1983 New York Mets

This was the worst team in the National League in 1983. It is probably most remembered by Mets fans as the year Tom Seaver came back to the team. Darryl Strawberry won the NL Rookie of the Year award and Keith Hernandez was acquired mid-season, and this was a sign that a better team was on the way.

Best Player: Darryl Strawberry

Best Pitcher: Jesse Orosco

All-Stars: Jesse Orosco

Hall-of-Famers: Tom Seaver

Rookie Card of the Year: Darryl Strawberry...you know his story, the drugs, the cancer, the waste of talent. Baseball's answer to Leif Garrett. After his first season with the Dodgers in 1991, he was nothing more than a part time player, although he stuck around until 1999.

Other rookies: Carlos Diaz, Brent Gaff, Brian Giles, Scott Holman, Terry Leach, Rick Ownbey, Gary Rajsich, Doug Sisk

First Met card: George Bamberger, Danny Heep, Keith Hernandez, Frank Howard, Mike Torrez

Most interesting non-Topps card: Carlos Diaz started his career with the Braves, and was traded in September 1982 to the Mets for Tom Hausman. Carlos Diaz's rookie cards are in the 1983 sets, although Donruss shows him as a Brave and Fleer shows him as a Met.

Starters

__	TO	713	C	Ron Hodges	NYM
__	TT	43	1B	Keith Hernandez	NYM
__	TO	548	2B	Brian Giles	NYM
__			SS	Jose Oquendo
__	TO	134	3B	Hubie Brooks	NYM
__	TO	80	LF	George Foster	NYM
__	TO	55	CF	Mookie Wilson	NYM
__	TT	108	RF	Darryl Strawberry	NYM
__	TO	343	MI	Bob Bailor	NYM
__	TT	41	RF	Danny Heep	NYM
__	TO	160	1B	Dave Kingman	NYM

Starting Pitchers

__	TT	101	SP	Tom Seaver	NYM
__	TT	115	SP	Mike Torrez	NYM
__	TO	601	SP	Ed Lynch	NYM
__			SP	Walt Terrell
__	TO	292	SP	Craig Swan	NYM

Relief Pitchers

__	TO	369	CL	Jesse Orosco	NYM
__	TT	105	RP	Doug Sisk	NYM
__	FL	540	RP	Carlos Diaz	NYM
__	DO	224	RP	Scott Holman	NYM
__	TO	575	RP	Neil Allen	NYM
__			RP	Tom Gorman

Other Players

__			C	Junior Ortiz
__	TO	740	UT	Rusty Staub	NYM
__			OF	Mark Bradley
__			C	Ronn Reynolds
__			UT	Tucker Ashford
__	TO	444	IF	Wally Backman	NYM
__	TO	317	1B	Gary Rajsich	NYM
__			UT	Clint Hurdle
__	TO	469	SS	Ron Gardenhire	NYM
__	TO	107	1B	Mike Jorgensen	NYM
__			C	Mike Fitzgerald
__			C	Mike Bishop
__			RF	Mike Howard
__	TO	212	PR	John Stearns	NYM
__			SP	Ron Darling
__	TO	739	RP	Rick Ownbey	NYM
__			SP	Tim Leary
__	DO	553	RP	Brent Gaff	NYM

Minor Leagues

__

TO

187

MN

Terry Leach

NYM

Manager

__	TO	246	MG	George Bamberger	NYM
__	TT	47	MG	Frank Howard	NYM

1982 New York Mets

MVP
Just 4 seasons before the infamous '86 Mets, it is hard to decide who to say who is the best player on this team. Not because there were so many to choose from, but from a lack of players to choose from. This was the first season with one of the biggest free agent signing busts ever, George Foster. Dave Kingman had solid slugging numbers but it went with a .204 BA/.285 OBP.
I am going to give this teams MVP award to Mookie Wilson. He led the team in runs scored and hits. He also led the team in stolen bases by a mile.

Cy Young
There was only one pitcher who pitched more than 49 innings* with a winning record, and that was Craig Swan. This was an odd pitching staff. All of the main starters on this team pitched at least 10 games in relief. Craig Swan also had a respectable 3.35 ERA, so I will give him this team's Cy Young award.

*OK that seems random, but Terry Leach pitched that many innings and had a 2-1 record, and allows me to make the following statement true

Rookie Card of the Year
There was only one true rookie card on this team, and that belonged to Charlie Puleo. Puleo had a 9-9 record for this team, was traded away the next year in a package to Cincinnati that brought Tom Seaver back to the Mets, and eventually finished out the '80s with the Braves, going 29-39 for his career with a 4.25 ERA.

Unspectacular, sure, but it would have to be pretty cool to tell your grandkids you were traded for Tom Seaver.

Most Interesting Non-Topps Card
Donruss had Jesse Orosco's first card by himself in their set. He was in the 1980 Topps set on the Mets prospects card, and would not appear in a Topps set again until 1983. Orosco bounced around forever playing on the Dodgers, Indians, Brewers, Orioles, Cardinals, Padres, Yankees, and Twins as the left handed ace out of the bullpen. He finally retired in 2003 at the age of 46.

Starters

__	TO	743	C	John Stearns	NYM
__	TO	690	1B	Dave Kingman	NYM
__			2B	Wally Backman
__	TO	494	3B	Hubie Brooks	NYM
__	TT	39	SS	Ron Gardenhire	NYM
__	TT	36	LF	George Foster	NYM
__	TO	143	CF	Mookie Wilson	NYM
__	TO	15	RF	Ellis Valentine	NYM
__	TO	79	IF	Bob Bailor	NYM
__	TO	234	C	Ron Hodges	NYM
__	TO	270	UT	Rusty Staub	NYM

Starting Pitchers

__	TO	592	SP	Craig Swan	NYM
__	TO	326	SP	Pete Falcone	NYM
__	TT	94	SP	Charlie Puleo	NYM
__	TO	432	SP	Mike Scott	NYM
__	TO	626	SP	Randy Jones	NYM

Relief Pitchers

__	TO	205	CL	Neil Allen	NYM
__	DO	646	RP	Jesse Orosco	NYM
__	TO	121	RP	Ed Lynch	NYM
__	TO	399	RP	Pat Zachry	NYM
__			SP	Rick Ownbey

Other Players

__	TO	655	RF	Joel Youngblood	NYM
__			RF	Gary Rajsich
__			2B	Brian Giles
__	TO	566	UT	Mike Jorgensen	NYM
__	TT	123	MI	Tom Veryzer	NYM
__			C	Bruce Bochy
__			UT	Mike Howard
__			3B	Phil Mankowski
__			RF	Rusty Tillman
__			C	Ronn Reynolds
__			PH	Rick Sweet
__			RP	Terry Leach
__	TO	524	RP	Tom Hausman	NYM
__			SP	Brent Gaff
__			SP	Scott Holman
__			SP	Walt Terrell
__			RP	Tom Gorman
__			RP	Doug Sisk
__			RP	Carlos Diaz

Manager/Coaches

__

MG

George Bamberger

1981 New York Mets

Brighter Days Ahead
The 1981 version of the New York Mets wasn't very good, finishing second to last in the old NL East, ahead of the Chicago Cubs. They were managed by Joe Torre, who would make a bigger name for himself 15 years later managing the other New York team. Two of the starters on the 1986 Mets team debuted in 1980, so they had their rookie cards in the 1981 sets. Mookie Wilson was on the multi-player rookie card for the Mets in the Topps set, which I listed under miscellaneous cards, but he gets his own card in the 1981 Donruss set. Wally Backman also has his rookie card in the 1981 Fleer set (sorry, don't own this card and couldn't find a good picture of it anywhere online).

1981 cards
Veering away from the Mets, this is the first post I've made showing a sample of each of the major card sets put out in 1981.

I really like the Topps set from this year, it makes good use of team colors with the hats in the corners and the photography was really good.

I also really like the debut set from Fleer with the simple baseball in the corner with the team name inside and the simple name and position next to it in a yellow box and plenty of room for an uncluttered picture. Trust me, I generally hate Fleer cards, they always seemed like the cheap set to me, even before Score, Upper Deck and some other high end sets came out later in the decade. They were always thinner than the Topps cards and the designs looked like they were thrown together at the last minute. Wait until we get to 1982 with Fleer to see how awful they could make cards.

The debut set for Donruss is also nice, but they would do better as the decade wore on. I think they put out the best sets available for several years in the mid-'80s from a design standpoint. I have no inside knowledge of this, but I wonder if Donruss was the first to use computers when designing their cards. I can point out why I think this when we get to the 1984 cards. For 1981, I like the Fleer set better, and that is why I have a preference for them when making these checklists for 1981 when there is a player who is in both Fleer and Donruss sets, but not in the Topps set. This will change when I move onto 1982.

I am not sure how distribution of cards was in the 1980s, but until there were card shops everywhere and you just bought cards in the candy sections of the grocery store, I always was able to get near complete sets of Topps and Donruss cards, but rarely ever even got one Fleer card. Usually, I picked up Fleer cards at an outdoor fleamarket in a large farmers field my parents would go to every Sunday morning to get fresh vegetables, and there was one guy there with a table full of current baseball cards for sale. This is sort of where I came up with the idea to just get the players that didn't come in the other sets, because he would charge premium prices for the rookies and hot players (OK 25 cents a card seemed outrageous when you could buy a whole pack in 1984 for nearly that price), so I would dig through the box for players that I didn't have in the other sets. Mostly this amounted to backup catchers, who for whatever reason only showed up in the Fleer set, and I could get them for a nickel, which seemed more reasonable. Perhaps this is why I think Fleer is the cheap set, because I have almost no star players on a Fleer card, unless I bought them in the ebay era.

Starters

__	TO	428	C	John Stearns	NYM
__	TT	781	1B	Dave Kingman	NYM
__	TO	634	2B	Doug Flynn	NYM
__	TT	742	3B	Hubie Brooks	NYM
__	TO	343	SS	Frank Taveras	NYM
__	TO	510	LF	Lee Mazzilli	NYM
__	DO	575	CF	Mookie Wilson	NYM
__	TT	849	RF	Ellis Valentine	NYM
__	TT	835	1B	Rusty Staub	NYM

Starting Pitchers

__			SP	Ed Lynch
__	TO	109	SP	Mike Scott	NYM
__	TO	224	SP	Pat Zachry	NYM
__			SP	Greg Harris
__	TT	777	SP	Randy Jones	NYM

Relief Pitchers

__	TO	322	CL	Neil Allen	NYM
__	TO	117	RP	Pete Falcone	NYM
__			RP	Terry Leach
__	TO	359	RP	Tom Hausman	NYM
__	TO	472	RP	Dyar Miller	NYM
__			RP	Ray Searage

Other Players

__	TO	23	C	Alex Trevino	NYM
__	TO	58	RF	Joel Youngblood	NYM
__	TO	698	UT	Mike Jorgensen	NYM
__	TT	732	MI	Bob Bailor	NYM
__	TT	752	3B	Mike Cubbage	NYM
__			SS	Ron Gardenhire
__	TO	537	C	Ron Hodges	NYM
__	FL	336	IF	Wally Backman	NYM
__			OF	Mike Howard
__			MI	Brian Giles
__			RP	Mike Marshall
__	TO	456	RP	Jeff Reardon	NYM
__			RP	Jesse Orosco
__			RP	Dan Boitano
__	TO	57	SP	Dave Roberts	SEA
__	TO	189	SP	Craig Swan	NYM
__			RP	Charlie Puleo
__			SP	Tim Leary

Minors

__

FL

69

MN

Bruce Bochy (or DO 20)

HOU

Manager/Coaches

__

FL

325

MG

Joe Torre (or DO 506)

NYM