Happy "Meet The Mets" Day
In today's issue, we look back on the debut of the New York Mets on this day in 1962.
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Pregame Pepper - New York Mets Rewind
Leading Off
The Baseball World Meets The Mets
By Bill Pruden
To paraphrase The Beatles, “It was 60 years ago today, that the New York Mets began to play.” That’s right, on April 11, 1962, the consolation prize offered to the city of New York in the aftermath of the abandonment of Gotham by the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants took the field for their first game. Ironically, they did so against the St. Louis Cardinals in the city that had, before Walter O’Malley and Horace Stoneham decided to follow the historic advice of New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley to “go west” with their young men, been the western boundary of Major League Baseball.
Interestingly, the Beatles, whose legend has no small tie to the Met’s one-time home Shea Stadium, encapsulated much of the Mets’ history in their classic Sergeant Pepper. Surely anyone who has followed the Amazins since their debut and up to the big dollar fueled optimism of today can recognize the emotional roller coaster ride that has been central to being a Mets fan in the Fab Four’s lyrics:
“It was [60] years ago today
[Casey Stengel] taught the band to play
They've been going in and out of style
But they're guaranteed to raise a smile.”
While those smiles have been mixed with no small amount of frustration, those sentiments, in their own way, very much reflect the distinctive history of the New York Mets, a team that has over those six decades offered the baseball world and its own fans a little bit of everything. Their early years were encapsulated by manager Casey Stengel’s query, “Can't anybody here play this game?” while their improbable 1969 World Series championship was the miracle that offered the template for the US Olympic Hockey team’s 1980 effort.
Meanwhile, the 1986 “Bad Guys” were a collection of characters and talent perhaps unrivaled in the game's recent history and yet the expected culmination of their dominant season hanging by a thread until the final moments of the famous sixth game of the World Series against the Boston Red Sox. The Mets have been a team whose pitching staff has included some of the finest, if short-lived, stars the game has ever seen in Dwight Gooden and Jacob deGrom (although there is certainly hope for more from the comparatively late-blooming, if often injured, deGrom) as well as one of the all-time great hurlers in Tom Seaver, "The Franchise," whose two exits from the Mets – once by an ill-fated trade and once by a clerical oversight – say in their own way all one needs to know about the franchise.
From the beginning, the Mets were different, a team rooted in a community’s love for the game and its desire to have a team of its own. Owned by Joan Whitney Payson, a one-time part-owner of the Giants, who upon their exit sold her shares and vowed to bring a team back to New York, And that she did in a way that resonated with the city and the fans, wins and losses be damned.
Seeking to connect with the New York’s long time National League tradition, the initial roster included more than a few veterans - most prominently Gil Hodges and Roger Craig - whose best days had been seen on those previous New York teams while its early occupancy of the Giants' former home, the hallowed Polo Grounds, only reaffirmed the tie. I well remember seeing my first ever doubleheader at the Polo Grounds. The place wreaked of baseball history and it was a great place to further water the recently planted seeds that sprouted into a lifetime love of the game. I was certainly not alone.
Admittedly the early seasons of ineptitude tested the resilience and loyalty of every one of the team’s early fans for it was never clear if anyone there could play that game. But that, of course, only made the Miracle Mets just a few years later, such a phenomenon, as well as a totally unexpected reward for all the early suffering.
Indeed, over the course of six decades, the Mets and their fans have seen it all. Although the timing has sometimes been a bit off. While he was good for the box office, the “Ol’ Professor” who managed the team at the outset was not the Casey Stengel who held the reins for the Yankees dynasty of the 1950s. In contrast, Joe Torre was a whole lot better a manager - or at least got better results - after his time with the Mets when he moved to the other side of the one-time Mayor's Trophy Game rivalry. And while the Mets were able to bring Willie Mays back to New York, it might have been better for all had he remained a Giant with the memories of him chasing down balls into the far recesses of the Polo Grounds being preferable to his floundering finale with the Mets.
The annals of Mets history are wide-ranging and diverse. Consider Frank Cashen's prized acquisitions, Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter, whose distinctive abilities, presence, and different styles of leadership, coupled with that of manager Davey Johnson, were critical to harnessing the diverse talents - like farm system and draft produced talents Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry - that were central to the 1986 juggernaut. More recently there was the homegrown captain David Wright whose injury-shortened exit was unfortunate but somehow very Met-like. And then there was Mike Piazza who made the move from the bright lights of Hollywood to the equally bright lights of the Big Apple without missing a beat while giving the Mets a lift, leading them to a World Series match-up against their cross-town rivals.
The Mets have often been a weigh station and a jumping-off point for later greatness. As noted, Joe Torre cut his teeth on managing with the Mets before he switched sides and helmed the Yankee Dynasty of the late 1990s. Or there was Nolan Ryan whose time with the Mets offered much promise, a promise that would be fulfilled with the California Angels, the Houston Astros, and the Texas Rangers.
Shea has also been a place where the once-great went to finish, often ignominiously. Does the name George Foster, ring a bell? But each of these, as well as the countless others that Mets fans have taken to heart, is a part of the history that has made the Mets amazing in ways that go beyond a marketing slogan.
Now, about that first game sixty years ago.
To no one’s surprise, the band of cast-offs and big-league wannabees lost to the Cardinals. It was the first of the nine losses they suffered. They finally achieved their first win, a 9-1 victory over the Pirates in Pittsburgh. They would not record their first home win until April 28, a victory that brought their record to a reality check 2-12. But worse things were to come.
While a mid-May spurt saw them win nine of 12, any glint of optimism that the surge had kindled was dashed by the 14-game losing streak that followed. In fact, the wins represented just under a quarter of the team's final total of 40 as the Mets finished their inaugural campaign 40-120, establishing a record for losses that 60 years later remains the standard for futility in the Major League's modern era.
But now, as a new season unfolds, there is a renewed feeling of optimism and hope. Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling in the booth remind fans of the kind of play that once made Shea the epicenter of the big leagues, if only for a brief time. Meanwhile, buoyed by new free agent acquisitions, led by Max Scherzer, whose presence reflects the willingness of owner and fan, Steve Cohen, to make the financial investment that modern championship baseball demands, a new generation of fans, as well as those who have watched for years, can look ahead to the possibility that championship baseball can return to New York in the form of the National League’s New York representative. Let’s Go Mets!
Bill Pruden is a high school history and government teacher who has been a baseball fan for six decades. He has been writing about baseball--primarily through SABR sponsored platforms, but also in some historical works--for about a decade. His email address is: courtwatchernc@aol.com.