As Tug McGraw said, “Ya gotta believe!”
The New York Mets were created as an expansion team in 1962. I was nine years old, growing up in Hackensack, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City.
My dad, raised in Brooklyn, had been a Giants fan but later became a Dodgers fan, I think because of his admiration for Jackie Robinson. After the Dodgers and Giants departed New York City for the West Coast before the 1958 season, he had no local National League team to root for. So, like so many New Yorkers, he was thrilled when the Mets formed a team. The Mets cap is blue to recall the Dodgers and has the orange “NY” monogram to honor the Giants.
Courtesy Champs Sports
For their first two seasons, the Mets played at the Polo Grounds, where the New York Giants had played. My dad took me to several Mets games at the Polo Grounds.
Until last season, when the Chicago White Sox lost 121 games, the Mets held the record for losses in a season in the Modern Era (since 1900). In 1962, they went 40-120 (they didn’t bother to make up the two rainouts, as the Mets already had a stranglehold on last place). This year, the Colorado Rockies are on track to break the record!
Casey implores the grace of God (photo courtesy Baseball History Comes Alive)
The Mets’ first manager, Casey Stengel, memorably moaned, “Can’t anyone here play this game?” The early Mets teams were so bad that anything we could find to cheer about was magnified one hundredfold.
On Memorial Day 1962, the Dodgers made their first visit to New York since playing in Ebbets Field to face the Mets in a doubleheader. A remarkable 55,704 attended, the largest crowd in the major leagues that season. For the second game, my dad maneuvered us from well back in the stands on the third-base side to a couple of seats in the second deck right above home plate.
The Mets lost again, 6-5, but we had a great view of an incredible play. With Maury Wills on second and Jim Gilliam on first with no out for the Dodgers, Willie Davis hit a liner that appeared destined to be a single to left field. But Mets shortstop Elio Chacon leaped skyward, pulled down the line drive in the web of his glove, and flipped to second base to nail Wills. Second baseman Charlie Neal fired to Gil Hodges at first, who appeared to stretch toward second too far and pull off the base.
But the ball arrived before Gilliam, and the umpire gave the thumbs-up for the triple play. My dad said the ump had to overlook Hodges’ questionable footwork with 55,000-plus fans in the stands rooting for the Mets.
We saw the San Francisco Giants play the Mets at the Polo Grounds on “Willie Mays Night,” May 3, 1963, with 49,4321 in attendance. I asked my dad, who had been a New York Giants fan from the days of Mel Ott, Bill Terry, and Carl Hubbell, who he would be rooting for. He said, “The Mets and Willie Mays.”
With a lineup that included legendary former Dodger Duke Snider, the Mets faced off against the Cardinals on Friday night, June 7, 1963, in the Polo Grounds. Cardinals starter Ron Taylor carried a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth, but the Mets managed to get runners on second (Ron Hunt) and third (“Hot Rod” Kanehl) with one out. As Snider strode to the plate, it looked like a redo of “Casey at the Bat.”
The Duke did what Casey could not, jumping on a pitch from left-handed reliever Diomedes Olivo and smacking it into the upper deck in right field for a three-run walk-off homer and a 3-2 Mets victory. But when the ball struck the bat, all the fans in front of me, much taller than I, stood up, and I never saw Duke’s shot land in the seats.
I can barely describe the excitement of the 1969 season, when our perennial doormats defeated the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series, four games to one. As the series’ last three games were day games on weekdays, the best I could do was listen on my transistor radio in the halls between my high school classes. So I didn’t see center fielder Tommie Agee’s spectacular catches in game three or Ron Swoboda’s incredible grab in game four until I watched the six o’clock news highlights.
The Mets were almost as miraculous in 1973. Going into a game against the Astros on July 11, the Mets were in last place with a 36-46 record in the National League East, 12 games behind the first-place Cubs. That’s when reliever Tug McGraw inspired them in a clubhouse meeting with his now-famous, “Ya gotta believe!” The Mets went 21-8 in their final games to finish 82-79 and win the division on the last day of the season in Chicago. They upset the Reds in the NL Championship Series and advanced to the Fall Classic against the defending champions, the Athletics.
My dad took me to the fifth game of that World Series at Shea Stadium. The Mets, behind Jerry Koosman, defeated Vida Blue, 2-0. But the A’s won the last two games in Oakland to take the crown.
The Mets pulled off another miracle in game six of the 1986 World Series (the Bill Buckner miscue game) and took game seven. But by that time, I had moved to San Francisco, so the excitement of that season had to come through my TV rather than in person. The same was true for the Subway Series of 2000 and the 2015 Series against the Kansas City Royals, both losing efforts.
We have Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso, and Juan Soto, and a decent start to the season, though we just slipped behind the Philadelphia Phillies. It’s harder to root for the Mets from 3,000 miles away, but ya gotta believe.
Let’s go, Mets!
