Quote:
Originally Posted by Déjà Bru
So you are saying they couldn't even afford to stage an Old Timers' Day? I suppose the team pays for the attendees' travel expenses and such. Or is it that they were so stupid, lazy, and out of it that they just didn't feel like honoring the team's past?
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To be more fair than the Wilpons deserve, not every team loves Old Timers' Day; it's mostly a Yankee thing. (The original was when the Yanks brought folks back for Babe Ruth's farewell [Babe had cancer, and knew it] in 1948.)
Bill Veeck, for example, thought OTD was depressing and embarrassing, and it was better to remember players as they were than wheel them out in middle or old age. And with the 1994 strike having damaged the game, there was a desire by ownership to sell the game as it was (hence "great ideas" such as wild-cards, interleague play [steroids…]), rather than bang on about "tradition" when most of the fans didn't care and were moving to the NFL and NBA, where you didn't have to know chapter and verse about people who died before World War 1 to feel like a fan.
(I disagree with this decision, just as I disagree with practically everything Bud Selig did, but I get the point.)
Also, since it was the same people invited every year (and fewer and fewer interested in attending) the Wilpons saved history for Anniversary celebrations (including the 50th anniversary of 1969 not long ago), Mets Hall of Fame ceremonies and number retirements, and the closing ceremonies for Shea Stadium in 2008. Just because we hadn't done "here's Steve Dillon, who was in one game in 1963 and two in 1964" in a while, that doesn't mean there had been no effort to maintain the team's connection to the past.
I mean. I'd mark out for Terrell Hansen, but I get that not everybody has the same p.o.v.
(Could you imagine Howie's introduction for Hansen? LMFAO!)