Last week when I made my annual trip to Citi Field, I plunked down my 15 bucks for the annual New York Met yearbook. My collection is over fifty years old. I got it home and was literally done looking at all the pictures in five minutes. I would have enjoyed spending some time with a few articles. But...wait...there were none.
Sigh.
It used to be the highlight of my summer.
Meanwhile, the 2018 Los Angeles Dodgers yearbook, while also laden with photos, actually has some well done prose and stories. It took me over two hours to get through a first perusal.
Now that's what a baseball team's yearbook should be. Something that lasts all summer.
Ah, I remember when....
When I was a kid, my dad took me to two, maybe three Met games a year. Of course, as you might imagine, the weeks preceding each game offered me glorious anticipation. Who was going to be the starting pitcher? I'd start tracking that weeks in advance. What was the weather forecast? I'd start looking for that on TV a week in advance.
And, of course, there was my allowance. I needed to plan my expected souvenir purchase.
And, if it was the right time of the season, I'd be scraping together two quarters to buy the Mets yearbook.
When I mention "the right time of the season," this was intricate guesswork on my part. You see the photo above? There is a notation in the upper right hand corner.
"Revised Edition."
If the Mets had undergone a lot of personnel changes in the first two months of the season, they would do a revised version of the yearbook to get the new guys in there. I never ever wanted to have an incomplete yearbook. So, I would want to have the book, but always needed to wait in case they did the revised edition.
Regardless, I needed to have that damn thing in my house by July 1. Because school was over and I was into my summer reading phase. And a major part of that was the Mets yearbook.
This is when there was more to the book than just player pictures. There were extensive write-ups on each and every Met. Other nifty articles. It kept this eight-year-old awfully busy. I'd curl up in my favorite hot weather reading spot---right next to the kitchen fan---and completely immerse myself in a cool breeze and some hot stats.
It would take me several nights to finish the Mets yearbook.
Yes, I have them all. Save for one yearbook. The very, very first yearbook from my very, very first season with the Mets. During my second season with the team, they went on what seemed to be a 25 game losing streak. I got so disgusted that I ripped up the yearbook from the previous season. Which you can now buy on e-Bay for about twenty bucks.
Oh, well.
I was so captivated by baseball yearbook reading that I branched out. You see, in my younger days, I always nominated an American League team to be my own each summer. Since most of the kids "up the block" were Yankee fans, I needed to talk on their level about teams in the same league.
Of course, I seemed to switch American League favorites every summer. One year, I was enamored with the Chicago White Sox. The next year, it was the Boston Red Sox. One summer later, it was the Detroit Tigers. I never stuck with one for more than a season. Hey, my fandom was valuable.
Naturally, I had to look the part. Back then, there was a place called Manny's Baseball Land across the street from Yankee Stadium. The cool thing about this souvenir store was that they had stuff from all teams. It was a different time and era. So, usually accompanied by my best neighborhood chum Leo, we'd pop down to Manny's on the subway. And I would officially adopt an American League team by buying myself their cap.
And, of course, their team yearbook.
For the next two weeks, I'd be back nestled against the kitchen fan. Learning all about Carl Yastrzemski or Jim Northrup or John Buzhardt. I mean, I had to be totally conversant, right?
For me, there was nothing like enveloping myself in a baseball team yearbook. I could read it for days.
What else is better to do on a summer night?
Dinner last night: Arclight salad at the Arclight...duh.
1 comment:
There was nothing better than reading those Mets yearbooks. Learning who was coming through the farm system, who hit 25 homers in one season in the minors -- every bit of it. We lapped it up. I still have a chewed-up 1962 yearbook that featured a picture of future Met Derrel Harrelson (later known to Mets fans as Bud) playing catch.
But $15 for a yearbook! What happened to the 50-cent version, like the one in your picture? Also, I can remember when you could get other teams' yearbooks at Shea -- I still have my 1965 San Francisco Giants yearbook, with a huge article on the 23-inning game in 1964.
And don't get me started on game programs ...
Those were the days.
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