Mets old timers day roster8/16/2023 The pattern has been copied intermittently by other sports but, due to the lack of day games (and total games, overall), it is not a regular feature of the season as it is in baseball. 345/41 HR/110 RBIs he accumulated when he won his first MVP, at 23, in 1954 exalt the greatest defensive play of them all, the one he made that fall, in the World Series against Cleveland, running down Vic Wertz’s fly ball in the deepest pocket of the Polo Grounds.Old-Timers' Day (or Old-Timers' Game) generally refers to a tradition in Major League Baseball of a team, especially the New York Yankees, devoting the early afternoon preceding a weekend late afternoon game to celebrate the baseball-related accomplishments of its former players who have since retired. 312/.387/.593 slash line he had a New York Giant toast the. It’s why Joan Whitney Payson fell in baseball love with him. It will hang forever next to 14, 17, 31, 36, 37, 41 and 42 because of what he meant to baseball New York, especially when he was young and he’d play stickball with the neighborhood kids in Harlem in his civvies after grinding nine innings in his uniform. Bettmann/CORBISīut 24, in truth, isn’t being taken out of circulation for Mays’ 491 plate appearances with the Mets. for the NY POST Mets manager Yogi Berra (L), pitcher Tug McGraw, and Willie Mays after the Mets won the second game of the 1973 World Series. SNY/Twitter The Mets retired Willie Mays’ No. Willie Mays’ number will be plastered at Citi Field. And in that wild Game 2 in Oakland? Mays’ two-out single in the 12th inning broke a 6-6 tie in a game the Mets would win 10-7. The Mets were only in the World Series because Mays drove in a key run in decisive Game 5 of the NLCS. But so did Oakland’s Joe Rudi (who was 27) and Reggie Jackson (also 27). Yes, Mays lost a ball in the sun in Game 2 of the 1973 World Series. Any aging ballplayer, any sport, the simile is always the same: Willie-Mays-falling-down-in-the-outfield. History has often been cruel to Mays’ final days as a Met. The number was in repose, but not retired. Rickey Henderson and Robinson Cano were given special dispensations when they became Mets. The backlash was immediate, and Torve was soon wearing 39. Someone named Kelvin Torve was somehow issued the number in 1990. Twenty-four disappeared for a while, but Payson’s wish was never granted. He hit the final 14 of his 660 lifetime homers as a Met.īut Payson died not long after Mays retired in 1973. Mets fans were delighted to have him back home. He was 41 by then, no longer a kid, but it didn’t matter. Famously, he hit a home run in his very first game as a Met - against the Giants, of all teams, on May 14, 1972. Corey Sipkin Willie Mays MLB via Getty Images Robert Sabo for NY Post In a pregame ceremony on Old Timer’s Day the New York Mets retire Willie Mays’ No. 24 that was retired before Old Timers Day. 24.” The New York Mets unveiled Willy Mays’ No. “Willie,” she said, according to team lore, “you’ll be the last Met to ever wear No. Mays himself, comfortable in San Francisco, was unsure about moving East, knowing he was no longer the breathtaking force of nature who’d once roamed center field at Coogan’s Bluff. And in May 1972, when it became clear the Giants would make Mays available, she pounced. It was her dream that Willie finish his career in New York. And though she lived and died with her Mets, Willie Mays remained her favorite. Yes, 24 was Willie Mays’ number, and no athlete in American sports history is more closely identified with that digit than the “Say Hey Kid.” But it was also an essential piece of the heart of a woman named Joan Whitney Payson, a New York Giants fan to her core and a member of the team’s board, the lone “no” vote when the time came to decide on whether the team should move to San Francisco.Ī few years later, Payson became the Mets’ charter owner, a fixture in her field box, the first woman to ever own a ballclub. The team honored its recent vow to recognize its rich franchise history on the day it celebrated the return of Old-Timers’ Day. The Mets did more than retire a famous baseball number Saturday afternoon, stunning a nostalgia-nourished crowd at Citi Field when it was revealed that Willie Mays’ No. Jacob deGrom's latest season-ending elbow injury a massive MLB blow There is little reason to believe in Mets right now New season, same story: Braves still just better than the Mets Mets keep predictably finding Amazin' new ways to lose with latest collapse Mets threatening to join unwanted list of local flops after high expectations
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