Greener Pastures
Another place where ideas can come from if you’re having trouble finding something to write about is simply talking to someone. A discussion at the kitchen table led to talk about the so called “hired guns” baseball players and many professional athletes are today, i.e. simply in it for the money and how rare it is that one player stays with a team for the entire length of his career. I had to have one little growth in the farmer’s field just to give some hope. While the straw hat and the farmer really turned out great, the one thing that disappoints me about this is that there are stick figures playing in the background and not full fleshed-out characters. But here you can barely see them.
I don’t know that much about Mets history, so I enlisted the help of Ted, one of the editors at SNY, who has encyclopedic knowledge of the team to get me the name of the only guy so far who was a Met lifer: Ed Kranepool
Geoff the Ref
Thursday, June 21, 2007
"Geoff the Ref"
Where have all the lifers gone?
By Geoff Walter / SNY.tv
When Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn were elected as the only two members of the Class of 2007 to the Hall of Fame, they represent an increasing rarity in the baseball world -- spending one's entire career with a single team. The shift has come as a result of the free agent and trading markets, and while none of us would balk at the salaries of professional athletes if they were offered to us, it's been the nature of that very market that has in my opinion caused much of the rift between players and fans save for those few remaining "lifers."
There is so much turnover sometimes on a team that the phrase "root for the laundry" has become cliché. Consider the two New York teams. On the current roster there are only five players who have been with the team their entire careers: Pedro Feliciano (five seasons), Aaron Heilman (five), Jose Reyes (five), David Wright (four), and rookie Joe Smith. But five seasons is not a career (unless you get injured and can't play anymore, and even then I wouldn't consider them a lifer). You'd think that the retired numbers along the Shea Stadium wall -- Gil Hodges, Tom Seaver, and Casey Stengel -- would be of help, but Hodges was a Dodger, Seaver came from the Reds, and Stengel was a Yankee. After hours of research and a little help, only one name came back who spent his career with the Mets: Ed Kranepool who spent 18 seasons with the Amazins from 1962-79. Meanwhile the Yankees currently have Mattingly, Jeter, Posada and Rivera, and had Gehrig, Mantle, DiMaggio, Ford, Stottlemyre, Chandler and the list goes on.
In his office, Yankee GM Brian Cashman has a quote: "the higher the monkey climbs, the more you see of his ass." Alex Rodriguez was the prime example he pointed to as being the epitome of the quote, as A-Rod is probably the most hated player in the Majors not named Bonds in large part due to that quarter of a billion dollar salary. He was booed in Seattle, jeered in Texas, and mocked in Boston. Regardless of what people say, he is a terrific ballplayer and a future Hall of Famer, and much of the disdain is that he's not wearing your particular uniform anymore or right this second. So here's the conundrum: a player comes up, much like some of those young Met players are right now, they play extremely well, uniforms start selling, fans are showing up in the stands and everybody's happy. Time goes by, the player turns free-agent, leaves and then comes back with a visiting team. The question is, what do you do? Cheer him, or jeer him? No wonder it's so easy to root for the laundry.
Wanna argue with the Ref? Don't like the call? Go ahead and make your own!
