RING IN THE OLD
More Old-Timers' games hello, Mets! a great way to grow sport
It is inarguable that no team in baseball honors its history quite like the Yankees, as we witnessed once again on Sunday at the 71st annual Old-Timers’ day celebration at the Stadium. Before you flood my inbox with polite — and, well, less polite — versions of “but no team in baseball can rival the history of the Yankees,” let me continue by agreeing with you there.
But that doesn’t mean the other 29 teams in MLB also shouldn’t implement or reinstate a similar day every season to help pass down the love of the game between fans bridging different generations that you feel every year in the Bronx — even with the passing of so many legends — when Whitey and Reggie and more recent stars like Bernie and Tino and Posada and, hopefully, one day Mariano and Jeter come back to the Stadium en masse.
(Not to be confused with Kevin Maas, but he comes just about every year, as well).
For more than a decade, the Yanks were the only team in MLB to still hold an OldTimers’ Day every season, until the Dodgers brought back the tradition in 2013. The most recent OTD game in Los Angeles earlier this month featured the likes of Don Newcombe, Steve Garvey, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser and more.
Many older fans surely remember the days when plenty of other teams around the league held such events on a regular basis, too. For many years, that included the Mets, who discontinued the annual tradition in 1994, citing laggard ticket sales combined with the rising cost of hosting an Old-Timers’ Day every year.
Still, I vividly recall watching the Mets’ version of Old-Timers’ Day in 1977 (about a month after Tom Seaver had been traded, no less) and seeing the four legendary New York centerfielders — Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Duke Snider — walk in together through the opening in the centerfield fence at Shea. And then asking my dad to extol the virtues of each of them.
Yes, the Mets still have events every few years honoring their two championship teams, and the 30th anniversary of the 1986 World Series champs one year ago was a huge hit.
But there are plenty of fans who’d like to see those names, as well as Seaver and Koosman and other members of the '69 Mets, more regularly, as well as more recent names like Piazza and Ventura and Alfonzo, etc.
There has been some clamoring in Chicago for the Cubs, especially now that they’ve won their elusive first World Series since 1908, to bring back some of the lovable losers who contributed to the franchise falling short for over a century. Heck, maybe even Steve Bartman would get an ovation by now, just like Bill Buckner did years later in a return to Fenway Park. The Red Sox, the Cardinals, the Giants, the Pirates and other franchises all have history that should be so celebrated.
As another sports fan I know noted after attending Ice Cube’s Big3 3-On-3 hoops league that began play on Sunday at Barclays Center, he heard fathers in the stands telling their kids about Allen Iverson and some of the other former stars playing in the traveling nostalgia league.
If MLB believes it’s losing the next generation of fans, perhaps instituting more Old-Timers’ Day events in each city could be a way to help change that, to help foster that connection between the generations.
It’s true what they say, what’s old is new again.
Let’s not get too worked up over whether Tim Tebow is playing in low-A ball or advanced-A, OK?
What, you didn’t think the Mets were planning on getting the Florida football legend to the Florida State League at some point to sell a few more tickets and jerseys?
That said, I actually refuse to scoff at the former Heisman winner’s .220 batting average. It’s like when people used to say that Michael Jordan failed at baseball. At 31 years old, after not playing the game for about 15 years, he hit over .200 with three homers, 51 RBI and 30 stolen bases in his lone minor-league season at DoubleA Birmingham. Do you know how difficult that is? Let the Mets have fun with their little marketing experiment … and get ready for that September call-up.
l If the Mets’ season has been largely a train wreck, what does that make the San Francisco Giants, who I picked to go to the World Series this year?
l If the Yankees had any sense of humor they would’ve asked Chris Carter to come back for Old-Timers’ Day.
l Pretty cool for former Anaheim linemates Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne to go into the Hockey HOF as a tandem. As Gordon Bombay taught us, Ducks fly together.