I posted this last year and thought I would reprise it again. Enjoy.

The 1905 Washington Senators

Spring got a little closer today when my MLBTV subscription turned over for the 2014 season. I don’t watch spring training games, per se, but is good to know that the exhibition season got underway this week. I remember living in Gainesville, Florida in the mid-1980s and having major league split squads come through to play the Gators. It was always very fast. You would hear at 10:30 am that the Yankees, some of them at least–maybe Mattingly if you were lucky–would be playing at 1:00. And it was all word of mouth; there was no internet as we know it in 1986. There really is something magic about spring training.

I downloaded the app to my iPhone as well. I did not the phone last year. I figure it will be ideal for listening on the radio. I am going to listen to a lot of ball this year.

I just got back from the Mets game. Cliff Lee threw eight innings of one run ball before handing it off to Jonathan Papelbon for a Phillies save. The worst news of the night was not the Mets loss but that young phenom Matt Harvey is done for the year, and maybe next year, with a tear in his pitching elbow. One hates to see that with any player, let alone a twenty-four-year old.

Joan Whitney Payson plaque, Mets Hall of Fame

Here is a trivia question sure to stump them around the water cooler:

What do Abraham Lincoln and the New York Mets have in common?

The answer is Joan Whitney Payson, the team’s co-founder and original owner. Payson was the daughter of Helen Julia Hay, which makes her the granddaughter of Lincoln’s personal secretary John Hay. Joan’s mother, Helen, married into the Whitney family at the turn of the twentieth century, bringing together two of the leading families of the era. Our tendency is to think these people lived in a far distant time, but Payson did not pass on until 1975. Her and her husbands personal effects were auctioned in 1984.

I had seen her plaque in the Mets Hall of Fame before, but had not known who she was until reading John Taliaferro’s All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt earlier this summer. Of course I had to have a friend snap the photo above prior to tonight’s game.

I was listening to the Dodgers-Pirates game last night when Charlie Steiner mentioned that a Honus Wagner T206 baseball card sold yesterday for a cool $2.2 million. The card is so valuable because Wagner was an anti-tobacco advocate in the early twentieth century, a time when such sentiments were less common than they are today. After several hundred were produced the baseball legend legend forced the company to cease and desist. Tobacco cards were common at the time, and not just for baseball; I have written about them a bit before. Ironically, Wagner’s actions are what make his card rare and valuable today.

One of the reasons I love baseball on the radio is because the audio incarnation of the game lends itself to digression. Though I have the television option on my MLBTV package, I end up listening to the radio broadcast more often than not. It was a great piece of serendipity that Los Angeles was playing Pittsburgh the day the Wagner card was sold. Discussing the card led Steiner and radio battery-mate Rick Monday into a discussion of who was the best Pirate of all time. The two quickly got it down to Wagner and Roberto Clemente. It’s difficult to argue with that, and it’s so good to see baseball back.

Enjoy your Sunday.

My Red Sox had a disastrous season, but at least there will be postseason baseball in the nation’s capital for the first time since the first year of the FDR administration. The Hayfoot and I went to the Mets/Nationals game in Queens on September 11th. They had a moving ceremony before the game. We were wondering afterward if Major League Baseball scheduled the New York and Washington DC teams on the anniversary of 9/11 intentionally. One of the nice touches at the Mets ballpark is the rotunda paying homage to Ebbets field. Earlier this week we were going to dinner near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and walked past the site where Jackie Robinson signed his contract. Several years ago I saw Mrs. Robinson speak on the anniversary of her husband’s first major league game. A Robinson biopic will be released on April 12, 2013.

Citi Field rotunda