Happy 2015, everybody!

And since New Year's Day (January 1, 2015) falls on a Thursday this year, I couldn't think of a better way to start things off than with a very special pair of 'photo-ops' for this first "Throwback Thursday" of 2015.

This first 'photo-op' - taken by my brother Glenn with his smartphone - is of yours truly with legendary baseball player Ed Kranepool of the New York Mets. Said 'photo-op' was taken back in December, 2014 at Coconuts - a newly-opened flea market in Coconut Creek, Florida. (Glenn was a regular customer of this sports memorabilia dealer who worked at Coconuts. The dealer told him about having Ed put in an appearance at his concession before the end of 2014, and we'd 'lucked out' in meeting him on a weekend outing that December.)

For those of you who are new to baseball, Kranepool was a first baseman for the Mets from 1962 (when the team was still playing at the Polo Grounds in Brooklyn, before moving to Shea Stadium in Queens in 1964), and stayed with the team through 1979. The apex of his career came in 1969, when the Mets finally won their first World Series - defeating the Baltimore Orioles in five games. (You can find out more about him by going to the Wikipedia site...)

Ed Kranepool - who had just turned 70 back in November, 2014 - was autographing baseball cards for the sports memorabilia dealer, and he was nice enough to give Glenn and I each one of them. (Glenn went out and bought two frames - one for each card - so we'd each have something to display them in.) And we each took turns, using said smartphone to take a picture of him, with one of us standing behind him. (At the time, I was wearing a Santa cap and my green "Megaplex/Christmas in July" T-shirt.)

BTW, Glenn - who is a bigger sports fanatic than I am - told Ed about the very first New York Mets game we'd ever attended, fifty years ago... the one on Father's Day, when Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Jim Bunning pitched a 'perfect game' You can read my journal about this famous (or, in my case, infamous) moment in sports history, by going to http://www.furaffinity.net/journals.....t/#jid:5849992 .

You can also check out the other major celebrity 'photo-ops' in my 'Scraps' section (when you have the spare time... and inclination)!

ADDENDA: One piece of bitter irony to relate... About 24 hours after posting this 'photo-op', I had learned that Coconuts is going out of business (less than two months after its initial opening). Apparently, the landlord left America with thousands of dollars of rental money from all of the vendors. Luckily, the sports memorabilia dealer managed to acquire a separate store (in the same strip mall as the flea market), and he'll still be in business, as long as there as sports fanatics (like my brother Glenn).