With 25 home runs, Pete Alonso is an All-Star for the third time as a Met. Despite first-half performances suggesting they could have planned to join Pete on the flight from San Diego to Seattle this Sunday, Francisco Lindor and Brandon Nimmo remain players who’ve never been All-Stars as Mets. It is the latter cohort that we’re focusing on this week on National League Town.
Out of affection for all the Mets we’ve loved before, Jeff Hysen and I, over at the podcast that’s all about Mets History, Mets Fandom and Mets Life, constructed an All-Star ballot strictly of Mets who never made an All-Star team as Mets. We set out to retroactively elect Mets who were overlooked or snubbed in their time by the Midsummer Classic powers that be. At their Met best, they may have been having very good seasons, but found themselves excluded for various reasons.
• A traffic jam at a given position.
• The Mets meeting what amounted to their quota.
• Fans elsewhere taking the “popularity contest” aspect of voting a little too literally.
• Managers who chose to cater to their own players rather than ours.
• The international anti-Met conspiracy.
It seemed time to give all these Mets who missed the All-Star Game as Mets a second chance. That’s what this ballot is about. We offer a dozen slots with five choices apiece, along with some write-in possibilities, and we remember some Mets who don’t otherwise come up in conversation this time of year. We didn’t consider current Mets, in the hopes that some year soon, when the Mets are playing better as a unit, the Lindors and Nimmos finally get their number called, and we didn’t try to sneak Mets who already made it onto an All-Star team as Mets on some more. Those 61 Mets already have the designation All-Star next to their names. Met All-Star Ed Kranepool. Met All-Star Pat Zachry. Met All-Star Michael Conforto. If you made it once, you’ve made it for life. If you made it as an Expo or a Brave or whatever, good for you, but we’re concerned that you didn’t make it as a Met, no matter that you might have been celebrated on the cover of the 1973 Official Yearbook for having made it in another guise.
If you haven’t made it as a Met, have you really made it?
This exercise is also informed by having been twelve years old once and remaining twelve years old somewhere inside. Mets who could have been All-Stars but weren’t when you were twelve represent an injustice that stays with you when you’re twelve years old times five.
Here’s the ballot. Listen to the episode for particulars and cast your own vote in your heart and/or head.
FIRST BASE
__DONN CLENDENON, 1970
__IKE DAVIS, 2010
__CARLOS DELGADO, 2006
__JOHN MILNER, 1974
__JOHN OLERUD, 1998
SECOND BASE
__WALLY BACKMAN 1986
__DOUG FLYNN, 1980
__GREGG JEFFERIES, 1990
__JEFF KENT, 1994
__FELIX MILLAN, 1975
THIRD BASE
__HUBIE BROOKS, 1984
__WAYNE GARRETT, 1973
__RAY KNIGHT, 1986
__LENNY RANDLE, 1977
__ROBIN VENTURA, 1999
SHORTSTOP
__ASDRUBAL CABRERA, 2016
__KEVIN ELSTER, 1989
__REY ORDOÑEZ, 1999
__RAFAEL SANTANA, 1987
__FRANK TAVERAS, 1979
CATCHER
__JOHN BUCK, 2013
__TRAVIS d’ARNAUD, 2017
__JESSE GONDER, 1964
__WILSON RAMOS, 2019
__MACKEY SASSER, 1990
LEFT FIELD
__GEORGE FOSTER, 1984
__CLIFF FLOYD, 2005
__BERNARD GILKEY, 1996
__KEVIN McREYNOLDS, 1988
__FRANK THOMAS, 1962
CENTER FIELD
__TOMMIE AGEE, 1970
__LENNY DYKSTRA, 1986
__JUAN LAGARES, 2014
__DEL UNSER, 1975
__MOOKIE WILSON, 1982
RIGHT FIELD
__JAY BRUCE, 2017
__JOE CHRISTOPHER, 1964
__CURTIS GRANDERSON, 2015
__RUSTY STAUB, 1975
__RON SWOBODA, 1968
ONE EXTRA GUY*
__BENNY AGBAYANI, 1999
__ENDY CHAVEZ, 2006
__CARL EVERETT, 1997
__WILMER FLORES, 2016
__ART SHAMSKY, 1970
*Player who’s somewhere between a utilityman and an everyday starter
STARTING PITCHER
__MARK BOMBACK, 1980
__GARY GENTRY, 1971
__TERRY LEACH, 1987
__BOBBY OJEDA, 1986
__CRAIG SWAN, 1978
SETUP RELIEVER
__LARRY BEARNARTH, 1964
__DENNIS COOK, 1998
__PEDRO FELICIANO, 2010
__DOUG SISK, 1984
__TURK WENDELL, 1999
CLOSER
__NEIL ALLEN, 1980
__BOB APODACA, 1975
__BRADEN LOOPER, 2004
__ROGER McDOWELL, 1986
__RANDY MYERS, 1988
There you have your National League Town Retroactive All-Star Ballot — happy listening, happy voting and happy Fourth!
Ooh, this one’s fun. I won’t give away my picks, but I will say that I have very strong opinions at first, third, and leftfield, while there are other positions where the really good picks actually made the All Star Game (catcher comes to mind). The one name I wish I had seen on the ballot was Skip Lockwood, although to be clear I wouldn’t have voted for him. Finally, maybe when this is done we can do a poll of guys who made the All Star team (or Cooperstown) with other teams and really, really didn’t deserve it during their Mets years. That would be a long list.
Lockwood was a tough cut, acknowledged on the show.
They’re parking cars, and pumping gas…
My favorite yearbook ever, and my cover looks a little worse than that one.
Hey Gates, if you liked Skip Lockwood, and I certainly did, order yourself his autobiography, INSIGHT PITCH, all about his life, and how he visualized success before he went out to the mound.
Seaver gave him some pretty good advice:
“Red Light, Green Light.”
That meant when you came off the mound at the end of an inning, that was RED LIGHT, so shut it down and conserve your energy, until it was time to go back out to the mound, which was GREEN LIGHT.
His first game as a Met was the day we got swept by Montreal, losing each game 7-0, and Yogi got fired that day. What a beginning to his Mets career.
Skip’s book gets quite the collection of raves on the back cover, especially that third blurb.
Hey, that’s THE most insightful one of course!
Well, now that you guys basically forced me to go look it up, the least I could do is copy & paste while I was in that neighborhood…
“Skip Lockwood writes he might have been the “most ill-equipped person” to ever don a major league uniform, yet few seem better suited to tell the story of a baseball life. Skip’s glasses may have fogged up on the mound, but his perspective on the challenges, rewards, and realities of the game as it was truly played couldn’t be more clear-eyed. Hop in the bullpen cart with Skip Lockwood and settle in for a most Amazin’ ride.”
—Greg Prince, Faith and Fear in Flushing
PS: On last day of ‘75 season in Philly, Skip hurled 4 hitless innings, fanning 6*, preserving Seaver’s 22nd win en route to his 3rd Cy Young.
*Remember when 6 K’s in 4 innings was considered an outstanding feat? I do! Yep, them were the good ol’ days before analytics deemed contact overrated.