(bad news no. 1 :  there are no “Kiner’s Korner” klips on YouTube.   bad news no. 2 : the above phone number to identify the Foamy Famous Face has been disconnected)

The ascents of Jonathan Niese , Angel Pagan and R.A. Dickey aside, the most positive Mets story of 2010 might well have appeared in this morning’s New York Times, as Richard Sandomir reports the Wilpon-owned SNY plans to make old episodes of “Kiner’s Korner” available online.

Starting Tuesday, SNY.tv. will post the first of nine weekly webisodes that combine clips from Kiner™s postgame interviews and new chats between him and the host Ted Berg for the Mets network™s dip into nostalgia.

The footage that will be seen is about all that is known to have been rediscovered. Only some of it is usable.

Nearly all the œKorners are gone, tossed out or taped over at a time when few local stations, networks or teams understood the value of a video archive of their history and broadcasts.

The guests on the SNY webisodes are Pete Rose, Bobby Valentine, Johnny Bench, Richie Ashburn, Ed Kranepool (a two-parter), Eric Davis, and Johnson and Tommy Lasorda (also in two parts). In a clip from the 1980s, Rose and Kiner discuss why Rose™s continuing to play would delay induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The interview with Ashburn leads inevitably into a discussion of the 1962 Mets, when Kiner was calling the games with Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy, and Ashburn was in the outfield and batting .306.

Kiner recalled that guests received $50 or so for appearing on the show, but in the early days, they could instead choose merchandise from a catalog as compensation. One year, Kiner said that he balked at an offer to be paid $75 a show. He missed a couple of shows (Murphy filled in) while he bargained for more money.

Eventually, Kiner relented and took the $75.

œMy first holdout, he said.