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Today, Michael Keedy takes a slight respite in his countdown to the Top Ten Greatest World Series Catches. In this interlude, he chooses instead to give us a brief history of the “Amazin Mets.” So I think we can easily surmise where he is going with his next entries of his greatest catches series. Stay tuned! -GL
The “Amazin Mets,” 1962-69
“The Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I even knew existed.” -Manager Casey Stengel
When baseball owners Horace Stoneham and Walter O’Malley took their teams west after the ’57
By 1961 expansion added two teams to the Junior Circuit, raising hopes that a National League newcomer the following season could find a home in New York. That happened, of course. The freshly-minted “Metropolitans” of 1962 took up residence in the Polo Grounds, and a league now boasting ten teams embarked upon a 162-game schedule, mirroring what the American League had done the year before.
But the Lords of Baseball, craftier than ever following the expansion draft of ’61, offered the Houston Colt .45s and New York Mets shamefully slim pickings and starting blocks that were shockingly behind the curve as a result. By the end of its first season, New York had lived down to the most pessimistic of expectations with an amalgam of well-traveled veterans, untried and equally uncertain hopefuls, and a marginally productive cast of low-grade utility players.
Aided by seasoned and/or promising pitchers Roger Craig, Al Jackson, Craig Anderson, and Jay Hook, who together conspired to drop exactly 80 games, these Mets stormed to an all-time record 120 losses, just a tad off the pace set by San Francisco and Los Angeles, the very clubs that had blown town under cover of darkness a few years earlier. For all their ineptitude, and perhaps to a large extent because of it, the Mets still managed to attract a couple million hungry and delirious fans in their first two seasons, with unlikely but wildly popular icons such as Marv Throneberry, Charlie Neal, and Chris Cannizarro showing the way.
While these guys in orange and blue were navigating the choppiest of waters on their maiden voyage to sports mediocrity, a young and optimistic president captured the country’s imagination that September by pledging the U.S. would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. As ambitiously unrealistic as that lofty goal seemed then, if anyone had suggested the Mets could win a world title in the same length of time, men in white coats would have found him a new place to call home. Perhaps reflecting JFK’s can-do mentality, however, the “Amazins” would chase down and capture that dream, not because it was easy, but “because (it was) hard.” And chase it they did!
Lurching through the turbulent ’60s, these lovable but laughable losers staggered to the finish line dead last five times in their first seven years, and a distant ninth the other two (’66 and ’68). According to the finest odds-makers Vegas had to offer, the chances of their landing in first place by ’69 were, oh, one in a hundred, i.e., far slimmer than landing a human being on the moon.
Although equally as tempestuous as the rest of the decade, the year 1969 was to be one of the most stirring and unforgettable of our lives. Kennedy’s outlandish promise was kept posthumously with the help of Neil Armstrong that July, when he took a “giant leap for mankind.” An unpopular Asian war that had ruined Lyndon Johnson’s re-election prospects the year before raged on, dividing the country ever further with each passing day. “Chappaquiddick,” as it was quaintly but descriptively dubbed, erased any reasonable chance that the last surviving son of Joseph P. Kennedy would ever become president. Thousands of revelers were drawn to Woodstock that summer; the nation was riveted and repulsed by Charles Manson and his murderous minions; Broadway Joe and the Jets upset Baltimore; “Abbey Road” became the Beatles’ very last album, and both the aforementioned Joe Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower shuffled off this mortal coil.
The New York Mets, meanwhile, were setting the world of baseball on its ever-lovin’ ear. With the encouragement of a steady and cerebral manager whose own legendary playing career was now well behind him, they began to believe in themselves as never before. Although trailing Chicago in the standings, for the first time in their sorry history they wrapped up the month of June with a winning record. Blow me away!
“You can observe a lot by watching.” Whether Yogi actually uttered those immortal and provocative words, I resolved to check out the Mets for myself in early July, just as New York was invading St. Louis. They promptly dropped a doubleheader to the defending N.L. champions on the first, which was no great surprise. (Here we go again.) But the game I witnessed, July 2, 1969, told me these perennial also-rans were finally and truly for real. More than that, they were now actually legitimate contenders.
Of course, I knew – or thought I did – that no single ballgame could possibly be a reliable barometer of a team’s strengths and weaknesses over an entire season. Yet, as I walked out of Busch Stadium 14 grueling but revealing innings later, I felt certain the Cardinals had just been outplayed by the league’s team of destiny for 1969. (“Seeing is believing,” and thank you, Yogi Berra.)
Gravitating grudgingly but dutifully to The Great Gil’s platooning approach as the season wore on, and relying on a magical blend of outstanding pitching, fortuitous hitting, and captivating defense, the Mets stayed fresh and competitive through the Dog Days, winning 38 of 49 ballgames down the stretch. Having trailed the front-running Cubs by ten full games in mid-August, the Miraculous Mets hit the tape “going away” that autumn, finishing a commanding eight games on top. Koosman and Tom “Terrific” Seaver combined to go 42-16, which compared favorably with the 18-44 record rung up by Craig and Jackson seven miserable years before.
In this, the inaugural season of division play in major league baseball, the Amazins would have to scale yet another mountain of tall odds just to make it to the World Series. The Braves, champions of the so-called “West,” stood squarely in their way. But Gilbert Ray Hodges, with “twenty-five guys who think they can,” guided his team of true believers to a shocking sweep of Atlanta. (William T. Sherman would have been proud.)
Suddenly, the mesmerizing Mets of ’69 were in the World Series. Believe! Now, all they had to do was get by the Baltimore Orioles, winners of 109 regular-season games and the scourge of Minnesota, whom they had mercilessly eliminated in three straight divisional playoff games of their own. As baseball fans and historians know, these upstarts from the Big Apple would need a timely collection of unbelievable defensive plays to knock off the very creme de la creme of the major leagues.
Next up: Three Catches for the Ages
Michael H. Keedy
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