The Highlight Film

It's been a while since I've talked about the ubiquitous history of Mets Highlight Videos. The sort of thing that was virtually a rite of passage in my youth has kind of faded into obscurity, primarily because is there anyone who really wants to see a 2009 Mets Highlight Video? I'd rather pretend that year never existed.

But I digress. The last time the Mets had a Real Highlight Video, to the best of my knowledge, was in 2006, not surprisingly the last time the Mets made the Playoffs. When the Mets produced their own video, it was boilerplate cheesy in-house stuff. For a while, say 1984 through 1988, the Mets Highlight Video reached near-legendary status, incorporating pop music to underscore dramatic montages. If you're like me (and few people are) and you were between the ages of 7-12 in 1986, you basically have the 1986 Highlight Video committed to memory (How'd we do it? Mirrors!).

Then it sort of faded out. 1999 and 2000 have videos, and then 2006. At some point, I actually saw SNY running "Mets Yearbook" episodes from 2010 and 2011, although I'm sure they cobbled it together themselves just so they didn't have to keep showing the 1976 video over and over again. And even then, the SNY selection chops up and edits many of the videos for cost-cutting copyright purposes, so it's not the same.

And now, here we have the 2015 Mets. The team that rose from the ashes and went on a wild ride all the way to the World Series. I mean, I wasn't alive in 1969, but this was the sort of stuff you'd dream about happening, the year the Mets finally got good again and what it would be like. This was one of those special years. The Greg Prince book is coming. I want a Highlight Video, too. I know it takes a few months for MLB Advanced Media or whoever is now tasked with putting this stuff together to get it in the works, but I think we need a 2015 Mets Highlight video. Come on. I know they have to put in their general fluff about the Mets giving back to the community, but we need some goofy footage about Jacob deGrom's hair and Steven Matz and his family. What about a Bartolo Being Bartolo segment? The "We Follow Lucas Duda" Cam. And yes, even Matt Harvey storming around the mound screaming during the World Series (I believe in taking the bad as part of the good in the big picture. But that's another blog for another time). YouTube has been a great source for some short form Highlight fixes, but I think an official production is in order.

Mets DVD Review: Shea Goodbye

There has, over the past couple of months, been a rather large influx of Mets DVDs hitting the market. Of course, by rather large, I mean two. But where one of them, the 6-DVD "Essential Games of Shea Stadium" set has been getting all the hype, the other one, the much more useful "Shea Goodbye" DVD seems almost an afterthought.

It's not to denigrate the Essential Games set, but let's face it: Any of the 6 games included are pretty readily available by watching SNY (except for the Grand Slam Single game, but you could readily read all about that game here, and what's besides the point, it's not clear whether the DVD contains the original NBC Broadcast with Bob Costas or the awful NBC-I broadcast with Gary Thorne), and I don't know what the bonus features are like, but suffice it to say that I don't see myself plonking down $40 for that. Let's wait until the secondary market kicks in and you can find it on E-Bay for $10. You know it's coming.

Then, there's "Shea Goodbye." This one pretty much squashes the "Essential Games" set down to all the bits and pieces of the games that you really wanted to see, plus some other clips of forgotten men and forgotten moments (Steve Henderson! Joe McEwing!) and condenses the history of Shea into a rather taut 85 minutes. Rather than telling the story in a linear fashion, however, the DVD jumps from era to era and back again with regularity, encapsulating the early days of Shea and the Mets, and even the Jets, the teams of '69, '73, '86, '00 and '06, and intersperses it with some clips of great plays, great players and great moments. Special attention is paid to the Shea Experience itself, the initial fan reactions to Shea (and Bud Harrelson gushing over it), the effect of airplanes, the seasons that Shea was a 4-team stadium, and even the many concerts held at Shea, and also to several specific moments such as the Grand Slam Single, Piazza's HR after 9/11, Seaver's Imperfect game and Endy's catch.

However, there's one great, inherent flaw with this DVD, and I suppose it's a flaw in just about any team highlight DVD. If you're not a big Mets fan, or if you only have a casual interest in baseball, you won't get most of the DVD. Many things are presented in such a way that you'd only understand it if you were as nutso a Mets fan as I am (eg: The Black Cat game in 1969 is sort of dropped in as if they expect you to know what's coming, in sequence with the rest of 1969). This isn't to say that I have a problem with it; for me, and for fans like me, it's great.

There are many cameo appearances in the DVD, and not just from Mets players. There are plenty of Jets players, such as Wesley Walker and Greg Buttle who appear, WFAN's Joe Beningo (credited not from WFAN or SNY, but of Saddle River, NJ, oddly), Fred Wilpon is there, Radio DJ Pete Fornatele and, however much it may sully the credibility of the DVD, George W. Bush and Mr. Larry Wayne Jones appear as well.

The extras are solid. While the last outs of the '69 and '86 World Series are expected, the inclusion of Ventura's Grand Slam Single, Agbayani's HR, and the final outs of Bobby Jones' one-hitter and Mike Hampton's masterpiece against St. Louis in 2000 are certainly welcome additions, particularly since they are all set to the narration of Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen. The DVD itself is narrated by longtime Mets fan Matthew Broderick, which is a departure from the era of Tim Robbins' narration. Does this mean a Jerry Seinfeld-narrated film is in the works? Broderick does a fine job of telling the story without getting too schmaltzy, which is, more or less, what the DVD dissolves into by the end.

Following a brief recap that brings you to the present time, covering the Piazza era (but not Piazza's last game—and while we're on that topic, I think Piazza, for everything he meant to the team, is woefully underrepresented here) to the Reyes/Wright era, to now. Willie Randolph poignantly says a few words about looking to the future, a future which he wouldn't be around to see, ultimately, and then the closing begins, with shot after shot of players, coaches and whoever saying Goodbye to Shea, and closing with the lights going off at Shea, one by one.

So, I suppose I'd recommend that anyone who's enough of a fan to read this should probably go out and buy the DVD, but, as with any DVD, try to find it cheap. You can do it. It's a good addition to any Mets video library, although with the Mets 50th Anniversary just around the corner, I sense even more DVDs on the horizon...

My Review: 3.75/5 stars.

Mets DVD Review

The Highlight Video has become a bit of a lost art over time. The Mets used to produce a short and sweet highlight video after each season, recapping the ups and downs and great moments of the past year's team. It was usually produced by the team, with a sponsor, and released the following spring.

The Mets have highlight videos for most of the early years of the club, running pretty much through the 1980s. Most of them are pretty hard to come by nowadays. Of course, it's the 1986 Highlight video that stands above them all, filled with unforgettable clips of the team both on the field winning, and off the field, acting like goofy idiots. I have met several Mets fans who have the video committed to memory, from "Mookie, did it break the glass?" to "The curtain calls and standing ovations, it's a display of emotion from the hometown fans." to Roger McDowell and Ho-Jo's Hotfoot Clinic.

Then, all of a sudden, the highlight videos disappeared. Didn't matter, really. Who would buy a highlight video for the 1992 Mets? Who cared? But the videos reappeared briefly when the Mets returned to prominence in 1999 and 2000. Given away as promotional items at Shea, both of these videos can be found, if you search hard enough. 1999's effort is nice, if uneven. Narrated by Tom Seaver, it's got plenty of clips and a lot of cheesy music. The 2000 video is actually very well done, and highly underrated as compared among other highlight films. Narrated by Tim Robbins, it's a quick moving video that really captures just how exciting that season was, from Japan, all the way to the World Series.

And, after 2000, the highlight videos disappeared again. The Mets did put out some other promotional videos between then and now, but most of them focused on singular games or individuals, rather than any given season. Made sense, again, who wanted a 2002 Mets highlight video?

But, as many of you have seen advertised, there's a 2006 Mets Highlight Video. I guess it's not a video per se, it's a DVD, but it's a season highlight film. The Mets have been plugging it pretty hard over the past few weeks. It's a pretty glitzy package, produced by MLB, and full of extras, in a bright orange case.

Now, it was posed to me by El Guapo as to why one would want to buy this DVD when many of last season's highlights are readily replayed on SNY, and in the TiVo era, clips and games can be saved. In fact, I myself have all of last season's playoffs on tape, but it's a flawed process. Sometimes a tape runs out. Sometimes the cable goes out. Sometimes the box resets itself and records the wrong channel. And, if you have full games, you know that sometimes, you don't really feel like sitting through and watching the entire game (like all 5 hours and 46 minutes of the Grand Slam Single game from 1999). Plus, SNY's highlight programs cover most of the regular season, but none of the playoffs. And they're full of commercials. That's why we have highlight videos in the first place. And, as such, I'd recommend this DVD to any interested Mets fan.

Like the 2000 video, this DVD is narrated by noted Mets fan Tim Robbins (and whether you like him or not, he's still a Mets fan, just like the rest of us). It's a nice effort overall. It's substantially longer than most highlight videos have been (most were between 30 minutes and an hour, this is nearly 90 minutes). But it's uneven in many ways. In the past, most highlight videos stuck to the facts. Loads of highlights, noted games, great finishes, great individual performances, clubhouse camaraderie. This video has all of that. It begins with a brief look back at 2005, from Minaya coming in as GM, to the hiring of Willie Randolph, and the signings of Pedro and Beltran, and the emergence of Wright and Reyes, and the offseason of '05-'06. And then we get rolling with the '06 season, and the wild ride that it was.

But there are some moments in the season that are glossed over, and replaced by some boring "Mets in the Community" features. Now, I'm not saying that the work the players do in the community is unimportant. It deserves to be included, but the DVD devotes nearly 10 minutes to Delgado giving a speech to an Elementary School in Queens, as opposed to, say, Delgado's walk-off HR against the Pirates, or some more in-depth looks at the 9-1 road trip in June.

There's also a good chunk of the DVD that shows the Mets at the All-Star game, including a lot of shots of Wright in the HR Derby. Plus Wright's HR in the All-Star Game from about 16 different angles. Again, necessary stuff to put in, but it becomes a little superfluous.

The team chemistry is not overlooked. There's a short section devoted to the players talking about each other's personalities and nicknames, and some of the dugout antics. But, while it touches on some things, other, more interesting things, such as the origins of Reyes's handshakes and hand slaps, and El Duque's "Rowboat" dance are passed over entirely.

My final major gripe is that there isn't enough in depth examination of the playoff games themselves. Yes, each game is covered, and the wins are fleshed out, and the losses glossed over. Which is fine. But the wins are often covered so quickly, that important details are left out. Delgado's majestic HR and Wright's 2-run double and fist pump in Game 1 of the NLDS are barely even shown. And, while much deserved attention is paid to Beltran's HR in Game 1 of the NLCS, almost none is paid to Glavine's sterling 7 innings, or the sparkling defense the Mets displayed that night. There could have been less Wright at the All-Star Game, and more of the rally in Los Angeles in Game 3 of the NLDS.

Initially, I thought that too little time was spent on Endy's catch in Game 7. I don't feel that way now. In the larger scheme of things, there is a great deal of time spent on Game 7 of the NLCS, beginning with Willie talking about his mood, and shots of the crowd before the game, and the atmosphere in the ballpark. The Catch is given fair coverage within the action of the game itself, and shown from several angles (and not set to Joe Buck). The ending is handled tastefully. No nudity. No shots of Cardinals celebrating. There's a simple shot of the scoreboard with Beltran at bat, and a fade to black, followed by LoDuca in the dugout, talking about how he made sure to watch what was going on, so he could remember it.

Now, I don't know if it's because they didn't want to end on a down note, and that could have been avoided by simply going back and giving a final recap of the regular season, and the division championship, and ending the DVD, but, instead, there's another 5-7 minutes of Reyes, Wright and Maine in their tour of Japan, doing well. It annoyed me, more than anything else, because anyone watching is bound to think, "Well, why didn't they do that when it mattered?!" After going through the entire season, it was really overkill.

The extras are great. There's some nice footage from the Division Championship and NLDS victory celebrations (including a classic shot of Jeff Wilpon dumping a bottle of champagne on Wright, then shoving the bottle down the back of Wright's jersey), a short recap of the Walkoff victories (although some are omitted--where's the Woodward sac fly against the Giants?), a spanish-language feature of Beltran and Delgado, and an overview of Citi Field.

So, I'll give it 4 stars out of 5 (where the '86 video is a 5/5 and the 2000 video is a 4.5/5). I'd recommend buying it, but try to get it on E-Bay or somewhere else online, where it will be markedly less than if you bought it from the Mets website or at Shea.