THE List: 10 Most Popular Mets
Tug McGraw (1965-1967, 1969-1974)
Came up with “You Gotta Believe,” willing the 1973 Mets to the East title.
Tom Seaver (1967-1977, 1983)
How could a player who is the all-time face of a franchise be lost to that team not once, but twice? Only the Mets.
Rusty Staub (1972-1975, 1981-1985)
With all the food at Citi Field, why is there no Rusty’s Ribs?
Lee Mazzilli (1976-1981, 1986-1989)
Is it me, or does it seem like the Mets keep trading their most popular players, only to re-acquire them later?
Mookie Wilson (1980-1989)
Do you think he would have been as popular if his name wasn’t Mookie?
Keith Hernandez (1983-1989)
Every girl in the ’80s loved Hernandez. How do you compete with that?
Dwight Gooden (1984-1994)
Despite everything that went wrong, he’s still beloved by Mets fans. Still, it’s hard not to imagine what might have been.
Mike Piazza (1998-2005)
The best hitter the Mets have ever had. Hopefully he’ll go into the Hall of Fame as a Met.
Jose Reyes (2003-present)
The most exciting position player the Mets have ever had. It seems like everyone is wearing a Reyes jersey at the game.
David Wright (2004-present)
Unless they are wearing a Wright jersey. The new face of the franchise, he’ll be named captain soon.
Mug Shots courtesy Ultimate Mets Database, http://ultimatemets.com/mugshots.php
Hello? Aaron Heilman?
Reyes? Really? Backman before him.
Where’s Dave Kingman? If you ask anyone who was a Mets fan back in 1975 and 1976 Kingman was the man! He was power personified. Everyone and I mean everyone (to include the vendors) stopped what they were doing to watch his at-bats. John Milner in 1974 the year before Kingman came to town led the team with 20 homeruns and Kingman nearly doubled that (37) in 1975. As suffering Mets fans we never had our own true homerun hitter who could legitimately challenge for the National League Homerun crown until Kingman showed up. He was the first legitimate homerun hitter that the Mets had in their history who was in his prime. If not for his injured thumb in July 1976 he might have hit 60 homeruns. And this was well before homeruns were cheapened by performance enhancing drugs and smaller ballparks.
Perhaps I’m dating myself, but back in the mid-late sixties, Ron Swoboda was as popular a Met as there ever was. He wasn’t a particularly talented ballplayer, at bat or in the field (despite his great World Series catch), but his imperfections, plus his love for the game and the fans of NY, made him an absolute favorite.
Where’s George “the stork” Theodore?????