Tag: Jon Matlack

Autographed 1988 Topps Dwight Gooden card from my collection
Posted in Autographs

Spend "A Glorious Day with the Amazin's" on Sat., Nov. 14

Posted on by Paul
Autographed 1988 Topps Dwight Gooden card from my collection
Autographed 1988 Topps Dwight Gooden card from my collection

MAB Celebrity Services invites you to spend “A Glorious Day with the Amazin’s” on Saturday, Nov. 14, at the Crowne Plaza Fairfield in Fairfield, New Jersey.

Twenty-two current and former New York Mets will be guests at the autograph show, including members of four of the five Mets teams that played in the World Series.

Highlights of the show include appearances by Travis d’Arnaud, Endy Chavez, Billy Wagner, Sid Fernandez, Dwight Gooden, Mookie Wilson and Jon Matlack, as well as non-Mets guests Ozzie Smith, Whitey Ford, Don Mattingly and Bill Buckner.

Continue reading “Spend "A Glorious Day with the Amazin's" on Sat., Nov. 14” →

Posted in Baseball, Uncategorized

Ex-Met Matlack to coach college kids

Posted on by Paul
Jon Matlack's 1973 Topps baseball card
Jon Matlack’s 1973 Topps baseball card

Former New York Mets pitcher and 1972 National League Rookie of the Year Jon Matlack has signed on to coach the Glens Falls Dragons of the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League in 2015. (Team press release | h/t Corey Mansfield, Broken Bat Blog)

Matlack, who will turn 65 in January, coached in the San Diego Padres, Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers and Houston Astros organizations after retiring as a player in 1983.

The Dragons are one of 10 teams in the upstate New York-based collegiate baseball league. They play an eight-week, 48 game schedule with playoffs held in early August.

Former major league pitcher David Palmer was also named to the Glens Falls coaching staff.

Posted in Uncategorized

Mets alumni baseball card of the week: 1986 TCMA All Time Rangers Jon Matlack

Posted on by Paul

Jon-Matlack-1986-TCMA-All-TJon-Matlack-back

Jon Matlack, who just celebrated his 64th birthday on Sunday, began his major league career with the New York Mets in 1971. A 15-10 record with a 2.32 ERA in 1972 earned Matlack the National League Rookie of the Year award. And in 1973, he was an important part of the starting rotation for the National League champion Mets.

Matlack was a three-time All-Star for the Mets from 1974-76, but after a disappointing season in 1977 where he finished the year with a 7-15 record and a 4.21 ERA, the Mets sent him to the Texas Rangers as part of a four-team blockbuster deal. Matlack rebounded to win 15 games and lower his ERA to 2.27 in one of the best seasons of his career. However, he was never equaled that success again and only one more season where he pitched 200+ innings in the major leagues.

In 1986, TCMA Ltd. produced a 12-card set of former Texas Rangers players. In addition to Matlack, the checklist also includes future Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry and another 1970s Met – Lenny Randle.

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Matt Harvey pitches against the Miami Marlins on June 8 (Photo credit: Paul Hadsall)
Posted in Uncategorized

On Matt Harvey and a gem of a pitching performance

Posted on by Paul
Matt Harvey
Matt Harvey pitches against the Miami Marlins on June 8, 2013 at Citi Field (Photo credit: Paul Hadsall)

Today’s big baseball story is that Matt Harvey is going to have Tommy John surgery that will almost certainly cause him to miss the entire 2014 season.

Funny how the Mets try to bury bad news by announcing it late on a Friday afternoon, isn’t it?

Except this particular bit of bad news isn’t really much of a surprise, and I’m not even convinced it’s all that bad.

No matter what Sandy Alderson says, it’s unlikely the Mets are going to be playoff contenders in 2014. Isn’t it better for Harvey to get the surgery now than put it off, pitch for a while and then have his ulnar collateral ligament finish tearing?

(To someone without any kind of a medical background – and especially with the Mets’ fortunes – that seems like something that would definitely happen somewhere down the road. If anyone does have the appropriate expertise, please correct me if I’m wrong.)

I’ve seen a few people saying that they have no reason to watch the 2014 Mets without Harvey pitching for them.

I say we don’t even know who is going to be a 2014 Met yet. It’s time for Alderson and Terry Collins to give us a team that shows some visible progress, but I still have enough patience to wait until next spring before I even think about writing the season off.

I like the way Joe Giglio is looking at the Harvey situation:

Continue reading “On Matt Harvey and a gem of a pitching performance” →

Posted in Uncategorized

Baseball Card Notebook: 1977 Pepsi Discs

Posted on by Paul

It seems like a strange concept now, but once upon a time baseball cards were included as a promotional item to entice people to buy other products.  Last week, I mentioned cards that were printed on Hostess packages in the 1970s. Today, let’s look at some non-traditional baseball cards produced for Pepsi in 1977.

There are 72 players in the 1977 Pepsi-Cola Baseball Stars Collectors Series. While the set was licensed by the Major League Baseball Players Association, it doesn’t carry the blessing of Major League Baseball and therefore doesn’t include team logos. The cards are disc-shaped, not quite 3.5 inches in diameter. They were originally part of a larger glove-shaped insert that included a checklist tab at the bottom. (You can see what the complete assembly looks like at Indians Baseball Cards and Random Wax.)

There are five different color variations for Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt, so there are actually 80 unique cards in the set. Three New York Mets are included: Tom Seaver, Dave Kingman and Jon Matlack.

I recently found two of the three Mets in a dealer’s dime box at a baseball card show. While I don’t enjoy paying money for packs of logo-less cards made today, I think the old food issue sets had a certain charm to them and I have a hard time resisting when I see them.

(Discs that haven’t been punched out from the glove will be a bit more expensive, but they’re also a bit harder to store.)

Continue reading “Baseball Card Notebook: 1977 Pepsi Discs” →