Today would have been my Dad’s 80th birthday. Frank Springer was a freelance cartoonist whose work appeared in comic books and strips, magazines including Playboy, Sports Illustrated for Kids and National Lampoon, and newspapers including the long-defunct Suffolk Sun, which employed him to draw sports cartoons in 1969. After retiring from the commerecial art world in the 1990s he took up oil painting and was doing some terrific work, including the above, until he passed away this April. Born in Queens and raised there and in Lynbook, he grew up a Dodgers fan and then, an original Mets fan. He raised five blue-and-orange kids including at least one obsessive one, and had seven grandchildren who are Met fans too.

The short video here shows many of his baseball works, plus other stuff. Happy birthday Dad!

Yes, so happy birthday to Mets by the Numbers. It officially turned 10 last Sunday but wanted to kick things off once I had this alternacommemerative logo, thanks to Superba Graphics. It goes without saying they ought to be doing the same for the Mets. While 10 years ain’t much, it’s a lifetime on the Internet and as Mets sites go, I’m pretty sure there are only a few survivors any more ancient than this old bat. The Ultimate Mets Database debuted at around the same time as this site did, since I recall coming across it only while finishing up the back half of the site (it wasn’t around while I initially researched and wrote the 10s and 20s or that would have gone faster).Mets Online continues in a somewhat altereted fashion — the owner/editor and url are different — but was definitely here before this one.

This site has changed some too. It used to be charmingly free of design and functionality but I have to say it was a bear to manage and led to way too many mistakes, and so a few years back I decided I had to kill it so it could live again. The new architecture isn’t perfect yet but it works, and there’s no limit to what can be bolted onto it. And while you may not see it everyday there’s a little bit being added all the time (photos, player bios, etc), and it’s reassuring from this end to know there’s never going to be a time where there’s absolutely nothing to add.

I’m not much for birthdays but to celebrate this anniversary, I thought I’d present some of the revived content in list form and count down 10 Top Tens, starting with the Top Ten 10s, on Sunday. Stay tuned for that. And thanks!