{"id":1326,"date":"2010-01-05T19:57:10","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T19:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2013-12-08T19:59:01","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T19:59:01","slug":"44-caliber-killers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1326","title":{"rendered":"44 Caliber Killers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Henry Aaron<\/strong>\u00a0pioneered No. 44 as a number reserved for sluggers, and fellow Hall of Famers\u00a0Willie McCovey<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Reggie Jackson<\/strong>\u00a0solidified the trend. For the Mets, the\u00a044 jersey<\/a>\u00a0has often found its way onto the backs of guys who only\u00a0think\u00a0<\/em>they’re power hitters.<\/p>\n

\"\"There was\u00a0Jay Payton<\/a>, who had all the muscle of a power hitter but a delicate frame and a line-drive bat.\u00a0Ryan Thompson<\/a>\u00a0could hit it out of the park in interviews but was never as ferocious at game time.Lastings Milledge<\/a>\u00a0and his similarly powerful mouth wore out his welcome in less than two years (and only 11 Met home runs).Mike Cameron\u00a0<\/a>slammed 30 home runs in 2004 but his hardest hit as a Met was a gruesome collison with teammate Carlos Beltran in 2005.<\/p>\n

\"\"What’s a Met 44? It’s\u00a0Howard Johnson<\/a>\u00a0in May of 1991 switching to No. 44 in an attempt to jump-start his game, only to scurry back to his familiar\u00a0No. 20<\/a>\u00a0in less than a week when his wife reminded him her jewelry all included the No. 20. It was reserve catcher\u00a0Harry Chiti<\/a>, acquired from the Cleveland Indians in 1962 for a player to be named later — Harry Chiti, and the Mets would get fleeced. It was four different players as recently as 2008, and I can barely remember any of them:\u00a0Brady Clark<\/a>,\u00a0Tony Armas<\/a>,\u00a0Eddie Kunz<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Brandon Knight<\/a>. They threaten to join\u00a0Kevin Lomon<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Tom Filer<\/a>and\u00a0Bob Rauch<\/a>, to name three Met pitchers who wore 44 in my fan lifetime and of whom I retain no specific memory whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Like everything in Mets history, 44 was good for a stretch in the mid-1980s —\u00a0Ron Darling<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0David Cone<\/a>\u00a0each wore it before switching to other unis — but it wasn’t long before 44 was again the domain of guys like\u00a0Tim Burke<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0John Cangelosi<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Jay Bell<\/a>, who I still can’t believe chose sticking out to the bitter end of the 2003 campaign over retirement, or the Mets for allowing him .<\/p>\n

It’s into this dysfuctional family that\u00a0Jason Bay<\/strong>\u00a0officially arrived in a Met press event today.\u00a0Bonne chance,\u00a0<\/em>Jason! Ya gotta believe!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henry Aaron\u00a0pioneered No. 44 as a number reserved for sluggers, and fellow Hall of Famers\u00a0Willie McCovey\u00a0and\u00a0Reggie Jackson\u00a0solidified the trend. For the Mets, the\u00a044 jersey\u00a0has often found its way onto the backs of guys who only\u00a0think\u00a0they’re power hitters. There was\u00a0Jay Payton, who had all the muscle of a power hitter but a delicate frame and a … Continue reading “44 Caliber Killers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[290,446,18,211,136],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-howard-johnson","tag-jason-bay","tag-jay-payton","tag-lastings-milledge","tag-mike-cameron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1327,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}