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Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

G-Fafif Mar 19 2017 03:25 PM

RIP Jimmy Breslin, 88, as important a voice in establishing the Met legend as anyone. And a whole other career besides. https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nyt ... r.amp.html On any page of still the most essential of Met volumes, something worth quoting. The Mets are a part of life. You can start keeping track of time with them.

G-Fafif Mar 20 2017 04:39 PM Re: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

Take the thing about Elio Chacon. One day the Mets proudly announced that Chacon had handled 95 chances at shortstop without an error. As a rule, errorless streaks for infielders are not mentioned until the man has made 225 plays or so. But the Mets' publicity department did not have this kind of time.

G-Fafif Mar 22 2017 08:04 PM Re: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

Shea's third league promptly was forgotten. But he had what he wanted anyway: a team for New York. He also had the person to put up the money for it. From out of Shea's old Continental League lineup came the owner of the New York National League team. Her name: Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson. She is Bill Shea's style. A lot of other people's, too, because this is one helluva lady.

G-Fafif Mar 23 2017 07:33 PM Re: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

So the immediate future for the Mets is Casey Stengel,. Someday, when George Weiss's cold, automatic methods of running an organization turn the team into just another boring winner, everything happening now probably will be forgotten. But right now, the Mets serve as more than just some comic relief while we're waiting for the ballplayers to show. The Mets are vastly important. For one who has been raised on sports in New York, the team put continuity back into life.

d'Kong76 Mar 23 2017 08:02 PM Re: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

I got a new copy today via eBay of the paperback reprinted in 2003.

dinosaur jesus Mar 24 2017 12:44 AM Re: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

When I was in elementary school, we had an assignment to make a diorama, using twisted wire, that illustrated a favorite book. I chose Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? I wasn't skill enough to make anything too conceptual, like Throneberry missing second and third, or Kanehl being Casey's little scavenger. It was just a Mets pitcher, done with white and blue and orange wire, with his arm cocked behind his head, preparing to throw a pitch. He was pretty wobbly, like he was close to falling off the mound--not what I was going for, but appropriate. I must have read that book a dozen times. The last time was probably forty years ago or more, but I still remember odd bits from it once in a while. The Parks Commissioner, Newbold Morris, telling the architects for the new stadium they were putting in too many bathrooms (bad call there, Newbold). Comparing the Mets to the Marx Brothers in Room Service (a strange choice). The enemy home runs that went exactly nine miles. Rogers Hornsby preparing a scouting report on current players and writing next to Mickey Mantle's name "Looks like a ballplayer." Babe Ruth asking a bartender for one of those heavens to Betsy drinks and swallowing the whole thing all at once, ice and all. I thought "heavens to Betsy" was a pretty funny expression, and it didn't occur to me until decades later what the Babe actually said. The book was my introduction and guidebook to Met culture, as I'm sure it's been for an awful lot of people. It helped shape the idea of the Mets as lovable losers, which shaded into the idea, still with us today, of them as perpetual underdogs (sometimes lovable, sometimes not so much). I don't know if that's an entirely good thing, but the hell. It was my favorite book when I was ten, and I'm still a Mets fan.

G-Fafif Mar 28 2017 05:04 PM Re: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

Take any day, any town, any inning. With the Mets, nothing changed, only the pages on the calendar. It was all one wonderful mistake.

cooby Mar 28 2017 07:22 PM Re: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

dinosaur jesus wrote: When I was in elementary school, we had an assignment to make a diorama, using twisted wire, that illustrated a favorite book. I chose Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? I wasn't skill enough to make anything too conceptual, like Throneberry missing second and third, or Kanehl being Casey's little scavenger. It was just a Mets pitcher, done with white and blue and orange wire, with his arm cocked behind his head, preparing to throw a pitch. He was pretty wobbly, like he was close to falling off the mound--not what I was going for, but appropriate. I must have read that book a dozen times. The last time was probably forty years ago or more, but I still remember odd bits from it once in a while. The Parks Commissioner, Newbold Morris, telling the architects for the new stadium they were putting in too many bathrooms (bad call there, Newbold). Comparing the Mets to the Marx Brothers in Room Service (a strange choice). The enemy home runs that went exactly nine miles. Rogers Hornsby preparing a scouting report on current players and writing next to Mickey Mantle's name "Looks like a ballplayer." Babe Ruth asking a bartender for one of those heavens to Betsy drinks and swallowing the whole thing all at once, ice and all. I thought "heavens to Betsy" was a pretty funny expression, and it didn't occur to me until decades later what the Babe actually said. The book was my introduction and guidebook to Met culture, as I'm sure it's been for an awful lot of people. It helped shape the idea of the Mets as lovable losers, which shaded into the idea, still with us today, of them as perpetual underdogs (sometimes lovable, sometimes not so much). I don't know if that's an entirely good thing, but the hell. It was my favorite book when I was ten, and I'm still a Mets fan. . This is a very nice writeup. And I had to look up heavens to Betsy drink