National League Town

Doc Gooden was honored at Citi Field, and National League Town is honored to be to be able to share some insights about what the day was like in Flushing. Greg and Jeff are also glad that the Mets’ wretched start has morphed into a decent run, though that doesn’t mean they don’t question the timing of at least one preseason personnel move. Finally, we remember a catcher who set the defensive standard for all who followed him, and a pitcher who made the best of an undesirable situation (32:30).

Opening Day’s arrival has us dreaming a little dream. The 2024 Mets have won the World Series. A platform is set up for the presentation of the Commissioner’s Trophy. Your new world champions make sure one player holds the hardware aloft before anybody else can touch it. Who should that player be? Greg and Jeff aren’t beyond speculating wildly and nominating their Met of Mets to do the honor. Listen in as they clearly get ahead of themselves.

It’s a new season, and we’re on board with Tom Boswell’s assertion that time begins on Opening Day. We are excited. We are (cautiously) optimistic. We are building up a thirst for crafty baseball and craft beers. We hope to be dancing in the aisles during innings, while an entity called the Queens Crew dances on the field between innings. The ballpark beckons once more, and it’s got fans like us in its thrall. We also try to decide if we don’t mind the Mets Hall of Fame relocating, and we remember one of the mainstays of Met pitching from when miracles were performed.

"Great Scott", Scott was great! That's a wrap on Grapefruit League Town.

The Mets won and I had a unique perspective on the game.

The fries were hot, the Mets were not, and one of the people I went with went home happy. Find out in a weirder-than-normal episode.

"The Mets scored a run" and "Down in front!" are two things that weren't said at today's game.

Jose Quintana was great, the Mets offense was not, and the home team played a song that you shouldn't play at night.

Another 3-1 Mets win, another hot dog to talk about, and free parking.

No matter what side of the aisle you are on we can all agree that Thursday was a great night for the Mets, despite a bad vegan hot dog.

With today's day off, Jeff gives advice about buying tickets during Spring Training and explains why Steve Cohen can buy a dead shark but he won't sign Jordan Montgomery.

The Mets lost but Jeff found something that everyone, whether you wear blue or red, can agree on.

It was a great day at Clover Park as the Mets won... other than my chicken tender and fries.

Jeff is in Florida for a month for various reasons but let's face it, the Mets are the biggest reason. This is the "Trailer" for this show and Jeff explains what you will hear as he watches the Mets during Spring Training.

Music: The Royal Arctic Institute

Cover Art: John Newcomer

“Baseball is back!” says it all, and what it doesn’t say, National League Town’s first episode of 2024 will. Greg and Jeff are ready to turn their attention toward Port St. Lucie, cheering the players who show up early, figuring out who might play where, and wondering whether a Polar Bear can be kept in captivity beyond this year. We also preview a special Spring Training podcast series we think you’ll enjoy and look back lovingly on the life of a true über-Met we lost this winter.

Having passed the 100-episode milestone, National League Town pauses to reflect on two years of podcasting and how these seasons have intertwined with two lifetimes of Mets fandom. Mostly, Greg and Jeff say thank you to all who have accompanied this program on its trip around the bases...and, as always, Let’s Go Mets.

’Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the pod, hosts Greg and Jeff craved Yamamoto’s nod; free agents, alas, decide on their own time, not paying heed to our recording deadline. All this is our merry way of saying that when National League Town put together this episode, the Mets had yet to sign their main free agent target. Thus, rather than dwelling on the uncertain, we devote the bulk of our holiday episode (28:00) to a replay of our golden-anniversary salute to the 1973 season — who was going, who was coming and how the Mets came on late to go from last place to first and ultimately the pennant. It was the year we were told, “You Gotta Believe,” and a half-century later, that’s a sentiment we still take to heart. We also share a few fresh words on third base possibilities, bullpen construction, a welcome Spring Training innovation and the only Met pitcher who won more than he lost during the first three years of the franchise (17:30).

National League Town returns this week to some of Jeff’s Brilliant Ideas, thoughtful concepts and suggestions guaranteed to make baseball better. More doubleheaders and day games? Adjustments to the ghost runner rule and the WBC? Breathing new life into the All-Star Game? Jeff’s mulled these and more over and shares the thinking behind his always intriguing notions.

Our provincial take on the 2024 Hall of Fame election is Vote for David Wright...and maybe some or all of the other nine Mets on the writers’ ballot. The Captain is eligible for consideration for the first time after his fourteen-season career as a Met and only a Met, a span when he earned multiple honors, made multiple All-Star teams and created myriad memories. As far as National League Town is concerned, that’s worthy of serious Cooperstown conversation. We also remember the dozen seasons when the late Ron Hodges was a part of our lives, from his rookie highlight reel exploits to the distinct role he carved out as a constant of the Met catching corps across a baseball generation (44:05).

Greg and Jeff are happy this Thanksgiving over the presence of a mascot and the absence of a narrative. They’re perfectly fine with the return of a few coaches while they sort out their feelings over the comings and goings of several players. When it comes to the prospective Las Vegas A’s, they have a hard time imagining that team succeeding as a box office attraction in an event-driven market. And if National League Town could turn back time, which World Series trophy would our hosts add to the Mets’ not exactly brimming collection? We take a trip down Almost Avenue to provide a couple of answers.

Did you have any idea what Carlos Mendoza sounded like before his introductory press conference? Neither did we, but now we do. That was the primary National League Town takeaway from the introduction of the Mets’ latest manager at the Mets’ latest press conference as he sat alongside the Mets’ latest general manager and told us the Mets’ latest plan is to be competitive. Now that we’ve acquainted ourselves with both Mendoza and David Stearns, Greg and Jeff wonder what the tandem might do in the months ahead to make the Mets more than competitive (15:25). We also look back at the least known remarkable pitching performance in franchise history: The Rob Gardner Game (25:49).

Long Island’s Own Jeff Hysen blows out a few candles and shares his birthday with Ed Kranepool and Edgardo Alfonzo, but the real November celebration could be for the hiring of Carlos Mendoza as new Mets manager. If his tenure turns into a ticker-tape party, Mets fans may be talking about him someday like Greg and Jeff are talking about Davey Johnson this week, as a Hall of Fame candidate on the latest iteration of the veterans committee ballot. National League Town also remembers the baseball life and Met times of another of our skippers, Frank Howard, a man of many nicknames and monster home runs.

We know we couldn’t get from the 2023 Mets season what we wanted most, yet we carry away from this baseball year gone by a few moments that really resonated with us. Greg and Jeff each single out five games when they found being a Mets fan took on a little extra special meaning — win, lose or draw.

The National League Town monthly series “It Happens in Threes” pulls into the garage after zooming ahead one more decade, to remember 2023 (75-87) in a segment short on long-term perspective, but no doubt fortified by recency bias. As could be said of 1963 (51-11), 1983 (68-94), 1993 (59-103), 2003 (66-95) and 2013 (74-88), these were not the best the best of times, but they’re the only times we got to know in Met years that ended in “3” (you gotta believe pennant-winning 1973 remains the exception to that rule of threes). Also, we thank the Phillies’ backup catcher for thinking of us at a highly unlikely moment.

BONUS EPISODE! National League Town pauses from its stare out the window/wait for spring to revel briefly in the ouster of the hated Atlanta Braves from the 2023 postseason, even if it took the hated Philadelphia Phillies to do the ousting. October hat tips are issued as well to the Diamondbacks, Astros and Rangers because, honestly, what else do we have to do other than stare out the window and wait for spring?

One week after they framed Billy Eppler’s forthcoming role in the Mets’ decision-making hierarchy; railed against Major League Baseball for endless indecisiveness regarding the outcome of a suspended game; and wished the Miami Marlins ill in their postseason endeavors, Greg and Jeff return to square some circles (Eppler’s out; the suspended game was resolved; and the Marlins swam off to sea with nary a playoff peep), and then pick over some of the scabs of a 2023 campaign that left all family business unsettled (10:25). National League Town also remembers an early Met idol who inspired allegiance that lasted a mighty long time (28:30).

The Mets showed their manager the door and welcomed aboard a new president of baseball operations. National League Town therefore wishes Buck Showalter a fond (if ultimately necessary) adieu while hoping their fellow Mets fan David Stearns will know what he’s doing for a long time to come. Greg and Jeff also try to figure out how a person could have snuck into Shea Stadium and wonder whatever became of that Mets-Marlins game whose final outcome apparently got washed away in the rain.

The 2023 Mets did it their way, and ain’t that a shame? Greg and Jeff pull up a mic and discuss not so much what went wrong, but what it was like to live through all of it going wrong. You know what they say, though: whatever lousy Mets season doesn’t kill you makes you strongly aggravated you just sat through so much dismal baseball. On the other hand, what else were we gonna do?

Expectations were raised, expectations were dashed. In a nutshell, that’s been 2023 for the Mets. Still, hope springs eternal, even in the last days of a season about to end with no sign our most recent spasm of hope transformed into the success we dared expect. We can’t control what the players accomplish, yet we’ll be back to look forward to a collection of them next year doing better than they did this year. One decade ago, we had only one day in five to really look forward to, and we rode that Day for all it was worth. The “It Happens in Threes” series lands in 2013, a.k.a. Harvey Year (11:15). National League Town also takes a moment to remember the Mets fan author who preserved for us every Met day of the franchise’s first twenty years (37:45).

In 2023, everybody played everybody in the major leagues, which meant the Mets spent 46 games involved with opponents from the American League. Greg and Jeff delve into what it was like for National League fans like them to divert their focus more than ever from what they were used to. And what do the hosts of National League Town think about when they think about American League teams? We relive the entire Interleague journey of the past six months, from Oakland to Minneapolis, and everywhere in between.

Darryl Strawberry’s 18 and Dwight Gooden’s 16 will rise to Citi Field’s rafters in 2024, rafters being one of those terms we can’t necessarily define, yet we know what it means. It means two of the players whose pictures you see in the proverbial dictionary when you look up the greatest era in New York Mets history are getting the recognition they’ve long deserved, and National League Town couldn’t be more delighted. Well, maybe we could be if we knew perennial 40-plus home run man Pete Alonso will have every opportunity to be a “forever Met” and maybe join them someday high above Flushing.

Current News: 00:15

Doc and Darryl: 22:45

Jeff is solo this week and he explains how he is dealing with this season, looks at the schedule for next season, gives his opinion of Rob Manfred’s job status, tells everybody to stop clapping their hands, and brings back one of Greg’s finest moments.

Of every angle that tends to entangle a team that has fallen short of great expectations, you can usually count on the future of the manager to generate a din of discourse. Yet since the trade deadline clarified that the Mets were not going to make a playoff run, all’s been quiet on the Showalter front. National League Town attempts to penetrate the silence while withstanding the stiff breeze generated by a surfeit of draft position speculation. Then Greg and Jeff open the ol’ mailbag and try to avoid paper cuts (27:40).

Ever have your team sign an accomplished quarterback, a pedigreed coach, a dazzling shooter or a reliable lefty reliever and you weren’t thrilled because, quite frankly, you didn’t like the idea of rooting for that particular person? Funny we should ask, as Greg and Jeff are talking about the kind of adjustment a fan sometimes makes in the name of hoping your team wins more games. In 2003, the Mets constituted something of a test case in this regard, and didn’t win many games, but they left behind some intriguing memories, which National League Town explores this week in It Happens in Threes (14:50).

The Mets have played dead, and National League Town can’t bring them back to life, but Greg and Jeff are more than happy to talk each other (and their siblings) through the dog days of this most brutal summer. Are we having any seller’s remorse? Are we rewriting history on the fly to suggest that if only we’d stood pat, we’d be coming on strong in the Wild Card scramble? Are we still going to the ballpark? And are we not entertained? We have few definitive answers, but we’re always willing to pose a few questions.

Greg and Jeff get together in the post-trade deadline world and exchange ideas over where the Mets are going now that they’ve made deal after deal after deal. What legacy does Max Scherzer leave behind? What was Justin Verlander even doing here? How successful will the Steve Cohen Draft turn out to be? And how many euphemisms do baseball people throw around? National League Town puzzles out some answers that might prove right, might prove wrong, and will definitely take a while to prove either way.

Run. Field. Throw. Hit. Hit with power. You know them as the five tools, or what we want to see out of every ballplayer for whom we root. But what about us? How’s our game? National League Town considers what it takes to be a Five-Tool Fan, with Greg and Jeff asking themselves if they have enough of the right stuff to excel at baseball, albeit in the stands or on the couch. Our co-hosts identify the skills they think they bring to the proverbial table and identify areas where they think they could be doing a better job. Hey, if we’re gonna ask the Mets to the be the best they can be, we oughta try to do the same.

National League Town heads out to the ballpark and looks to commend fellow fans for doing things the right way...but winds up doing a little more tut-tutting than planned. C’mon, people: get your acts together! Greg and Jeff have a few things to say about section captains, foul ball peer pressure, and plate appearance decorum. One team that had its own ideas about suitable conduct was the 1993 Mets; sadly, they chose to conduct their season in seventh place. We look back thirty years in our “It Happens In Threes” series and try to glean the fine amid the fetid (19:20).

Going into the All-Star break, the Mets’ season looked broken. Can they put it back together in the 72 games remaining? National League Town will accept any glint of light that will allow them to discern a hint of hope. Maybe inspiration is to be had from Pete Alonso’s and Kodai Senga’s team winning the All-Star Game, a big boost for all fans of the NL (a.k.a. the ones in the dark pants). Maybe a long-term solution will emerge from a pitching-rich draft or a clever deadline acquisition. Or maybe our minds will wander to Odd Couple allusions.

Although Pete Alonso is the Mets’ only All-Star in 2023, National League Town salutes Steve Cohen’s stellar performance in his recent press conference, where he made himself available and positioned himself as accountable, even if concrete answers to what ailed the Mets in June were hard to articulate. On the sunnier side of Seaver Way, the Black Cat is spotted; not even Gabe Kapler can delay the next train to London; and what’s all this fuss about daft picks? Isn’t it hard enough to be daft without being picked on? (Sorry, that’s DRAFT picks — never mind!)

In this Special Commentary, Jeff explains why Buck must be fired as the Manager of the New York Mets.

“Play better” covers most of what Greg and Jeff have to say to the thus far flailing 2023 Mets, but because they’re fans, they take apart the pitching, the hitting, the fielding, the thinking, the managing and everything that has contributed to this monstrosity of a disappointment and try to figure out if there’s any hope in there. But mostly, Mets: play better.

If it was the worst of times, it wouldn’t have been much different from what had been going on for a while. If it was the best of times, it had a funny way of showing it in the standings. From the perspective of 40 years later, it was probably more than a little of each. Welcome to 1983, when Met past, Met present and Met future blended. We remember one of the most pivotal seasons in Mets history in our series It Happens in Threes, focusing on a campaign when the Mets were both pretty lousy and extremely promising, and the characters who populated the team still stand out in memory. National League Town also tries to fill the NL All-Star team with Mets and attempts to make the MLB All-Star Game watchable.

All-Star Game: 00:15

"Jeff's Brilliant Idea": 13:15

1983: 18:35

NLT Mailbag: 51:15

National League Town is up on its feet and joining Citi Field in a standing ovation for the New York Mets Hall of Fame ceremonies, even furtively clapping inside the press conference room and press box where we otherwise maintain professional decorum (00:20). So happy are Greg and Jeff to have watched Gary Cohen, Howie Rose, Al Leiter and Howard Johnson inducted into the Met Hall in 2023, they are getting ahead of the crowd and announcing their own nominations for the Class of 2024 — two players National League Town has talked up before, two players National League Town could have mentioned sooner (47:30). We also pay tribute to the franchise’s very first pitcher; remember one of The Franchise’s first very first catchers; and bump into the brother of another Met of yore while waiting for a train (1:10:00).

Now batting, now pitching, now broadcasting for the New York Mets: human beings. It might be helpful to remember those are people on the mound, at the plate or behind the mic. You are not legally required to bring empathy to a ballgame, but National League Town believes it doesn’t hurt to pack a little and keep it within reach, especially as a given season’s frustrations mount. And if you are going to a ballgame, it would be hard to pick a more glorious venue than Coors Field, regardless of inglorious results (14:15). Grab a beverage and take in our on-site report from Denver...then grab another and join us in toasting the incoming New York Mets Hall of Fame Class of 2023 — Howard Johnson, Al Leiter, Howie Rose and Gary Cohen (20:30).

There’s nothing quite like a Mets team emerging from its morass just in time for summer. Some years, a late May/early June turnaround will catapult the club clear to October. Other years, it simply makes for an enduring, joyful, perhaps Magical memory. Where will the 2023 Mets and their recent spate of pulse-quickening victories land? That’s to be determined — much as every night’s game story waits to be written and every off-day’s delivery of the Pancake Triple Play waits to be devoured (32:00). Hope you brought a hearty appetite for baseball talk to National League Town.