After our recent trip to Louisville to experience a minor league city with a major league attitude, My wife Beth and I decided to head to another baseball destination that had long been on our bucket list: Seattle. Now, before we get to the baseball, let me warn you that Seattle is one of those places where you can spend three days doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with baseball and still feel like you barely scratched the surface. It is part waterfront city, pa

This weekend Lee Mazzilli and Bobby Valentine will be inducted into the New York Mets Hall of Fame . This event brings understandable excitement from Mets fans of a certain generation — especially those of us who spent the late 1970s pretending our hair looked just as cool as Lee’s. Spoiler alert: It didn’t. Mazzilli was everything a young Mets fan could want. He was from Brooklyn, he was Tony Manero before Saturday Night Fever, and he carried himself with the kind of swagger

There are baseball seasons that unfold like symphonies. And then there are seasons like this one, which unfold more like the Three Stooges dropped a piano down the stairs at Citi Field. The Mets entered Tuesday night against Cincinnati looking less like a roster and more like the never-ending search for the right replacement for Curly in the Three Stooges. Every day another player seems to limp into the trainer’s room while another kid arrives from Syracuse carrying batting g

There’s a funny thing about being a Mets fan. You don’t really choose it. It chooses you. Usually somewhere between a summer night, a bad decision, and a team that convinces you—again—that this might finally be the year… right before it isn’t. And yet here we are. Still watching. Still arguing. Still believing. Which, medically speaking, probably says more about us than it does about baseball. So we decided to do something simple. We’re building a home for it. Welcome to Met-

There are certain things in life you assume are untouchable. Tom Seaver’s fastball. The expression on a Mets fan’s face when the bullpen gate opens in a one-run game. And the exact spice blend in the Soup Nazi’s mulligatawny soup — because one wrong move and you’re banned from baseball and lunch. And for me, Gary Carter’s No. 8. When the Mets handed Nick Morabito the No. 8 jersey for his major league debut last night in Washington, the reaction from many fans — mine included

Get ready to continue the journey as KinersKorner.com’s Diamond Destinations series heads to a place that may not have a Major League team, but offers everything a baseball fan could want — and then some. Louisville may be home to Triple-A baseball, but after a few days here, you’ll realize this city punches well above its weight. Rich in baseball history, bourbon culture, iconic landmarks, and just across the river from neighboring Jeffersonville, Indiana, Louisville deliver

There are baseball players who think they’re legends. There are baseball players who act like legends. And then there are baseball players who apparently believe Cooperstown is just waiting for them to pull into the parking lot while the valet shines the bronze plaque. Which brings us to Pete Alonso. According to a recently surfaced report about his negotiations with Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns during the 2025 offseason, Alonso allegedly said: “When m

Longtime readers of mine know exactly where my baseball obsession came from. It came from my father, Morris Rosenman — something I’ve also chronicled in my book Glove Story: Fathers, Sons and the American Pastime., co-written with fellow KinersKorner.com staff writer A.J. Carter. My dad took me to what felt like approximately 7.3 million baseball games beginning in 1968. Shea Stadium was our home away from home. Jerry Koosman was probably more familiar to me than several blo

If Day One of our “New York Upstate of Mind” Mets prospect tour was a stop in Syracuse with Triple-A pace, bigger stadium energy, and the reminder that the finish line is never as close as it feels, then Day Two in Binghamton brought things a little closer to the ground. Mirabito Stadium has a way of doing that. It’s a Double-A ballpark that puts you right on top of the action, where you can hear every glove pop, every dugout comment, and every pitcher trying to figure out wh

The next stop on our two-day New York Upstate of Mind tour took us from Syracuse down the winding roads of Central New York to Binghamton, where the baseball feels a little grittier, the coffee tastes a little stronger, the air a little colder (ok a lot colder) and every kid in uniform still looks like he’s one phone call away from either Citi Field or selling insurance. There is something wonderfully romantic about minor league baseball in Binghamton. Maybe it’s the way the

There’s something wonderfully unpolished about minor league baseball on a cold, damp night in Syracuse. Maybe it’s the smell of wet concrete mixing with ballpark hot dogs. Maybe it’s the handful of fans huddled under hoodies and blankets like they’re reenacting a Civil War encampment instead of watching Triple-A baseball. Or maybe it’s the simple beauty of watching young players stand one step away from the major leagues, carrying all the hope, nerves, swagger, and uncertaint

If you hang around enough minor league bullpens long enough, you start to realize they are a lot like college dorm rooms, except with radar guns, higher stakes, and a stronger likelihood that someone can throw a baseball through a brick wall. That pretty much sums up Syracuse Mets relievers Alex Carrillo and Ryan Lambert, two guys whose journeys intersected long enough for me to sit down with them and let the conversation roam from international glory to viral fame to the sim

Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood Hop a flight to Miami Beach or to Hollywood But I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River Line I'm in a New York upstate of mind... Billy Joel sort of. While others might jet off to the beach or head out to the Hamptons, I once again found myself doing what has apparently become an annual tradition—packing up the car and heading north for a good old-fashioned baseball double-dip. Year two of the upstate swing.

Back in 1971, a small group of baseball thinkers gathered in Cooperstown—the spiritual home of the game—to start something that would grow far beyond their wildest dreams. That group became the Society for American Baseball Research. Today, it’s a worldwide community thousands strong, made up of people who share one simple trait: they love baseball. Not “they can calculate launch angle in their sleep” love. Not “they’ve memorized every OPS+ since 1912” love. Just… love baseba

Every Sunday here at Kiner’s Korner, we dust off the attic of Mets history and pull down a “Forgotten Face of Flushing.” Some wore the uniform for years. Others barely had time to find the clubhouse spread before disappearing into baseball obscurity. But this week is different. Over and above our Derek Bell forgotten Met piece here is one that's about an “Almost Face of Flushing.” A player who, for a brief, dizzying moment in February of 2021, felt like he was about to be the

Every now and then, you set out to do something productive and wind up in a place where productivity goes to die—somewhere between YouTube, baseball nostalgia, and “how did I get here and why is it 2:17 in the morning?” For me, it started innocently enough. As I’ve been working to build the Long Island chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR, for those of us who enjoy explaining acronyms almost as much as we enjoy box scores), shameless plug: if you’re a L

If you want to understand the Mets’ mindset going into tonight, don’t start with the standings, the injuries, or even the schedule that suddenly looks like a gift from the baseball gods. Start in the clubhouse, where the message is somehow both simple and impossibly complicated. Relax. But also step up. Don’t press. But produce. Ignore the noise. But fix everything. Carlos Mendoza stood there pregame sounding like a man trying to balance a glass of water on a moving train. Th

If you’re reaching for the panic button already, you’re not alone. Mets fans everywhere are hovering over it like it’s the “Skip Intro” button on Netflix when the show hasn’t even started yet. The record? An ugly and I do mean ugly 9-19. The standings? A 10.5-game gap in the division and 6.5 back in the Wild Card. And yes, if you’ve already blamed the GM, the manager, and the popcorn vendor in Section 304 (we see you), you’re right on schedule for late-April baseball in Queen

If you’ve been a long-time reader of this site, you already know something about us: we are not the “Fire the manager! Fire the GM! Trade the mascot!” crowd. That’s not our style. Knee-jerk reactions belong in sports talk radio at 2:17 a.m., not here. You also know this: I’ve admired Carlos Mendoza from the day he walked into Queens. His work ethic is real. His communication style is modern. His players, by all accounts, respect him. And no, the Mets’ current funk is not some

There’s something about a reliever’s journey that feels a little like a cross country road trip in a car with questionable brakes. You start out in one place, pick up a few miles, lose a few along the way, maybe break down in the middle of nowhere, and if you are lucky and stubborn, you eventually find yourself back on a big league mound wondering how you got there and why your GPS sounds like it is judging you. That brings us to Joey Gerber. On a day when the Mets shuffled t