Welcome back to the Mets Beat newsletter! Anthony DiComo has covered the Mets for MLB.com since 2007, including the past 17 seasons full-time on the beat. |
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NEW YORK -- To know Howie Rose is to understand two of the great passions of his life. One is the Mets, the team he grew up rooting for in Queens that became the focal point of his decades-long broadcasting career. For Rose, calling a Mets championship on the radio would be nirvana. The other is the Beatles, another obsession born in the 1960s that has remained with Rose for the past seven decades. Sitting recently in the Mets’ press dining room, Rose bemoaned the fact that he had never had a close brush with any of the Fab Four. That changed after Rose received an invitation to attend last week's Saturday Night Live, with Paul McCartney as the musical guest. Receiving clearance to leave the Mets’ Subway Series game against the Yankees a couple innings early, Rose made his way to 30 Rock, watched McCartney’s performance, then stuck around for the invitation-only afterparty. There, just after 2 a.m., Rose enjoyed a brief exchange with the knighted musician. Given a chance to stammer a few words, the typically articulate broadcaster mustered something to the effect of: “Thank you for everything you meant in my life.” “I’m looking at him. I’m shaking his hand. And I’m seeing 62 years coming before me in so many different ways,” Rose said. “Metaphorically, I’m looking at album covers, and I’m looking at every live performance, and I’m looking at the movies, and I’m looking at everything. This is a guy that I’ve cherished -- him and the Beatles -- since I was almost 10 years old.” |
Although Rose, 72, has spent his career fraternizing with professional athletes, a rendezvous with McCartney felt different. To Rose, the Beatles were a touchstone. For millions of a certain age, the Beatles “changed the world,” he said, from the cultural norms they helped break down to the new ones they ushered in. “I even said to one of the people that I was with, ‘There’s literally -- and I mean this, literally -- not a person on earth who could walk into this party right now that I would be any more interested in seeing or talking to than Paul McCartney,’” Rose said. “I mean no one. I don’t care who it is. That gives you an idea of how important it is to me.” Rose, who has called Mets games in various capacities since the mid-1990s, burns to see a championship while he’s still working -- a hope that complicated his decision to retire after this season. While nothing outside of baseball can fill that void, meeting McCartney was more than a consolation prize. Said Rose: “I’ll savor and cherish those few seconds forever.” |
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MLB MORNING LINEUP PODCAST |
When Nick Morabito arrived at Nationals Park for his Major League debut on Tuesday, he found a No. 8 jersey hanging in his locker. Morabito, who wore No. 7 with Triple-A Syracuse, had not requested the number. It held no special significance to him. He was enough of a student of a game, however, to understand the history of No. 8 even before it became a minor news story. “Gary Carter’s number,” Morabito said on Tuesday afternoon. Gary Carter’s number indeed -- a number the Mets have frozen for a quarter century, keeping it in a sort of sartorial limbo. So how did Morabito come to wear No. 8 for his debut? According to people with knowledge of the situation, the Mets’ committee that makes number retirement recommendations quietly voted last year whether to retire Carter’s No. 8 as part of their recent relaxing of standards. For years, the team held to an unofficial policy of only retiring the numbers of Hall of Famers with Mets caps on their plaques in Cooperstown. That changed earlier this decade, when the Mets retired the numbers of non-Hall of Famers Jerry Koosman, Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden and David Wright in rapid succession. |
Carter, who is in the Hall with an Expos cap, was a candidate to receive the same honor. But he was voted down largely because he only spent five of his 19 Major League seasons in New York. There was no vote about unfreezing Carter’s number, but somehow -- whether due to a miscommunication or a simple mistake -- it ended up in Morabito’s locker. A firestorm followed, particularly given that this year marks the 40th anniversary of the Mets’ 1986 World Series title. Within hours of the news going public, the team announced it would issue a new number -- 55 -- to Morabito. While that won’t change the historical blip of Carter’s number being unfrozen for a single game, and while there are no guarantees that No. 8 will remain frozen forever, Morabito is happy with his new digits. “Two fives is cool,” he said. |
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Before Bo Bichette on Tuesday, who was the last Mets player to homer multiple times in the first two innings of a game? A) Curtis Granderson B) Francisco Lindor C) José Reyes D) David Wright |
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• Although Zach Thornton would have loved a win in his Major League debut on Wednesday, the game will stick with him for the rest of his life. On hand at Nationals Park was Thornton’s father, Paul, who remains paralyzed from the waist down following a surgical complication. Read more about his emotional story here. • If you happened to change the channel before Monday’s game against the Nats went to extra innings, you may have been shocked to learn the final score. That’s because the Mets -- thanks in part to the suddenly red-hot Bo Bichette -- did something no team had accomplished in more than 40 years. • What exactly is going on with Jorge Polanco, who hasn’t played since early April? Answers here. • Despite Jonah Tong’s struggles at Triple-A Syracuse, the Mets are considering him for a spot start this weekend in Miami. Here’s why. |
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A) Granderson Granderson went deep twice in the first two innings of a 5-4 win over the Rays on Aug. 8, 2015. No Met replicated that feat until Bichette on Tuesday. |
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