NEW YORK, NY — With Spring Training continuing week by week as we inch closer to Opening Day and MLB’s regular season, certain stories get swept under the rug.
Darryl Strawberry has been serving as an unofficial coach for the Mets during spring training. The 63-year-old former outfielder was asked by the media what he thought about the man who broke his all-time Mets home run record, Pete Alonso, no longer being a Met. Alonso signed a five-year, $155 million contract with the Baltimore Orioles late last fall.
Image Credit: Bill Menzel/Latino Sports
Strawberry was in Alonso’s position during his playing career. After playing his first seven years with the Mets, Strawberry signed a lucrative contract with his hometown Los Angeles Dodgers in late 1990.
Thomas Wolfe’s famous line about not being able to return home proved prophetic. Strawberry enjoyed a productive 1991 season with the Dodgers, but personal and drug problems began to surface. The Dodgers released him in 1994. When the Mets retired his #18 last summer, Strawberry profusely thanked the team and told the fans at Citi Field that leaving New York for LA was a major blunder.
It was that personal experience that led Strawberry to say Alonso would regret leaving the Mets. While Strawberry’s reaction was understandable, and made some Mets fans feel better, there was a major difference in the free agency experiences for the two players.
Image Credit: Bill Menzel/Latino Sports
Whereas the Mets wanted Darryl Strawberry to remain with the team after the 1990 season, they showed no such inclination for Pete Alonso as the team did not even make a cursory offer to him, even though he had frequently stated how much he wanted to spend his entire career in Flushing. He backed those words by deeds as he was tireless in raising funds for the 9/11-related causes.
While leaving New York for Baltimore for a job is hardly anyone’s ideal choice, it is hard to see Alonso having any regrets given the lucrative job security and career longevity the Orioles are investing in him. Based on interviews he has done with New York sportswriters who trekked to the Orioles spring training facility in Sarasota, Pete has turned the page.
If anyone will be ruing the decision not to have Alonso finish his career in Flushing it will be the architect of that decision, Mets President of Baseball Operations, David Stearns.
Stearns signed Jorge Polanco in December to replace Alonso at first base. Polanco is a fine player, but he has never played first base in the majors. That is quite a leap of faith on Stearns’ part considering how obsessed he was about the importance of defense and run prevention in his press conference five days after the disastrous 2025 season ended.
Image Credit: Francisco Rodriguez/Latino Sports
When Pete Alonso writes his baseball memoir and looks back at this time in his life, he will be able to quote Frank Sinatra’s signature song, “My Way.”
“Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention.”
Joe Girardi’s take on managerial/coaching departures in MLB
During the Yankees-Mets spring training game telecast on the YES Network, Michael Kay asked his analyst partner, former Yankees manager Joe Girardi, about ex-Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner’s refusal to mention his longtime employer by name during a Q&A with the media.
Girardi, who has been dismissed from high profile jobs in his career, empathized with Hefner. “It really hurts when you’ve put your heart and soul into your job, and you get fired. It takes a long time to get over it.”
The 2026 World Baseball Classic opens up this week!
The World Baseball Classic is underway, and all MLB teams and their fans are understandably worried about the possibility of injuries to their players who are participating in it. That is an old story, but this year, there is an extra intangible.
Image Credit: World Baseball Classic, Inc./Major League Baseball
With both the US men’s and women’s hockey teams winning gold medals in last month’s Winter Olympics held in Milan, there is understandable desire for Team USA to go all out and win the World Baseball Classic.
The difference between Olympic Hockey and the WBC
A major difference is the National Hockey League and Professional Women’s Hockey League players who took part in the Olympics, were in the middle of their seasons, and therefore were in peak game condition. While all baseball players take part in off-season exercise regimens, that is not the same thing as being in mid-season form with all those games under their belt. That increases the risk of injury for a baseball competition which everyone takes seriously occurring in March.
Shea Stadium scene in 1968 hit-movie “The Odd Couple”
Hall of Fame second baseman Bill Mazeroski, who played from 1956-1972 for the Pittsburgh Pirates, is immortalized in baseball history for his Game 7 ninth inning home run in the 1960 World Series which propelled the Pirates over the Yankees. Casey Stengel would be fired as the Yankees manager shortly after that game.
Mazeroski is also part of pop culture. The movie producers of the Neil Simon comedy, “The Odd Couple,” wanted to have Walter Matthau’s sportswriter character, Oscar Madison, film a scene from the Shea Stadium press box.
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures
The 1967 baseball schedule had the Pirates playing the Mets when the producers were shooting exterior scenes in New York.
The script called for Oscar Madison to be distracted by a phone call to the press box by Jack Lemmon’s Felix Unger in the ninth inning.
Roberto Clemente declined to be a part of filming “The Odd Couple”
The producers wanted Pirates legend Roberto Clemente to hit into a fictitious triple play which would give the lowly Mets an unpredictable victory at the time.
Image Credit: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Clemente wanted more than the $500 Paramount Pictures was offering. Mazeroski was willing to accept that sum, and the rest, as they say, is cinematic history.
Pirates name former Mets Daily News beat writer Adam Rubin as new communications director
Speaking of the Pittsburgh Pirates, they recently named former New York Mets Daily News beat writer Adam Rubin to be their communications director. Professional sports teams used to routinely hire sportswriters to oversee their public relations, but that has become rare in recent years.
Too many sports team PR officials fail to see the relationship between press coverage and revenue generation for their teams. They see themselves as “player protectors” and enjoy bullying the press, especially those from smaller outlets. Adam Rubin was a top sportswriter, who while never looking for confrontation, was not afraid to ruffle feathers when it came to serving his readers.
Image Credit: MLB
Adam will be sensing deja vu quickly as the Pirates open the 2026 season by taking on the Mets at Citi Field on March 26th.
Flight issues for Nets and broadcast team due northeast snowstorm
It is not easy being a Brooklyn Nets broadcaster as the team is out of most games by the middle of the first quarter. Great play-by-play announcers find ways to overcome the terrible teams they are covering.
A good case in point was a week ago when the Nets were playing the Atlanta Hawks on the road. Nets guard Nolan Traore was able to make a nice spin move and drive past Hawks center, and fellow Frenchman, Zaccharie Risacher, and to score a basket. “Oui! oui!” cheered YES broadcaster, and Forest Hills High School alum, Ian Eagle.
The Nets could not fly back to New York following their loss to the Hawks because of the blizzard which shut down all the airports in the Northeast. A few of the players took advantage of the unplanned day off in Atlanta to do some sightseeing. Last Tuesday, longtime Nets radio voice Chris Carrino, who slid over to the TV side for their game against the Dallas Mavericks, showed a photo of five Nets players visiting the Georgia Aquarium. No word as to whether they also visited Coca-Cola World next door.
Neil Sedaka Much Deserving of Induction into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
It is a disgrace that Neil Sedaka, who passed away Friday at the age of 86, is not a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Image Credit: CBS News
Sedaka had a remarkable career. After having big hits with “Calendar Girl,” “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Oh Carol,” “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen,” and “Next Door to an Angel,” his recording career, like that of many of his contemporaries came to a crashing halt with the arrival of the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion in 1964. Sedaka, Paul Anka, and to a lesser extent, Rick Nelson were the few artists to have successful career revivals in the 1970s. Sedaka’s “Laughter in the Rain” hit the top spot on the Billboard singles chart in 1975.
While the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame unjustifiably has ignored him, Sedaka has been honored multiple times by the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Not only did he write most of his own hits, but he also composed “Love Will Keep Us Together” and “Lonely Nights” for the Captain & Tennille, “Stupid Cupid” and “Where the Boys Are” for Connie Francis, “Working on a Groovy Thing” for the Fifth Dimension, and “One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round” for Peggy Lee.
Interestingly, Neil Sedaka could easily have been a classical music pianist in the mode of Van Cliburn. He wanted to enter the prestigious Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow early in his musical career, but the Soviet Union bureaucrats rejected his application.
Pop music fans should thank the Kremlin for helping the Brighton Beach native make his career choice.
You can read more of Lloyd Carroll’s columns posted weekly on The Queens Chronicle.
