The Mets tonight welcome a healthy Pedro Martinez back to the team, hopefully to stay awhile but you never know. To make room they optioned newly activated reliever Carlos Muniz. Claudio Vargas in the meantime got a sudden introduction to his new role as a long man, mopping up for irritating lefty Oliver Perez after the Giants bashed Perez for six momentum-eviserating runs in one-third of an inning Monday.
The arrangement saves a starting assignment for Mike Pelfrey, who, for all of his struggles has turned in more quality starts with a lot less hype than, say, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy combined. Oliver Perez too for that matter.
Pelfrey may not ever be the guy the Mets hoped he’d be when they called his name in Omar Minaya’s first draft as head honcho three years ago this week, but finding that out is the right thing to do.
Speaking of anniversaries, it was 10 years ago this Sunday that while playing ultimate frisbee in Yonkers, I collapsed to the turf with what would later be diagnosed as a ruptured Achilles tendon. Aside from effectively ending a maniacal pursuit to become the world’s most famous frisbee player, the coming months off my feet for surgery and subsequent rehab would lead to the even stupider quest to chronicle every uniform number in Mets history.
Figueroa’s victory last night marked the first appearance of the dreaded black unis all season (not to mention the first call for a tailor to get Figueroa’s jersey to fit right. Looked like a size 44 wearing a 52). Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ve yet to see pinstripes and/or the gorgeous all-blue Mets cap yet. Speaking as a neighbor of hundreds of young hipsters, the latter is becoming the new trucker cap around here: I’ll try and gather photographic evidence and show you in a future post.
Only a matter of hours after posing the question MBTN readers came through with the definitive proof: Willie Montañez went tilde-less during 1979, as shown in this screen capture sent in by on-the-spot reader Paul C. Interestingly, this cap came from the same ’79 opening-day footage that Paul provided earlier to solve the Jesse Orosco 61 controversy: It’s also first day the Mets (except for young Orosco) ever wore their names above their numbers. That font by the way looks a lot chunkier than that which we’ve become accustomed to, and we needen’t get into the icky use of a separate nameplate. That’s a lot of mileage from a single game.
