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If you spend enough time around collectors, you start to notice that the best collections rarely begin with money. They begin with moments. A handshake. A story. A childhood connection that somehow follows you for the rest of your life. This month’s Kollector’s Korner Met-o-ra-bil-ia Hall of Fame inductee has built a lifetime of those moments, often without even chasing them. Meet Paul Friedlander. Paul is 71 years old and has spent more than 45 years working as a tax account

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush the dust off the bubble gum cards, flip through curling yearbooks, and rediscover the names that once made you stop mid knish and say, “Hold on… he was a Met, right?” Last week we explored the day the fastest man on Earth showed up in camp to teach the Mets how to run. This week we stay in the same aisle of baseball oddities, only instead of Olympic speed we

Even before analytics baseball has always been a numbers game. Not the kind that requires spreadsheets and algorithms, but the kind where a handful of digits become shorthand for a life’s work. Say 60 or 714 and the mind drifts automatically to immortality. Mention 56, .406, or 511 and you don’t even need to attach the names. Numbers in this sport have a way of sticking to players like pine tar. Some careers are defined by one unforgettable line on a stat sheet. For Elroy “Ro

If you’re anything like me and my wife insists there is no one like me (I’m still not sure if she meant that as a compliment), you can remember exactly when and where you bought your very first pack of baseball cards. Just reading this probably has your sense of smell kicking into gear right now. (Is that… that smell?) That unmistakable aroma of cardboard, ink, and gum, or what passed for gum in the 1960s, especially when you peeled back that last card in the pack, hoping for

Wilbur Wood never looked like a pitcher destined to be remembered. That may be the most fitting place to begin. He did not arrive early, he did not overwhelm hitters with power, and he did not follow a straight path to greatness. Yet when Wood passed away at 84, baseball said goodbye to one of its most unlikely and extraordinary careers, built on reinvention, endurance, and a pitch that defied convention. Before Mets fans marveled at R A Dickey bending time and logic with a

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush the dust off the bubble gum cards, flip through the curling pages of old yearbooks, and rediscover the players who once made you pause mid–potato knish and mutter, “Hold on… he was a Met, right?” Last week, class focused on Joe Frazier , not the heavyweight champion, but the Mets manager whose brief tenure somehow produced a better winning percentage than Ter

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush the dust off the bubble gum cards, flip through the curling pages of old yearbooks, and rediscover the players who once made you pause mid potato knish and mutter, “Hold on… he was a Met, right?” We closed out 2025 by revisiting one of the strangest detours in Mets history, when Tom Seaver, Ron Swoboda, Ralph Kiner and Yogi Berra paid a visit to Sing Sing pri

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush the dust off the bubble gum cards, flip through the curling pages of old yearbooks, and rediscover the players who once made you pause mid potato knish and mutter, “Hold on… he was a Met, right?” Last week, we told the story of Randy “Moose” Milligan, a man whose Mets career could fit comfortably on a cocktail napkin but whose fingerprints somehow wound up al

If you’ve read any of my stuff over the last three years, first of all thank you, and second of all my condolences. You already know I am dangerously prone to falling down Mets rabbit holes on the internet. One minute I’m innocently looking for a Gary Carter highlight to avoid doing something productive, and the next thing I know I’ve lost three hours, three 20 ounce bottles of Diet Pepsi, and any grip on the space-time continuum while watching pixelated footage of long-forgo

Back in 1986, the Mets were so big, so loud, so unapologetically Mets that even 20/20—the same show that once spent an hour investigating whether your salad bar was trying to kill you—decided to devote a full segment to them. And why not? On Thursday night, August 21st, 1986, ABC rolled out the red carpet for the Amazin’s, even as the competition (Trapper John, M.D. on one channel and Hill Street Blues on another) politely stepped aside and let the Mets suck all the oxygen ou

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we dust off the bubble-gum cards and game-used jerseys of the guys who made you squint and go, “Wait… didn’t he play for us?” Last week, we spotlighted the slime-soaked, neon-splattered Nickelodeon crossover era, a chapter of Mets lore so bizarre you’d swear it was dreamed up by a pack of sugar-fueled 10-year-olds who’d just mainlined Fruit Gushers and were ready to p

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where the dust smells like pine tar and nostalgia, and where we occasionally stumble across treasures we thought we’d forgotten. Last week, we focused on Ron Herbel, a sturdy right-hander whose brief but reliable stint with the Mets in 1970 made him the kind of pitcher every team needs: steady, uncomplaining, and quietly effective. This week, we return to the 1960s, to a Me

On July 5, 1981 , as Major League Baseball sat still in silence, the diamond’s disputes found their way to the Sunday morning airwaves. On Face the Nation, one of television’s most respected public affairs programs, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and New York Mets first baseman Rusty Staub joined CBS News to publicly discuss the game’s crippling labor strike — a rare and fascinating crossover between America’s pastime and America’s political discourse. For fans ac

Yesterday marked Keith Hernandez’s 72nd birthday ,and if that doesn’t make you feel old, consider this: when Keith sat down on David Brenner’s Nightlife on December 1, 1986, over 38 years ago it had only been 35 days since the Mets won the World Series. Just over a month removed from Mookie’s grounder rolling through Buckner’s legs, and New York was still floating somewhere between disbelief and euphoria. And there was Keith, the mustachioed captain of the newly crowned worl

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where the dust smells like pine tar and nostalgia, and where we occasionally find something we forgot we ever owned. Last week, we wandered off the basepaths entirely and into the barnyard, revisiting Homer the Beagle and Mettle the Mule , the two mascots who barked, brayed, and did their best to distract us from box scores that sometimes made you want to cover your eyes. T

Ralph Kiner once said, “All of Rick Aguilera’s saves have come in relief appearances.” And just like that, he taught us everything we...

Today was one of those raw, gray October mornings, the kind that makes you reach for an old Mets yearbook instead of the remote, because...

The Mets family lost one of its elder statesmen yesterday, as Jim Marshall passed away at the age of 93. At the time of his death,...

There was much optimism in the air around Shea Stadium when the 1985 season began. The expectations had risen after a 1984 season that...

Last night in Washington, inside Nationals Park, baseball carved out a little history. Just a shade over two miles away from the ballpark...