I began reading Jon Springer and Matthew Silverman's Mets by the Numbers yesterday, which is a print version of the excellent website http://www.mbtn.net. The book is also quite good. My favorite feature of it so far, however (I've read through #17), is not the writing, but the reproductions of Topps baseball cards from throughout Mets history. All of the cards have photos with visible uniform numbers. Tom Seaver, David Wright, Keith Hernandez, and Darryl Strawberry have cards on the cover, but lesser lights are also represented, e.g., Bobby Valentine (as a player, p. 3), Tim Teufel (p. 56), Felix Millan (my favorite '70s Met aside from Seaver and Lee Mazzilli, p. 89), Kevin McReynolds (p. 115), Hank Webb (p. 150), and so on. My only complaint about this feature is that the 1990 set - by far the ugliest Topps set ever - is represented seven times: Gary Carter (p. 39), Todd Hundley (p. 46), Bob Ojeda (p. 99), Howard Johnson (p. 104), Kevin Elster (p. 110), Frank Viola (p. 139), and Jeff Innis (p. 200). All of these players were with the Mets for multiple seasons, you would think that their uniform numbers would be visible on at least one of each of their cards from other years. But maybe not. Anyway, thank God the card reproductions are in black-and-white, because if they were in color the hellacious color combos of the 1990 set would give some readers seizures.
The book's card reproductions make me nostalgic for my childhood, when I spent virtually all of my allowance during the summer on baseball cards, much to the chagrin of my parents, who thought I should save money instead. I began collecting in 1987 because I wanted cards of the Mets' 1986 championship team. Back then a wax pack of 15 Topps cards and a stick of gum cost 45 cents (I never liked Fleer or Donruss; in 1991 I bought Score instead of Topps, probably because my eyes were still traumatized from the aforementioned 1990 Topps set). One time (1989) I bought an entire box of wax packs, and it only cost $14. Now, you're lucky to find a pack on sale for less than $2, and you get fewer cards (12? I'm not even sure anymore) and no gum. Also, you used to be able to buy baseball cards everywhere, and now they are very hard to find. Not even Wal-Mart sells them. This saddens me - baseball cards were my introduction to baseball literature, they were how I grew to love the game itself (not just the Mets), but now a generation of children are growing up without this resource.
1 comment:
Hi -- Glad to hear you're enjoying the book so far. We wound up going with baseball cards to illustrate in part because we had a limited budget for artwork but also because, where else would you find Hank Webb photos. The cards are from our very own beaten-up collections.
And I'm sorry about all the 1990 cards: I agree they're pretty hideous. I was working at a newspaper then and as part of the job did a weekly column about cards, and somehow wound up accumulating boxes from that year.
I promise that when we publish Vol. 2 we'll weed out some of the 1990s and include more from the 1960s which are definitely under-represented.
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