Looking back at the decade of Amazin’ Avenue

As the decade is set to come to a close this evening, we figured we’d do what people tend to do and take a look back at some of the best things that have been published on this site over that span of time. When the decade started, I wasn’t yet even writing for Amazin’ Avenue, though I jumped on board after the Mets’ 2010 season ended, joining Eric Simon, James Kannengieser, Sam Page, Eno Sarris, Alex Nelson, and Matthew Callan as the work on the 2011 Amazin’ Avenue Annual, which turned out to be the last, was done.

In the years since then, the rest of the names have changed, and there have been far too many to even try to list them all. But we’ve been lucky to have a bunch of fine folks writing about this ever-frustrating team, and I think it’s a lot easier to enjoy a mediocre or bad baseball team, depending on the exact season, when you have fellow Mets fans like we do here who are always capable of making things interesting.

The current cast of characters and I whipped up a list of things that stood out in our memories from the past decade, but there are surely some things that were fantastic that we will have missed here. If we missed one of yours, or if you just want to heap some praise upon something, mention it in the comments. Here, then, are ours, in no particular order:

• Before the 2015 season, David Capobianco used MLB: The Show to make a Mets team entirely out of Bartolo Colon clones. It was glorious. For bonus Bartolo content, check out his entire league of Bartolos.
• The R.A. Dickey Face contest was perhaps the greatest thing the site has done as a community. Dickey was aware of it himself, and his mother was reportedly a big fan.
• Speaking of Dickey, remember when Sam Page went to his house and interviewed him? Here are parts one, two, three, and four.
• Matthew Callan’s piece on the grand slam single was great on its own and worked its way into Yells for Ourselves: A Story of New York City and the New York Mets at the Dawn of the Millennium, Callan’s excellent book about the late-90s Mets.
• The Inani-Mets was one of the greatest FanPosts of all time. Mets: The Gathering was another.
• Technically this was published before the decade began, but James K’s GKR drinking game was referenced constantly during this decade, and relevant rules of the game still pop into my head fairly regularly while watching the Mets. The 2014 update on the game was a pretty fun read, too.
• The work that has gone into the Top 25 Prospects lists over the years is nothing short of impressive. Rather than link to each of those, here are the Google results on AA for that phrase.
• TWISNY has always been fun but was at its absolute best in the original incarnation. And here’s to Kevin Burkhardt, who embraced that series and was able to laugh at himself, and congrats to him on making it national with his football and baseball broadcasting.
• Green Man’s goodbye came early in 2018, but he visited later that year for a very important bit of research.
• Everything about David Wright’s playing career coming to an end, like this, and this, and this, and this.
• Nate Gismot’s piece about the Wilpons in the wake of the news that they were selling the team was great.
• During the 2018 season, Allison McCague and Rich Staff teamed up for an in-depth look at the Wilpons’ handling of the organization’s players.
• Kate Feldman reminded us that baseball players are people, too and summed up why bringing Jose Reyes back was a bad idea.
• The podcast that has become the network of podcasts, with Jeff Paternostro getting the credit for really getting something going on a consistent basis and keeping it running strong before handing the reins over to Brian Salvatore, who has overseen all of that work and was the driving force behind the creation of the four regular shows we now have.

And surely there were many more. The daily grind—prospect reports, Mets Morning News, and, during the season, recaps—serves as the site’s foundation.