The Mets On e-Bay

By Dana Brand
Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007

E-Bay is the nation’s attic. You don’t have to clean it out, but it lets you do what’s fun to do in an attic.

You look at things you haven’t seen for awhile, and things you don’t remember ever seeing. Your memories come back and you can imagine the memories of others. You feel the pathos of objects. They ask: How could the world have forgotten about us? But they don’t complain. They are looking for someone to appreciate them. They have survived neglect and real attics and even basements.

Go to E-Bay. Type in “Mets.” You will enjoy yourself.

There is a serving tray with coasters. The tray and the coasters are all stamped with an identical painted image of number 14, Gil Hodges, in a Mets uniform, uncharacteristically smiling. He is cheerful and upright and shows no sign of knowing that he is soon going to die of a heart attack on a golf course.

There are three sky blue Royal Crown cola cans, each with a bad photograph and a little bio of a Mets player. Tom Seaver, Ellis Valentine, and Dave Kingman. The seller admits that there is some rust on the cans, but he doesn’t say whether or not the cola is still inside. Do you remember when RC Cola was a major sponsor of the Mets? “RC! The One With the Mad, Mad Taste!” “It’s the Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad COLA!” You have a big chunk of their song in your head. Not all of it. You had forgotten that you had even forgotten that song. But it’s still there. Part of it.

Here are Rheingold Beer Mets coasters from the early ‘60s. That song you can remember more clearly. That was the prettiest song ever from a Mets sponsor. A lilting waltz with a nice old-fashioned feeling. “My Beer is Rheingold the dry beer. Just try Rheingold whenever you buy beer. It’s not bitter, not sweet. It’s the dry flavored treat. Won’t you try extra-dry Rheingold beer?” Remember when you would look at all that foam coming out of the glass stein and think of how you couldn’t wait to grow up to have yourself a Rheingold? And watch the Mets. Ah, to be a grown-up. What pleasures were in store!

There’s a lighter with the 1970 Mets home schedule printed on the side of it. That’s convenient. There’s a never-opened 1987 Farmland Dairies Junior Sports Watch. There’s a 1962 Salada tea coin with handsome Mets third baseman Don Zimmer. There’s a Darryl Strawberry Superstar Action Pop-Up that looks for all the world like a little cardboard cut-out.

There is a Richie Hebner autographed baseball. And a Victor Zambrano used jersey. Both with bids on them! Why is this happening? Somebody is selling a “xerox of an at-home-from-the-TV home-made scorecard (of the play by play)” of the Mets first game. Bids start at $0.99.

There are some genuinely interesting novelties, like a button that says “I Was a Believer, But Now We’ve Lost Seaver.” Or a decal of someone in a Yankees shirt peeing on a Mets insignia. Or a Grateful Dead-style sticker with a Mets logo. Or a monopoly game where Shea stadium is Boardwalk and Tom Seaver is Park Place.

There are some peculiar encounters between Mets culture and E-bay culture. There’s a picture of a heavily tattoo-ed young woman modeling what is called a “Vintage New York Mets t-shirt jersey YS Punk Emo Scene.” Whatever. Still, I have to restrain myself from bidding on a Home Run Apple in the Hat clock that has 13 bids on it, and is at $45 with 20 hours to go.

There is good stuff but most of it is appealingly desperate crap. You imagine all of these Ralph Cramdens in basements from Brooklyn to Montauk with their big ideas. You imagine the looks of puzzlement on the faces of workers in East Asian factories. There is the inflatable Shea stadium. The Mets wedding garter and thong set (there are a lot of these, somebody must have gone out of business). There are Mets fuzzy dice, a Mets Rubik cube, a Mets portable pop-up laundry hamper.

There are Mets earrings, Mets truck floor mats, Mets Mr. Potato-Head. There is Lenny Dykstra’s high school yearbook. Some of the forgotten crap is even new. Like a Citifield Groundbreaking Shovel desk pen.

Probably the strangest thing is a t-shirt that says “Mets Pimp – Give It Up for the Team.” The seller writes that “You don’t have to be from New York to enjoy it.” I’ve tried to figure out the exact meaning of the shirt, and this last comment. Now you try.

None of these things would ever have been made if there had never been the Mets. A lot of things wouldn’t have happened. But here is the trail the Mets have cut through time, the trail they have cut through the world of objects. I’m sure that if I go back on E-Bay in a month, heck, a week, I’ll find an entirely new batch of things. It’s like an ongoing archeological dig. It’s like an earthquake or a sandstorm that reveals a whole ancient city, filled with stuff that has been forgotten. You look. You see. You remember.

And you can even have.

You can contact Dana Brand at danaabrand@yahoo.com. Dana is the author of Mets Fan, which will be published by McFarland this fall. Please check out his book site at http://metsfanbook.com and his blog at http://metsfanbook.com/blog/