Typing on the Fringes

[Edgy MD]

Anyhow, Val Pascucci was a perennial minor league homerun champ, who may or may not have retired with the All-Time minor league record. For all I know, he still has it now. He plowed through multiple organizations, but drank his only big league burgundy during a stretch with the doomed 2004 Expos.

He came over to the Mets playing first and right and a smattering of left and third, but it's no fun waiting for a young wonder like Ike Davis or a superstar like David Wright to get hurt, so he moved on to the Los Angeles system, after which, Wright and Davis got hurt and hurt and hurt.

In a virtual trade, the Mets replaced him as their AAA cleanup hitter by signing the very similar résumé'd Mike Hessman away from LA, but a year away from his friends in New Orleans proved too lonely for Val, and so he returned the next year to re-join them in Buffalo. And because injuries did continue, he got his first big league chance in seven years, hitting a single Met homer, which our own A Boy Named Seo celebrated by singing Val's trademarked fan chant from his days in NPB.

Upon his retirement, he spent several seasons as a minor league batting coach in the Mets system.

[kcmets]

The Grateful Dead did an utterly unmemorable set in between the two heavyweights.

Did they ever do a memorable set? Did anyone in attendance ever remember one?
I only saw them once. I think it was after the first World Trade Center bombing and it
took like an hour to get into The Garden. My dead-head friend and I were pretty greased
and gassed. He slept through half the show. I could have, but someone had to be in charge.
I still razz him about that... my only trip on the bus...

[Edgy MD]

I would have no way of knowing.

My experience is that friends of mine who were followers would return from the show and tell me it was great. I'd name a song or two I knew (and maybe even kind of liked) and ask if it was part of the set list. They never seemed to know.

[kcmets]

Followers always boasted that if you went to see them three nights in
a row they'd not play the same song twice. But who would know?

[batmagadanleadoff]

Jon Rauch was tall. Still is, I'm guessing. But what else youse got on Rauch, pictured below on a pair of Lucky Strike Mets 50th anniversary panels from 2012? Use the slider at the bottom of the post for optimum viewing. These babies are wide.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I had to split the photos into two posts because the forum software provides only one slider per post, instead of individual sliders for each image.

[batmagadanleadoff]

ROCK & ROLL BONUS!

While we're waiting on Jon Rauch stuff, a bonus card. The Mets and Braves set up a field to play baseball on the front lawn of some rock and rollers. It's a return to old-timey baseball, where the fans get to watch the game from fair territory. Bring your kiddies! Bring your couch! Guaranteed to have the time of your life!

No fringe Met in this post.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Jon Rauch was tall. Still is, I'm guessing. But what else youse got on Rauch ....

Rauch the Met was best known, I think, for a hazing incident that went off the rails. Rauch came upon rookie Matt Harvey napping in the clubhouse and decided to pour a bucket of ice on Harvey's chest, which had the expected effect of rudely awakening Harvey. Rauch's ice attack also ruined Harvey's smartphone. Harvey didn't react well to the incident and challenged Rauch to a fight. Rauch backed down and walked away from Harvey, who at the time, was the more popular Met with his teammates -- a budding star with his whole career ahead of him.

Thank you for playing. All contestants will receive consolation prizes provided by Bissell Inc., The La-Z Boy Chair Company, and Amana Refrigeration. Your host's wardrobe was furnished by Dicker & Dicker of Beverly Hills. This is Johnny Olson.

[Edgy MD]

Sorry to be late to the game.

When Jason Bay smashed into the left field wall trying to corral a deep drive by then-Red Jay Bruce, he was knocked silly by the collision as Bruce circled the bases for an inside-the-park homer.

As Bay was removed from the game and slowly escorted off the field by teammates and trainers, a small but meaningful wave of boos accompanied him, some boobirds joining the chorus slowly as the scene progressed, emboldened by the first wave.

Maybe several Mets stood up for their teammate. Maybe David Wright and R.A. Dickey gathered a throng of writers around their lockers to discourse on how disappointed they were with Mets fans, but the guy I remember was Jon Fucking Rauch going on a Twitter tear later that evening, back when the 140-character limit forecably tempered your tweeting posture, hammering out in a string of four or so tweets how thoughtless and shitty those fans were being.

My other automatic memory of Jon Rauch, besides the hugeness and the neck tats, is that I know that his name is pronounced John ROWSHE, but every time I read it, my mind mentally pronounces it as Jon RAWK, before I mentally correct myself.

[Fman99]

ROCK & ROLL BONUS!

While we're waiting on Jon Rauch stuff, a bonus card. The Mets and Braves set up a field to play baseball on the front lawn of some rock and rollers. It's a return to old-timey baseball, where the fans get to watch the game from fair territory. Bring your kiddies! Bring your couch! Guaranteed to have the time of your life!

No fringe Met in this post.

I dig this one man

[batmagadanleadoff]

ROCK & ROLL BONUS!

While we're waiting on Jon Rauch stuff, a bonus card. The Mets and Braves set up a field to play baseball on the front lawn of some rock and rollers. It's a return to old-timey baseball, where the fans get to watch the game from fair territory. Bring your kiddies! Bring your couch! Guaranteed to have the time of your life!

No fringe Met in this post.

I dig this one man

That's one of my faves. It came to me in stages. The original source photo had an outfield wall in the background. The wall was in two sections. Originally I had put the front side of the CSN album cover on just one section of the wall. Later on, I remembered that that CSN album was a gatefold cover: it opened up and presented a wide view continuous photograph taking up both the front and back sides of the album cover. So I put that whole gatefold cover in there, but only occupying the left side of the outfield wall, which was sectioned off from the rest of the wall. And the more I stared at that version, the more it looked like CS&N were watching the game from the field itself. So I rearranged the placement of the gatefold album to the current state of the card - with the gatefold album cover obscuring the entire outfield wall. Now it looks like the house is on the field. Cool! I did another card in that same style. I'll post it in a few minutes.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Here ya go.

[Fman99]

Yeah man another good one. I love that album.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Yeah man another good one. I love that album.

Me too. The cards don't always reflect my rock music tastes. I've put some bands in there that aren't my cup of tea because they're historically significant or immensely popular or colorful, etc.

That album was recorded in one day -- one session. It was Black Sabbath's first album so they were likely pressed for time and money. Wanna know on what specific day BS recorded their debut album?

On the same day that the Mets won the last game of the 1969 World Series.

[kcmets]

On the same day that the Mets won the last game of the 1969 World Series.

This has come up before, but I don't remember the how or why. But a fun fact.

[batmagadanleadoff]

On the same day that the Mets won the last game of the 1969 World Series.

This has come up before, but I don't remember the how or why. But a fun fact.

I remember when it came up before because I'm the one that posted it before. I never read anything that made this Mets/Black Sabbath connection but I remember once reading something on BS that mentioned that BS recorded their debut album on October 16, 1969. I then made the Mets connection myself, because I know that date and its Mets relevance all too well. And this anecdote has stayed with me ever since.

[RealityChuck]

I would have no way of knowing.

My experience is that friends of mine who were followers would return from the show and tell me it was great. I'd name a song or two I knew (and maybe even kind of liked) and ask if it was part of the set list. They never seemed to know.

There are playlists of most every Grateful Dead concert at https://www.setlists.net/ and elsewhere.

You can also find audio of most of their concerts at https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead

[kcmets]

They were always big on that, right? Set-lists, bootlegs and such. My
friend mentioned above has like 200 cassettes of concerts he collected
from the pre-internet daze...

[Edgy MD]

I would have no way of knowing.

My experience is that friends of mine who were followers would return from the show and tell me it was great. I'd name a song or two I knew (and maybe even kind of liked) and ask if it was part of the set list. They never seemed to know.

There are playlists of most every Grateful Dead concert at https://www.setlists.net/ and elsewhere.

You can also find audio of most of their concerts at https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead

I understand that the setlists are available online, but these conversations typically occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s, and I really was just making polite conversation.

[roger_that]

I lived with a bunch of Deadheads in college--a more obsessive, trivia-driven bunch of guys I have never met, and never want to meet, and I say that as an umpteen-time winner of baseball trivia contests in bars all across this country. Jesus, give it a rest, man--no one gives a damn about whether they played "St. Stephen" before or after "Uncle John's Band" on Tuesday night. Once in the early 70s, one of them dragged me to a Dead show at the Felt Forum where I got to understand what the term "Grateful Dead" really meant. I wished I'd died--that thing went on and on, everyone standing up and clapping for hours, high as the moon, taping and trading tapes and nodding wisely to each other throughout the interminable set.

[whippoorwill]

Lol
The band or the audience?
Or both?

[batmagadanleadoff]

I love this Typewriter Chewing Gum Rock n Roll set and would literally buy the entire set for real money and frame it and hang it my office, for real. It's the best thing since sliced (Wonder) bread, and a pity we had to wait 12 years to see it.

Signed,
Roger Kaputnik

Dear Roger:

The 2022 TCG set is finally under development. It will be code named Rock and Roll, Part 2. Because you have been such a loyal fan of our trading cards over the years, we are sending you some advance cards for your pleasure and to show off to your friends. These cards will not be available to the general public for a few months. So go ahead and brag about that.

Yours truly,
TCG

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Wow!! (I mean, Hey!) being it's Rock nRoll Part 2

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Typewriter Chewing Gum 2022 total Mets set is now available at a store near you. And what a set it is. We anticipate that with future updates, it might turn out to be the largest TCG Mets set ever. The set will include base cards for every player, even the fringiest Mets:



...base card variations:



...teammate cards:



...MTV cards, an exciting subset that will take collectors back to the glorious days of pop music video (look for the MTV logo on these cards):



...Brogna Boys cards (dead Brogna Boys, too):



...old friends:



...and a chance to acquire a unique one of a kind trading card (POP. - 1). But you'll need to score our Willy Wonka style golden ticket first, for a chance to claim this unique card, featuring Led Zeppelin. We've sprinkled several golden tickets in our card packs. (Odds: 1 in every 15,000 packs). The first collector to mail a golden ticket to our offices will win the unique trading card:



And many other surprises and features. Like digging into our fascination with Chicago's corporate logo style album covers. And the Brandon Nimmo walls of 45RPM history. Plus Max Scherzer gets assigned to the Andy Warhol rock and roll desk.

It's all happening. Now!

[batmagadanleadoff]

We're busy bees over here at TCG what with the flurry of new Mets arriving at the trading deadline. We like trades. Because more trades means more cards. And more cards means more money for us and our overlords over at Plasticine Industries. We've started our update set for the new 2022 Mets. And we'll have alternate cards for some of the other Mets who appeared in the base set. Plus extras. And surprises. So go out and buy those packs of cards. You might even get a golden ticket and win a one-of-a-kind trading card featuring Led Zeppelin's private reunion concert held at our offices earlier this year. Here's a sneak peek at some of our updates.