Some eBay Therapy for a Fan of a Schizophrenic Team
May 17th, 2010 by slangon

What do you do when you root for a team that starts the season horribly, sitting in the basement for a few weeks, then goes on a 9-1 tear, propelling themselves into first place over the course of a week and a half and then tanks it, free-falling back into the basement 2 weeks later? Buy a couple of cards from their first championship team of course.

I guess the easy thing to do when your team starts to become really unbearable to watch is languish in the glorious past. The funny thing is that even the year that they won it all, it still seems to have been a roller coaster ride. I mean, as of today, the Mets have a 18-20 record, sitting 6 games behind the 1st place Phillies. On May 17, 1969, the Mets has a 17-18 record and were 6.5 games behind the 1st place Cubs. I know that’s reaching, but when your team has played as terribly as my Mets have over the last few weeks, you latch onto any little crumb of hope that you can.

Anyway, here’s a couple of sweet looking cards from the Miracle Mets Championship season, with both Gil and Tom looking like they mean business. They both have that look on their face that says no longer will the Metropolitans be the laughing stock of the N.L. East. I wish there were someone with that look in their eye on this years team.

The seller I got these 2 cards from was the kind that charged one flat shipping rate regardless of how many auctions you won from them and I wasn’t about to let that go to waste, so I bid on a few more cards that they were selling. I ended up winning 2 more.

First up was this nice little ’65 Billy Williams. The more ’65 cards I see, the more this set grows on me. They’re colorful, they generally have pretty awesome photographs and the little pennants are really cool. It also helps that pretty much all of the team logos from the 60’s are really awesome looking. Going with the theme of trying to distract myself by delving into better times in Mets history, Billy was of course on the 1969 Cubs team that the Mets miraculously caught up to and eventually surpassed for the N.L. East title. For such an awesome looking card of an awesome player, I can’t believe I won this for $0.49.

I was really psyched to win this one. First of all, 1963 is one of my favorite sets from the 60’s. I especially love the way these Rookie Star cards look from this set. I’m always a big fan of disembodied heads. Secondly, it’s Rusty Staub’s Rookie Card. Although, Le Grand Orange would never be mistook for a superstar, and he was pretty run down by the time I saw him, he was always one of my favorite players when I was a kid. Also, the Colt .45’s is quite possibly one of the coolest names for a Major League team. Thirdly, I found it interesting that 75% of the guys on this card eventually played within the Mets organization. Rusty, of course, had 2 tours of duty in Queens, from 1972-1975 and finishing his career from 1981-1985. Duke Carmel was traded to the Mets the same year that this card came out and played in 47 games for them. Bill Haas, although he never played a Major League game anywhere, was in the Mets Minor League system from 1964-66. Dick Phillips was the one guy who had nothing to do with them.

So there you have it. A couple of cards from better days. I wish I didn’t have to resort to post like this, but like my Grand-Pappy used to say, you can wish in one hand and s#!+ in the other and see which one fills up first.

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