The Applefather was able to make it to Jim Plummer's memorial service, and had this to share with us:

The Funeral Service for Jim Plummer was a beautiful, uplifting, solemn, serene and spiritual Celebration. My guesstimate is 400-500 in attendance. Wonderful (and 100+ percent accurate) words of tribute and hymns. Looked like the entire Mets Family turned out.

A couple of the pages from the Service are [below].

The Apple is at half-mast:

The Applefather just sent me a note about the passing of Jim Plummer, a long-time Mets employee. You can read about it at mets.com and newsday.com (to name just a few).

The Applefather, in his e-mail to me, had the following things to say, and I found them moving and wanted to share them:

Jim Plummer, my assistant in the promotions dept. 1980-81-82, passed away earlier this week. As you know Jim was with me "at the beginning" of ideas and designs for The HR Apple. He was one of the all-time SPECIAL GUYS. Always there for you. Everybody loved him. He helped, by my count, thousands of ballplayers over the years.

I plan to be at the Celebration of Jim's life on Monday in Queens. If I am The Applefather, Jim is certainly at very least The Beloved Uncle. I miss him.

Goin out to Shea:

Lonnie and I have decided to head out to Shea tonight to spread the word. We'll be sitting somewhere in the upper deck, and we should be pretty easy to spot with our SaveTheApple t-shirts and Save The Apple posters.

Feel free to come say hi (Kevin Burkhardt, this includes you), we love to talk Mets, baseball, and The Apple at any and all times.

Web Roundup / Catching Up:

Not too much to report on the Apple front, but there are always things happening around the web. I was on vacation for the last two weeks, so here's what I've been reading to catch up on our boys in Blue and Orange.

The guys over at Develop Willets Point have been extremely busy. If you don't know their site, you should go check it out and catch up on what they're fighting for.

At Mets Mesmerized Online they wrote a great piece about us! If you're not familiar with this blog, you need to be, they have a lot of great writers and keep updating constantly so that you can get your Mets fix.

We've just added Magic Mets to our links page, you should check them out.

Will over at metsfansforever.com has been hard at work and we always enjoy his writing too.


Don't forget: Spread the word (tell all your friends about us, join the facebook group and invite all of your friends to it, etc), Sign the Petition (which just broke 8000!!! signatures), Buy a T-Shirt, and Let's Go Mets!

Backward progress:

We received an e-mail tip from Keith who pointed us to StadiumPage.com. We think these pictures speak for themselves...

original design


original design (note the "Mets Ballpark" name)

current design



original design


current design


We hadn't seen these early design pictures before... But it sure looks like the Mets initially planned to BRING THE APPLE AND TOP HAT and have since CHANGED THEIR MINDS. They've put in that concrete hole 408 feet away from what will be home plate to house either the same Apple or a new apple:



Photos courtesy Tom Kaminski/WCBS 880

But concrete is not that expensive. It's not too late for them to change their minds, fill in the hole with dirt and put the Apple (and TOP HAT) on the side of that hill, like in the original design pictures.

Thanks Keith and Tom!

Besides that, we have an air date. THIS SATURDAY, May 31st, at 12 noon, we will make our TV debut on SNY's Mets Weekly!

Please keep spreading the word. If you haven't, please Sign The Petition. Buy a t-shirt! But most importantly, make it out to Shea this summer, catch a game, and see the imperfect beauty that is Shea and is The Apple. Let's Go Mets!

Bumped:

Just a note that our spot on Mets Weekly on SNY has been bumped back at least one week. We'll let you know when our new air date is as soon as we know.