Hot Foot
May 3, 2023
I was one of the 47,267 people who were at this game, and the only way I know this is because it was Kahn's Beef Baseball Card Night, and knowing me, I would have been all over that. Still, I had to google what the 1989 Mets Kahn's Beef Baseball Card set looked like because unlike the 1988 set, I don't remember it. So it googled it and yes, now I remember these cards. They were a huge disappointment, just like the 1989 Mets.
Unlike the '88 set, most of the cards from the 1989 Mets Kahn's Beef Baseball Card set had terrible lighting. For instance, Keith Hernandez looked black. I remember my dad looking at the cards during the game and commenting on the terrible photography.
Besides the baseball cards, I don't remember anything about this game. Thankfully it's on YouTube, which helped me recall the zeitgeist of the 'Batman' summer of 1989, namely the Pete Rose scandal.
After the introduction of the starting lineups, the ABC broadcast team of Michaels, McCarver, and Palmer commented on the weak Mets lineup, with McCarver calling it, "like a B-team" and Palmer saying "it looks like half of Tidewater". They weren't wrong. The toothless lineup would have made my younger self sad, but by 1989, I was learning not to tie my emotions to the Mets.
As Michael mentioned in a previous post about this game, the announcers spent an inordinate amount of time talking about Pete Rose. At one point they commented on the irony that Rose's scandal was overshadowing Johnny Bench going into the Hall of Fame, and after that one comment, they never mentioned Johnny Bench again.
As far as the game, David West did not acquit himself well on this night. In what was to be an 'audition' to be trade bait (on national TV no less), he left the game after 4 IP and 7 ER, increasing his ERA from 0.63 to 3.93, but he did get a base hit. Davey didn't do him any favors with that punchless lineup, but again, Frank Cashen gutted that team so it wasn't all Davey's fault.
Played at night (with a late 8:12 pm start time) in humid 78 degree temperatures under an intermittent drizzle, flashes of lighting could be seen and the rumble of thunder was heard in the distance. The weather was probably the most exciting thing about this game.
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