{"id":1536,"date":"2011-02-25T13:42:02","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T13:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/?p=1536"},"modified":"2015-04-20T20:42:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T02:42:35","slug":"a-very-boswell-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1536","title":{"rendered":"A Very Boswell Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Here’s Ken Boswell’s 1971 Topps baseball card. That’s the Cardinals’\u00a0Vic Davalillo<\/strong>\u00a0arriving too late to break up the double play as Boswell works the pivot between shortstop\u00a0Al Weis\u00a0and first baseman\u00a0Art Shamsky. The card — which must be one of the only Mets cards that includes a view of the Whitestone — was shot on May 28, 1970, in the 6th inning of a game that Mets were losing 6-0 to the Cards. Boswell, however, was having a good afternoon. He’d go 3-for-3 in this game with a double, a sac fly, and both Met RBIs in what became a 9-2 loss. Against\u00a0Bob Gibson,<\/strong>\u00a0not bad.<\/p>\n

Boswell wore\u00a0No. 12, which is apropos in that this month marks the 12th anniversary of Mets by the Numbers, which I’ve determined “went live” for the the first time on Feb. 22, 1999. This makes MBTN one of the real dinosaurs of the Metosphere; the\u00a0Ultimate Mets Database<\/a>, whose awesome powers I use to determine things like what happened to the Mets on May 28, 1970, debuted at around the same time. A site called Mets Online, founded by the current\u00a0Yankees beat writer<\/a>\u00a0for MLB.com (!) and whose offspring today operates as\u00a0NY Sportsday<\/a>, was around then too, but not sure of many others. No. 12 was then in a dark period following\u00a0Jorge Fabregas’s departure and the coming of the\u00a0Shawon Dunston\u00a0Era later that year.<\/p>\n

Boswell was a Met for eight seasons and possessed a pretty good left-handed bat for a second baseman, especially for his era. A few injuries interrupted his early progress, and he’d eventually be displaced as the regular second baseman by\u00a0Felix Millan, but he remained a useful player who batted 1.000 in the 1973 Word Series (3-for-3, all pinch hits) and clubbed home runs in consecutive games in the 1969 NLCS rout of the Braves. When\u00a0Willie Randolph\u00a0namechecked Ken Boswell while taking the No. 12 jersey, it might have been his finest moment as Mets manager.<\/p>\n

\"12\"<\/a>The No. 12 jersey has been an interesting one in Mets history. The all-time No. 12 was probably\u00a0John “Bad Dude” Stearns, a four-time All-Star and all-time tough guy. Twelve was also the best of\u00a0Ron Darling’s\u00a0three numbers as a Met: He went 68-38 with a 3.38 ERA wearing 12 — and 31-32, 3.73 wearing other numbers (44 and 15, respectively).\u00a0 Darling’s the only Mets pitcher to ever have worn 12.<\/p>\n

Twelve belonged to\u00a0Tommy Davis\u00a0during his outstanding (and only) Mets season in 1967; and to maddening chatty hacker Jeff Francoeur\u00a0in 2009 and 2010. It currently belongs to\u00a0Scott Hairston<\/strong>, who’s likely to be a pinch-hitter and hopefully not a full-time player for the 2011 squad. One day, we may remember 12 as the number belonging to two Hall of Famers who endured difficult stays in Metville:\u00a0Jeff Kent\u00a0(who probably deserves in) and\u00a0Roberto Alomar\u00a0(who’ll be enshrined this summer).<\/p>\n

Who’s your favorite 12?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s Ken Boswell’s 1971 Topps baseball card. That’s the Cardinals’\u00a0Vic Davalillo\u00a0arriving too late to break up the double play as Boswell works the pivot between shortstop\u00a0Al Weis\u00a0and first baseman\u00a0Art Shamsky. The card — which must be one of the only Mets cards that includes a view of the Whitestone — was shot on May 28, … Continue reading “A Very Boswell Birthday”<\/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":[422],"tags":[374,532,183,533,398,167],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-news","tag-john-stearns","tag-jorge-fabregas","tag-ken-boswell","tag-ron-darling","tag-shawon-dunston","tag-willie-randolph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536","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=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2300,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions\/2300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}