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Now 28 years since the last time the Rangers won the Stanley Cup, Roger Cormier ponders a drought now more than half as long as its infamous predecessor; Colleen Sullivan looks at Mets-Brewers

Trivia question: The Brewers began their existence as the Seattle Pilots, spending one memorable year – the year chronicled by Jim Bouton in Ball Four – before a used car salesman named Bud Selig bought the franchise and moved it to Milwaukee.

On December 2, 1969, the Mets made their first trade with the Brewers, sending Bernie Smith – the original Bernie Brewer, if you will – to Milwaukee for minor leaguer Gary Upton, who was out of baseball a year later. The best player the Mets ever got in a trade from the Brewers was probably Charlie O’Brien, or maybe the second coming of Jeromy Burnitz, if you forget how miserable his 2002 was. It sure as shit wasn’t Doug Henry, who on April 4, 1996, came in with a five-run lead against the Cardinals in Paul Wilson’s major league debut, and proceeded, along with Blas Minor, Bob MacDonald, and John Franco, to blow said five-run lead. To be fair to those pitchers (not that they deserve it), there were four errors in the inning, two by Edgardo Alfonzo, one by Carl Everett, and one by Jeff Kent on a grounder by Gary Gaetti that allowed Ray Lankford to score the tying run. Franco gave up a go-ahead RBI single to Willie McGee in the ninth, but the Mets somehow rallied against Dennis Eckersley after being down to their last out… thanks to a throwing error by Gaetti on a Chris Jones grounder (not a walkoff, weird for him) (also, dramatic E5 much, Cardinals?) and Brent Mayne’s single to win it. That’s all well and good, and without that ninth inning rally, the Mets would’ve lost 92 games insetad of 91 that year, but it was Henry and Kent who forever shared the blame for that easy Mets win turning into 10-9 and a 3:28 game (that was a preposterously long game back then), leading to one 15-year-old arriving late to Passover Seder at his grandparents’ house in Brooklyn.

It wasn’t Wilson, but rather Bill Pulsipher who was the member of Generation K traded to the Brewers in 1998… then reacquired from the Brewers before the 2000 season. Whom did the Mets acquire for Pulsipher, which player did the Mets send to Milwaukee to get him back for a disastrous reunion, and, as a bonus question – the initial question before that whole tangent about the third game of the 1996 season, which disappointingly doesn’t have easily available highlights on YouTube (the opener does, of course, it’s the Rey Ordoñez Game — but you’ve seen that play a million times, read Roger Angell’s contemporary account instead)...

Okay, so before the Brewers became the Brewers, the Mets did make a trade with the Pilots, and whom did they acquire as the player to be named later (on July 14, 1969 — there’s a nonzero chance that Buzz Aldrin read about it on the sports page during his morning poop before leaving for the moon two days later) for Greg Goossen, shipped to Seattle in February of that year?

While you’re thinking about how you definitely don’t know the incredibly obscure answer, why not join our Discord? Or do some shopping?

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How Long Is A Lifetime?

By Roger Cormier

“That’s it! 54 years of curses are over! No more 1940! The New York Rangers are going to win!” Sam Rosen screamed. His MSG broadcast partner, John Davidson, was fixated on that bullshit icing call with 1.6 seconds left. Davidson continued to talk strategy. Rosen kept painting the bigger picture.

“This is the moment they have waited for, for a lifetime.”

Craig MacTavish won the faceoff. 

“The waiting is over and the Rangers are Stanley Cup Champions! And this one will last a lifetime!”