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New York Post
16-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Post
A Preakness Stakes long shot is named after an obscure Met
Don't be surprised if a lot of 'Mets money' shows up on a long shot in Saturday's Preakness Stakes. That's because the No. 9 horse in the 2025 Preakness is named 'Gosger' after Jim Gosger, a journeyman outfielder who played 74 games for the Amazins, including 10 for the 'Miracle Mets' in 1969. The gray, Kentucky-bred colt is owned by Harvey Clarke Racing Stables and was named after the former MLBer thanks to a random Facebook connection with Donna Clarke, whose family owns the horse, according to Paulick Report. Gosger was tagged with 20-1 odds on the morning line, tied for the biggest price on the board with No. 5 Pay Billy. 'It's amazing,' the human Gosger told Paulick Report. 'I'm so darn excited about something like this. I had a good career playing ball. I was very fortunate. But this ranks right up at the top.' 4 Gosger works out at Pimlico ahead of the 150th Preakness Stakes. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect Gosger, 82, played for six teams during his 10-year career, and although his stats may not be memorable, his story certainly is unique. He was the last batter to face Satchel Paige, and he was once declared dead by the Mets. Paige was brought out of retirement in a publicity stunt by Kansas City A's owner Charlie Finley. At age 59, Paige hurled three scoreless innings, culminating with a groundball out by Gosger. 'I grounded out, and as I was running by him to grab my glove, he grabbed my arm and it scared the [heck] out of me,' Gosger recounted to the outlet. 'He looked at me and said, 'Good luck, young man.' And that's something I will never forget.' 4 Jim Gosger during the 1969 World Series. Getty Images Four years later, Gosger joined the Mets midway through the 1969 season. He played 10 games, mostly as a defensive replacement for Gil Hodges' team, but was left off the postseason roster. He never got a World Series ring, but he was honored by the club decades later as part of the 'Miracle Mets' 50-year anniversary celebration. 4 Jim Gosger in 2022 with one of his cats. Sergio Montanez/Times Herald / USA TODAY NETWORK There was only one problem. The Mets included him in the 'In Memoriam' video during the celebrations. 'They declared me dead, honest to God,' Gosger told the Paulick Report. An official from the Mets reached out that night to apologize. 'I said, '[Expletive] you' and hung up,' he told the publication. 4 The Mets issued an apology to Jim Gosger and Jessie Hudson after including them in the 'We Remember' segment of their celebration of the 1969 World Series champions. Paul J. Bereswill Gosger retired from the major leagues in 1974 after a second stint in Flushing. He hit .226 with 16 home runs and 177 RBIs in 705 games for the Mets, Expos, Red Sox, Seattle Pilots and Athletics. With numbers like those, imagine Gosger's surprise when he found out a Mets fan wanted to honor him by naming a thoroughbred in his honor. Donna Clarke was a massive Mets fan and, along with her late husband Harvey, ran the family's stable. 'I was nine-year-old years old in 1969 and I had a big crush on Ken Boswell,' Clarke told Paulick Report. So Clarke's son, Scott, thought it would be a nice touch to name their new colt 'Boswell.' Unfortunately, that name had already been taken, so they had to pivot. It just so happened that Clarke and Gosger had struck up a friendship on Facebook a few years earlier, leading Donna to request the horse be named after the journeyman outfielder. This is not the first time that Harvey Clarke Stables have named a Triple Crown runner after an athlete. Nyquist, the winner of the 2016 Kentucky Derby, was named in honor of Gustav Nyquist, then of the Detroit Red Wings. Gosger — the horse — is the son of Nyquist. Clarke and her family invited Gosger to Baltimore for Saturday's race, but the former Met respectfully declined because he has five cats and a dog to care for at home in Port Huron, Mich. Jim Gosger may not have ever got that 1969 World Series ring, but he could have his name etched into Triple Crown history on Saturday. Not too shabby for a .226 lifetime hitter.
Miami Herald
17-02-2025
- Sport
- Miami Herald
Cote: Young, low-budget Marlins open spring as biggest underdogs in Miami pro sports history
If sports did not invent the underdog, it certainly has provided the greatest stage for the very notion. This is where disregarded athletes and teams across time have overcome seemingly impossible odds to achieve greatness. Well, sure, the disregarded usually are that for a reason and fail as expected. But when they don't and shock the world instead — those are the instant folk heroes we embrace above all others because they most represent us. The 'Miracle Mets' winning the '69 World Series. Rocky Balboa. The 1980 U.S. men's hockey team. Rudy and Notre Dame. Appalachian State beating Michigan. Joe Namath's Jets making good on that guarantee. Whatever you think of when sport's biggest underdogs come up brings us to the oddly named suburb of Jupiter, 80 miles north of Miami, and Monday's first full-squad work of spring training for the Miami Marlins. Spring is sprung full of optimism with most baseball teams, and the Marlins are no exception. It's just that nobody outside of this team shares the rosy view. 'We're more than happy to play the underdog role,' said new manager Clayton McCullough on Monday. He better be, for he now pilots the youngest, most inexperienced, biggest underdog team South Florida has seen, in any professional sport, ever. The Marlins embrace the long odds ... because what choice do they have? 'We're super young, super hungry,' said Connor Norby, 24, projected starting third baseman. 'We feed off of that. It's going to be a group people are excited to watch. Everything people think we can't do, we're going to do at a high level.' Miami may well have only one player on its 26-man opening day roster who has had his 30th birthday. Outfielder Jesus Sanchez, 27 and a Marlin since 2020, is the de facto wise old veteran in the lineup and the only proven big-league hitter. 'I think we're going to surprise a lot of people,' said Sanchez. Opening day starter Sandy Alcantara, back after missing last season to Tommy John surgery, is the Marlins;' one and only star player by any definition. Which of course means Alcantara may be traded next for prospects, because that's what the Sherman Marlins do. Asked about that possibility Monday, principal owner Bruce Sherman and president of baseball ops Peter Bendix danced around the topic like experienced ballroom partners. 'Sandy is here right now,' said Bendix. 'I'm thrilled he's here.' Sherman: 'Sandy is under contract; I'm the one who extended him. He's our franchise right now.' Right now. Rote optimism aside, this is what the absolute bottom looks like in pro sports: A franchise owner, Sherman, unwilling or unable to spend on player payroll at a level that even pretends to approach competitive MLB standards. A resulting team full of inexperienced kids trying to learn on the fly to be major-leaguers. And a coming baseball season of hopelessness in Miami for a club given no chance but to fail in the mighty National League East, where the big-spending Phillies, Braves and Mets are really good and even the Nationals are coming on strong and spending while the Marlins shop the bargain bins with coupons. The Marlins' master plan to trade pricey veterans for cheap prospects is building for a dubious future that may or may not ever arrive. And when I say the cub is given no chance as is, in the present,. I mean it quite literally. The respected organization, Baseball Prospectus, utilizes sabermetric analysis in its annual Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm (PECOTA) to forecast won-lost records and project playoff likelihood and such. The Braves are given an 88.3% playoff chance, the Mets 85.7 and the Phillies 52.2. The Marlins are given a 0.0% chance, one of only two teams (Colorado) in the no-hope bin. Miami is given the same chance to make the MLB playoffs in 2025 as your beer-league softball team. 'I know what all the won-lost projections are,' said Sherman (his team's is 62-100). 'I think we're going to win a lot more games than you think we will.' What else can you say if you are an MLB owner whose total 2025 player payroll as of Monday ranks a dead last 30th at $47.1 million? That is 30% of the MLB average of $158M per team player payroll. (For further comparative purposes, the Mets, Phillies and Braves spending is all top 10, with their combined payroll at $800 million. Sherman, admirably with a straight face, bragged to assembled reporters Monday that the club has made lots of new front-office hires and will now have MLB's second-biggest weight-training room. (Dear Bruce: Fans don't care about that. They do care that you once again failed to spend on any notable free agent bats to improve what looks to be an historically bad offensive lineup.) 'Everybody wants you to sign every free agent agent available,' Sherman said.. No. Wrong. But fans do have a right to expect that the team owner might sign a couple or three good ones. Might at least double the player payroll (dreaming here), even though that would still put Miami's about half of the MLB average. As is, Sherman's spending is so egregiously dismal that baseball and the players' union ought not stand for it. Fans' opinion of Sherman and his gutter-level spending is reflected in home attendance that last year ranked 29th of 30, beating only the A's team in the midst of jilting Oakland. The Marlins are not even assured of selling out Opening Day March 27 vs. the Pirates, despite a delicious Alcantara vs. Paul Skenes pitching matchup. That's why there will be lots of bells and whistles, including Dan Marino throwing out the ceremonial opening pitch and a postgame concert by Luis Fonsi and Flo Rida. Anything to disguise the team itself, the one given the 0.0 percent playoff shot. The Marlins' youth overhaul is so extreme there is a large poster in the clubhouse with the faces, names and titles of 74 spring-training personnel, so all the new young players might get to know them quicker. 'They could use name tags in here,' kidded Marlins broadcast analyst Tommy Hutton as new players roamed the clubhouse for the first time. (At least I think Hutton was kidding.) These Fish will need a cocktail of great health, immense luck and perhaps some magic (the Miami Merlins) to surprise in '25. The realistic hope is that, even surrounded by losing, the raw young Marlins may rise up to either be surprisingly good or at least OK this season or, more likely, to be lovable losers easy to root for. The best plausible hope is that this is a team of underdogs Miami rallies behind because they play hard like hungry kids do and are fun to watch — because they are such underdogs, the biggest this market has ever seen.
