{"id":2507,"date":"2016-03-09T07:37:54","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T13:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=2507"},"modified":"2016-03-09T07:37:54","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T13:37:54","slug":"in-passing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=2507","title":{"rendered":"In Passing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"10\"<\/a>Kevin Collins, the former Met infielder who was a\u00a0key ingredient in the trade bringing the Mets 1969 World Series MVP Donn Clendenon and who also holds a distinction in the club’s uni-number history, passed away<\/a> at his winter home in Naples, Fla. on Feb. 20 at age 69.<\/p>\n

\"19\"<\/a>Collins was among the “Youth of America” class of young players assembled by the Mets in their formative years. Although a steady job in the big leagues would wind up being blocked by another of that group, Bud Harrelson, Collins bobbed between the Mets’ farm and the big-league club often enough between 1965 and 1969 to achieve a notable place in team history: He was the first Met to wear four different uniform numbers, a record that would be tied in the 1980s by Ed Lynch and surpassed a decade after that by Jeff McKnight.<\/p>\n

\"16\"<\/a>As part of SABR’s book on the 1969 Mets, THE MIRACLE HAS LANDED, I interviewed Collins by phone and wrote a brief biography you can see published here<\/a>. In our conversations Collins was a gregarious and funny man — when informed him of his place in\u00a0Mets’ uni-number history he was so amused he told his wife as we discussed it. What emerged from my research was a story of a great teammate: When sent to the minors in 1969, instead of storming off he left a note in his emptied locker wishing luck to incoming replacement Ken Boswell; and when knocked cold\u00a0in a collision at third base by a sliding Doug Rader in 1968, several teammates rushed to Collins’ aid including pitcher Don Cardwell, who initiated a bench-clearing brawl by socking Rader above the eye. After a subsequent trade made him a member of the 1970 Detroit Tigers, Collins\u00a0was among the first big-leaguers to share a road-trip hotel room with a black player, Gates Brown.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a>Collins wore 10, 19, 16 and 1 over his sporadic appearances as a Met, dating to a debut in 1965 as an 18-year-old.<\/p>\n

More sad news from the afterlife: Tom Knight, a Brooklyn-based baseball historian<\/a> and a fan of the MBTN project, passed away Feb. 17, according to this article in the New York Times. I knew Tom from his appearances as a master of ceremonies at countless Casey Stengel Chapter SABR meetings, and I was more than flattered when I discovered he’d penned an unsolicited and extremely positive review of the 2008 Mets by the Numbers book.<\/p>\n

Fans and media around Metland this week are also mourning Shannon Forde,<\/a> the club’s beloved media relations director, who passed away at the way-too-young age of 44.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Collins, the former Met infielder who was a\u00a0key ingredient in the trade bringing the Mets 1969 World Series MVP Donn Clendenon and who also holds a distinction in the club’s uni-number history, passed away at his winter home in Naples, Fla. on Feb. 20 at age 69. Collins was among the “Youth of America” … Continue reading “In Passing”<\/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":[361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507","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=2507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2508,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions\/2508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}