Remove some obstacles — like a fence; the Payson Club; construction on the other side of Seaver Way; the Van Wyck; and a creek also identified as a river — and theoretically you could make a direct beeline from right field at Citi Field to Four Points by Sheraton Flushing, the fancy corporate name for the hotel where Queens Baseball Convention set up camp on Saturday. It’s just a long fly ball away from our ballpark, provided the long fly ball was pulled by a lefty slugger.
The Sheraton is fairly convenient to the last stop on the 7 line, Flushing-Main Street, one stop beyond where I usually detrain, ergo I don’t mind the schlep it takes me to get there every December. The hotel is a ten-minute walk north on Main Street. You cross Northern Blvd., turn right, make your first left, and, provided you don’t walk into the stationary half of a sliding glass door (which a sleepy person might have come awfully close to doing, ahem), you’re an elevator ride away from QBC.
Once you’re at QBC, you’re in baseball again. Never mind that it’s December. Never mind that it’s freezing outside, the temperature unhelped by any winds whipping off the Flushing River/Flushing Creek. You’re inside now, surrounded by baseball fans and baseball warmth. Mets fans. Mets warmth. QBC has materialized most every winter since the one leading into the 2014 season to center a hot stove for our collective benefit. Warm your hands and fill the air with temperate takes.
Many of us who populated the second floor ballroom and associated spaces were in a right field state of mind Saturday on account of two right fielders, even though none of QBC’s four featured guests — Turk Wendell, Gregg Jefferies, Ray Knight and Jose Reyes — inhabited right field as Mets. I didn’t say we weren’t versatile. We could think about relievers and infielders, too. It’s a long winter. Baseball has lots of positions.
But right field, somewhere out the Sheraton window, entered our thoughts because of two right fielders who didn’t join the QBC fun. Juan Soto might someday be a special guest at a Mets fanfest like this. Or he might be a dim memory from that offseason when our owner made a very generous offer that Soto the intensely sought free agent spurned. On Saturday we didn’t know whose offer Soto wouldn’t refuse. We wanted him to accept Steve Cohen’s. It might have come up in conversation once or two-thousand times.
The other right fielder we would have loved to have seen has also never played a home game at Citi Field, but we did know him at Shea Stadium and have kept up with him through a lot of years since. Art Shamsky was the recipient of the 2024 Gil Hodges Unforgettable Fire Award. I was the presenter, filling the role I’ve been assigned since QBC began more than a decade ago. It’s an annual thrill for me to get to stand before a roomful of Mets fans and put somebody’s Met life and career in a bit of historical perspective. It fills me with Met pride to be able to invoke Gil Hodges and connect his too brief but forever impactful Met experience to those individuals QBC has opted to honor.
Art couldn’t join us on Saturday because you know how it is with New Yorkers in winter. Quite a few flee to Florida to escape our persistent chill. Not an unwise move, but we missed Art. I still gave the presentation and was fortunate that one of Art’s several co-authors — my compadre Matthew Silverman, who’s been working with Art on the forthcoming Mets Stories I Only Tell My Friends — was on-site to accept. I hope the applause the crowd gave Mr. Shamsky echoed south.
While we wait to hear whether Juan Soto will be roaming right field at Citi, I thought you might enjoy reading what I shared at QBC about the man who gave us true quality time out there at Shea between 1968 and 1971…especially in 1969. Art Shamsky was a fine player as a Met, and has been an even finer tender of the Met flame.
I couldn’t help but think of Gil’s finest work this past October. If you’re a Mets fan and it’s October, of course you’re going to think about 1969 — this October in particular, when the 2024 Mets pulled off a mini-miracle of their own. They didn’t go all the way, but they did overcome a world of doubters, they never showed any sign of giving up, and they became only the fifth team in franchise history to win a pair of postseason series. The first was 1969.
The other reason I thought about the 1969 Mets in October of 2024 was when the Mets invited back distinguished alumni to throw out and catch ceremonial first pitches before their five postseason home games, we had the chance to stand and applaud Mets from 2015, 2000, 1986…but not 1969. I don’t think there was anything nefarious about the omission, and for all I know, plans were being made to reach further back in time had the 2024 Mets made the World Series. Mostly, though, I figured it was just a matter of time marching on.
For those of us lucky enough to have experienced 1969 as Mets fans in the moment, we do the math and realize we’re now 55 years past that most Amazin’ of seasons. You then grasp how many 1969 Mets are no longer with us — including four to whom we’ve said goodbye this year: Buddy Harrelson, Jim McAndrew, Jerry Grote and Eddie Kranepool — and that those who are around maybe aren’t able to be around as much as they used to be.
For decades, no big Met occasion, like a postseason first pitch, happened without some direct participation of 1969 Mets. If you grew up in the era between 1969 and 1986 and tuned into a Mets game, you probably didn’t go a week without hearing about our first world champions. It came up reflexively between pitches. It was the best topic there ever was to revisit, so why wouldn’t the Mets revisit it every chance there was?
It might have been easy to take the presence of the 1969 Mets as so-called Old Timers for granted in those years. We’d hear about their exploits regularly and we’d see them pass through Shea no less than annually. I think we’re coming to a point when we understand how precious those experiences are becoming. Again, it’s not as if we as Mets fans will ever forget these miracle workers. It’s just that their collective profile is inevitably lowered, or perhaps obscured, by the passage of time and all that occurs in the span of 55 years going on forever.
That is why what Art Shamsky has been doing all these years means so much. That is why we’re acknowledging what Art Shamsky has been doing all these years with the 2024 Gil Hodges Unforgettable Fire Award. Talk about keeping a torch lighted. Art has been front and center for decades as what the Sports Illustrated writer Michael Bamberger in 2009 called the unofficial class secretary of the 1969 Mets. He’d shaped the multiple celebrations surrounding their 25th anniversary in 1994. He rode out on a cart with Buddy Harrelson, the last time Buddy was able to make a personal appearance, at the 50th anniversary, in 2019, an expression of friendship that showed the Citi Field crowd how tightly 1969 binds those who made it memorable. He co-wrote two books capturing his and his teammates’ memories of a special time in New York, the second of them, After the Miracle, a poignant recounting of not only 1969 but his efforts to bring a cadre of Mets to California to essentially say goodbye to Tom Seaver in 2017.
Certainly no player who knew what Gil Hodges was all about spoke more consistently or eloquently on Gil’s behalf prior to Gil’s induction into the Hall in 2022 than Art Shamsky did. Art became a Met in 1968, the first year Gil managed in New York. “The more the season progressed, the more the players knew who was in charge,” Art wrote in his first book, The Magnificent Seasons. Those Mets learned what Art termed “the Gil Hodges way of doing things”: mainly being professional on and off the field. The Gil Hodges way began sinking in, and it was in place in 1969, as Gil gained the trust of a clubhouse that resisted questioning the manager’s judgment, even if that meant less playing time for any individual.
That included Art, who split time in right field with Ron Swoboda. Art dominated the NLCS against Atlanta, Rocky was a hero in the World Series against Baltimore. It was a pattern that ran through each of Gil’s platoons. Under Gil Hodges, EVERY player made the Mets champions. And none of the players ever forgot Gil’s influence, certainly not Art, who concluded in After the Miracle that when Gil was hired, “the Mets had found themselves a leader of men.”
We at QBC certainly don’t want to forget Art Shamsky, an excellent hitter across nine years in the majors; an able defender in the outfield and at first base; a thoughtful storyteller in myriad media since hanging up his spikes; and, we take great pride in noting, a two-time attendee without billing of this event. He came our first year to support Gil Hodges Jr. when Gil Jr. accepted this award on behalf of his late father, and he returned a few years later to himself accept on behalf of Seaver, and then made sure to deliver the hardware to Tom personally when he, Buddy, Rocky and Jerry Koosman made that trip to Napa Valley. “Gil,” Art wrote in After the Miracle, “always held a special place in Seaver’s heart, and I knew the honor would mean a lot to him.”
Well, Art Shamsky holds a special place in the heart of the Queens Baseball Convention, and it is our honor to present this year’s Gil Hodges Unforgettable Fire Award to him.
As it happens, Art is in Florida right now — who can blame him in this weather? — but we will make sure he gets his award. We are thankful for his efforts on behalf of generations of Mets fans, on behalf of the legacy of Gil Hodges, and for all he’s meant in keeping the fire burning for the 1969 world champions. That ballclub couldn’t have elected itself a better unofficial class secretary.
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