Let Me Whisper in Your Ear

If you’re up on your Met lore, you know that you could just as easily be up on your Meadowlark lore had Joan Payson foisted her first choice for a team name on the new National League ballclub she was bankrolling. Mrs. Payson liked Meadowlarks and who are we who are native to the Flushing Meadows region to say we wouldn’t have enjoyed the avian identity? When baby names were being weighed sixty-one years ago — time, like the meadowlark itself, really tends to fly —The Sporting News reasoned one prism through which to view Mrs. Payson’s pet pick was that “everything’s a lark” for “New York men-about-town,” a.k.a. presumed ticket-buyers prowling the Metropolitan Area.

Whatever the team was about to be called (and the media fix was pretty much in for Mets, Mrs. Payson’s personal preferences notwithstanding), all concerned understood the town in question was a National League town. There wouldn’t have been much ado about naming an expansion team had there not been a need to expand. And, oh, was there a need to expand. New York went from two National League teams to none in a veritable blink. For four seasons, former fans of the Giants and former fans of the Dodgers were left to make like ex-Giant and future Met hitting coach Rogers Hornsby: stare out the window and wait for spring. Except in this case, spring was metaphorical. It had been endless winter since the fall of 1957. Baseball needed to come back to town in National League form. No substitutes, no matter how conventionally successful they appeared from a distance, were to be accepted.

You know the basics of the rest. The National League expanded into New York, a town it never should have departed; the Mets took the field as the Mets in 1962; and, save for the occasional management lockout of players/middle finger to fans, we’ve been entranced by the Mets ever since.

A lark for those native to the Flushing Meadows region.

All of which is my way inviting you to have a listen to a new Mets podcast I’m a part of called National League Town, a celebration of Mets Fandom, Mets History, Mets Life. Mets podcasting, richly populated by talented talkers as it is, may not have needed an expansion franchise, but my friend and fellow Mets devotee Jeff Hysen and I created one anyway. Well, he created it. Jeff also produces it; edits it; engineers it, emcees it; and puts it where people can hear it. I named it — and I think out loud about the Mets into the general vicinity of a microphone until Jeff presses pause on his end.

We’re still tweaking the format.

It’s a lark of sorts for this New York man-about-blog. Hopefully, as we go along, you’ll feel like you’ve grabbed a seat next to Jeff and me in Promenade some sunny Saturday afternoon as we go on about that season or that game or that moment that has suddenly leapt to mind. We’re in the midst of a several-part series on who we’d add to the Mets Hall of Fame. The short answer is basically everybody, but perhaps you’ll enjoy listening in on the details. We’ll probably veer into the present-day Mets once there are present-day Mets. Honestly, it’s the tangents you’ll want to stay tuned for.

Episodes of National League Town, with Long Island’s Own Greg Prince and Jeff Hysen, is searchable on all your favorite podcast platforms and accessible via this link.