Amazingly, Mets Did Have One Highlight

Bobby Bonilla threatens a critic of the New York Mets in the team’s locker room. An angry Bret Saberhagen sprays reporters with bleach. And to cap a 59-103 season, Vince Coleman injures a young fan with an explosive device in the Dodger Stadium parking lot.

But Joe Gergen of Newsday has found a bright spot despite the Mets’ dismal season: second baseman Jeff Kent, formerly of Huntington Beach Edison High.

Kent recently spoke about the danger of drugs and alcohol to children at an elementary school, family shelter and hospital in New York. Writes Gergen: “According to a team spokesman, it marked the first unsolicited request by a player for community contact in recent memory. He flew in from the West Coast to represent the Mets.”

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Add Kent: Kent’s message to the children was stark: “We had some guys on my high school team that got in trouble by drinking or taking drugs. Guess what those guys are doing now? They’re moving refrigerators. They go to work in T-shirts and shorts. They were as good as I was at baseball, but here I am, flying wherever I want, talking to you guys, and they basically have no life.”

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Trivia time: In his NFL career, Coach Don Shula has had to go with backup quarterbacks in 37 games. How many of those has he won?

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A season to forget: As badly as the Mets did last season, they were far better than the 1897 St. Louis Browns. Team owner Chris Von der Ahe, who had fired his manager five times during the 1895 season, watched in anguish as his team went 29-102. Von der Ahe, who had sold all of his best players a few years earlier, tried nearly anything to draw fans. Rob Rains writes in his book on the history of the St. Louis Cardinals that Von der Ahe held horse races around the Sportsman’s Park diamond and had amusement park rides in center field.

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Add Browns: But the Browns still failed to attract fans and Von der Ahe, who had bought the team because baseball fans increased business at his nearby saloon, went broke. It seems he regularly was past-posted by his employees who handled the horse race wagering.

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Last add Browns: On top of everything else, the Sportsman’s Park grandstand burned to the ground. The Browns went into receivership.

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Tattoos with a message: Defenseman Al Iafrate of the Washington Capitals has a tattoo of an Indian brave and a spear on his left arm. On his leg are an arrow and a rainbow.

“I’ve always heard that a tattoo is supposed to be a portrait of your soul,” Iafrate told Sandra McKee of the Baltimore Sun. “I didn’t get these at age 18. I got them when I was older and knew myself better. I waited until I knew what I could live with for the rest of my life.

“I don’t believe in betraying people, and Indians were betrayed. It was one of the first things we did when we came to this country, and I think that is why we have so many problems today. Unfair and unjustified acts have been multiplying ever since.”

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Trivia answer: Twenty-nine.

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Quotebook: Jockey Kent Desormeaux on the worst thing about flying to Japan on Thanksgiving to ride in the Japan Cup on Nov. 28: “My son is going to take his first step any day now and I’m going to miss it.”