Syracuse Mets

And then continue to move closer to the present day and see if you can get this team before we get to who they are today.

Because minor league baseball is actually celebrating its 125th anniversary or 125th season in 2027. minor league baseball goes back a long time and a lot of the franchises we still go and see today some have been in the same place a long time some have been franchises in all sorts of different locations so it's tracing a team's lineage until the present day and see if you can get this team before we get to who they are today it could be a little tricky but at the very least you'll learn something along the way this team started in the international league 1918 as the Syracuse Stars of course Syracuse has been in the International League for a long time but I believe today's Syracuse Mets began in 1934 I want to say but they had a different iteration named the Stars in 1918 who didn't even last the entire season ended up going to Hamilton which is Ontario and becoming the Tigers to finish out the 1918 season and Then from 1919 to 1932, they played under various team names in Redding, Pennsylvania.

We had Scott Hunziker, the current general manager on the show today.

This was a totally different iteration of Redding professional baseball.

[laughs]

Right? So how about this? Rochester Red Wings, Syracuse Mets-

Oh

... or Buffalo Bisons?

Coleman's hitting 250.

Mets being brought up to the Mets from the Syracuse Met, uh, from the, uh, Syracuse team.

That is a pitch inside for a ball.

Rick Tersha is on deck now.

We have the Mets.

What's, the Syracuse Mets.

The Syracuse Mets.

Yeah.

They're, you know, minor league.

Um, I think he, he worked with John Miller.

And he worked with a friend of mine from, from college, who's now the voice of the Bengals, to do the Syracuse Chiefs games for, for a, a, uh, a year at Triple A.

Uh, and, uh, he fa- famously made the comment on air, they're talking about Robin Yount, and he's saying, "You know, I was growing up in such so-and-so in California, and I would go over to my friend Dustin's house, and his dorky younger brother, Robin, [laughs] would always come back in." And if he's talking about Dustin Yount and Robin, Robin Yount, I th- I think it, one of the other k- uh, brothers of the family is Larry Yount, who has one of the most tragic stories in, in, in Major League Baseball history.

He's the only guy who's in the Baseball Encyclopedia and never played a game or...

But no, it'll still be a surprise when it comes there.

But just to contextualize that, the Golden Fork is the in-season tradition now in which the Syracuse Mets play as the Salt Potatoes against the Rochester Red Wings playing as the Plates, short for Garbage Plates.

So it's a Central New York regional food showdown between the s- Rochester Plates, Syracuse Salt Potatoes, and, uh, it means a lot to those two respective teams, who end up, ends up with the Golden Fork.

And we've had Dan on the show before to talk about the Golden Fork.

You know, Smoral, even when, uh, we won, he sent me a picture of him with the fork, just to, like, just to get me a little bit.

But, uh, no, winning the [laughs] you know, winning the, uh, the Governors, or winning the International League championship was definitely as sweet as it gets.

But, uh, winning the Golden Fork and the Thruway Cup against the, the Bisons and the dreaded Syracuse Mets, uh, is always really sweet.

Well, awesome.

But I'm curious, if you look at minor league baseball now, we just saw the Springfield Cardinals at the time of this recording this week announced that they're rebranding next year.

The Syracuse Mets, not that far from you all, they're going to be rebranding in 2028.

By my count, in 2028, there will be seven teams still named for their parent clubs out of the 120 in affiliated minor league baseball teams.

You saw that trend coming 25 years ago.