets coming off another last place finish but with a few glimmers of hope for the future. There was a new manager in Gil Hodges and a new...
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Dave Kingman was one of the most fascinating players in Mets’ history. Because he played in one of the Mets’ major down periods – the mid ‘70’s to early ‘80’s, you don’t hear his name mentioned much in Mets’ retrospectives, but for a while, he was clearly the Mets’ biggest star and one of their very few drawing cards, at least at home. If remembered at all, it’s as a low-average power hitter,...
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Today, when teams discuss trades, prospects have inflated value based on what they MIGHT achieve according to scouts and also because they will be relatively cheap and under team control for several years to come. But prospects often don’t turn out to be big stars; some don’t make the major leagues at all. Even the greatest prospects fail more often than they succeed. When a player already makes...
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