The Crane Pool Forum

One year on the Met bench, buncha years as a coach, one week as manager.

Was the Mets' first free agent signing, I believe.

I have two memories of Mike Cubbage and neither has anything to do with him being on the field.

1) One set of grandparents retired to a big old farmhouse in central Virginia and that's where we'd go on family vacations every summer. We loved it, a week's worth of woods, streams, ponies, etc.
But it was also very isolated which the grands loved to the point where they didn't even own a television. My one problem was that I was cut off from baseball and the Mets for the week which was akin to culture shock. The only connection was a lone newspaper, The Charlottesville Daily Progress, which at least had the standings and box scores listed -- although depending on where the game was being played not always with the previous night's games included often leaving me ignorant for two days at a time -- and, at best, a one or two sentence recap of each game. 'Reds held the Mets to four hits and knocked Seaver out in the 5th for a 5-1 win. It was their 5th straight victory'. With no ML city within 300 miles of there (Baltimore) that was about as much news as one could expect from the CDP.
The only actual articles about baseball they seemed to run by the mid-70s were about the local boy made good, one Mike Cubbage of Lane HS in Charlottesville. 'Charlottesville's own Mike Cubbage went 1-for-4 with a double last night to bring his BA to .243' ... as if news about some part-time rookie infielder for Texas and later Minnesota did ME any good.

2) in the early years of free-agency the rules were that each team had to 'draft' which FAs they wanted to chance to negotiate with. The owners, wary of the new fangled concoction forced on them by a court ruling, wanted to limit as much free in free agency as they could and Marvin Miller, knowing that decreased supply led to increased prices, was only too happy to let them do it. But we all know that 1970's era NYM ownership wasn't going to play by these socialist rules and make insta-millionaires out of the hired help if they could help it. So one of the first toe-dips into drafting a FA was none other than 30 y/o Mike Cubbage and his 702 career OPS. He got 90 plate appearances for them and, despite a fine year at Tidewater in 1982, never played in the majors again.

To this day wherever I hear the name Mike Cubbage my first thought is: Charlottesville.

Marshmallowmilkshake wrote: ↑Mon Aug 12, 2024 7:44 am Was the Mets' first free agent signing, I believe.

Tom Hausman was the first, pre-1978, followed by Elliott Maddox. Cubbage was three years later, though certainly in that vein.

My first thought of him was the glasses. Big ones. I don't recall too many players wearing them at that time, especially third basemen.

Later

Cubbage occupies the same psychic room in my head that houses John Denver and Robbie Rist. Overtly bespectacled, comfortably goofy, sun-kissed, squinty, tousled-but-straight-haired blondes of the seventies. Paul Williams occasionally wanders into the room, but is disappointed to find only soft-drinks available, and he leaves.

In fact, I'd be disappointed if he didn't play a little guitar himself, seeing how he's the guitarist in a band of interim Mets managers that also exists only in my head, with Salty Parker on bass and Frank Howard on drums. The real star of the outfit is keyboardist Roy McMillan.

Off to the great Cubbage patch in the sky.

G-Fafif wrote: ↑Mon Aug 12, 2024 8:43 am

Marshmallowmilkshake wrote: ↑Mon Aug 12, 2024 7:44 am Was the Mets' first free agent signing, I believe.

Tom Hausman was the first, pre-1978, followed by Elliott Maddox. Cubbage was three years later, though certainly in that vein.

Good catch! I remember Elliott Maddox being a big deal!

Cubbage's first MLB hit was a grand slam. His final year in baseball was scouting in 2020 for The Nationals. Done in by the Covid-19 lockdown, he was able to walk away with a championship ring. Apparently, Jay Horwitz stayed in touch with him throughout his career, because of course he did.

In a story shared The Charlottesville Daily Progress, Frayed Knot's periodical of choice, Horwitz recalls going to say hi to Cubbage when he was coaching for Houston. Cubbage was the kind of guy who would greet an old pal by throwing a couple of fun sparring punches at him, but Mike landed one in Jay's midsection, and Jay walked off with a cracked rib.

A couple of accounts have listed Cubbage's record as interim Mets manager as 7-5, which would give him a .583 winning percentage, second only to Davey Johnson in team history, but baseball-reference says he went 3-4 (.429), which puts him back in Jeff Torborg territory.

That literally made me LOL.

I always hated when he was compared to John Denver, who was so cute and Cubbage was not.

My memory of him is a yearbook picture of him talking to a coach (Eddie Yost?) with his hand on his chest as if to say ‘oh my!’

Edgy MD wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2024 10:08 am In a story shared The Charlottesville Daily Progress, Frayed Knot's periodical of choice ...

The other thing about the C.D.P. is that my grandfather may hold the all-time record for letters to the editor published in that particular broadsheet.
IIRC the paper even noted his frequent missives in his obituary notice. Papa was a good writer and a mighty opinionated guy who lived in that area
from the early-'60s until his death in 1991 at age 92. iow, right in the sweet spot of one's curmudgeon years.