Note that the plaques on the clubhouse wall
and the Eddie Grant Monument are long gone.
September 18, 1963: For the last time, a Major League Baseball game is played at the Polo Grounds. Maybe I should use the title, and say it was "the last competitive game" there. But the home team was the New York Mets, in only their 2nd season of play. So "competitive" may be a bit of a stretch.
The Mets lose to the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1. The winning pitcher was Chris Short. The losing pitcher was Craig Anderson. The Mets' only run came on the last home run in the stadium, hit by Jim Hickman. The last play was Ted Schreiber of the Mets grounding into a double play.
Attendance: 1,752. That is not a typo: One thousand, seven hundred and fifty-two. It remains the lowest crowd in Mets history, not counting the COVID-restricted games of the 2020 season. To be fair, it was a Wednesday afternoon, and this was the early Mets, and the Phillies were not, at the time, considered a rival.
That figure might shock people who have lived with the myth that the early Mets, as bad as they were, were more popular than the Pennant-winning Yankees. Here's the per-home-game attendance figures from 1961 (the year before the Mets debuted, included as a control) until 1969 (the last year of the decade, and the year of the Mets' "Miracle"):
Year Yankees Mets
1961 21,444 < Not applicable
1962 18,439 > 11,532
1963 16,260 > 13,335
1964 15,922 < 21,390
1965 14,982 < 21,832
1966 14,058 < 24,009
1967 15,454 < 19,327
1968 14,459 < 21,996
1969 13,185 < 26,856
Yankee attendance dropped by 3,000 a game when the Mets arrived. But, remember, '61 was also the year of the Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris home run chase, and that wasn't repeated in '62. Yankee attendance went down by 2,200 in '63. Why? Because Mantle missed 2 months of the season with an injury.
In 1964, the year the Mets opened Shea, brand-new, with no support poles, a big parking lot, and not in a deteriorating neighborhood where poor minorities lived? Met attendance rose by 8,000, which is completely understandable. But Yankee attendance dropped only 338 per game. If Shea was so great, and the Mets were so much fun, shouldn't the Yankees' drop have been considerably greater?
Even the fall from a Pennant to 6th place in '65 only dropped the Yankees' attendance by less than 1,000. Yankee attendance actually went up from '66 to '67, and in '68 (the first winning season since '64, though hardly a contending one) was higher than it was in '66.
But then came a 1,300-fan drop in '69. Was that because the Mets won it all? No, it was because Mantle retired, taking away the Yanks' biggest drawing card. This was later matched in the Baltimore Orioles' attendance, which took a nosedive not when they stopped winning in 1998, but after 2001 when Cal Ripken retired.
If the Yankees and the Mets had shared the same stadium, in the same neighborhood, who would have had the better attendance? We have an idea, since they did, in 1974 and '75: In 1974, the Yankees were 18 games better, but trailed by 449,000 fans; in 1975, the Yankees were only 1 game better, and trailed by 442,000 fans. But that may have been because Yankee fans hated going to Shea Stadium. In 1976, with the Mets winning 86, and the Yankees winning 97, and Yankee Stadium reopened, the Yankees led by 544,000 fans. So is it the ballpark, or is it winning? It's winning.
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Between its 1891-1911 version that burned down, and its replacement, over 73 years, the site between 155th and 159th Streets and 8th and 9th Avenues hosted 14 World Series, 2 baseball All-Star Games, 7 college football Thanksgiving Day games, 5 NFL Championship Games, and 3 fights for the Heavyweight Championship of the World.
It was where Christy Mathewson pitched World Series shutouts, Babe Ruth set single-season home run records before Yankee Stadium opened, Carl Hubbell pitched 24 straight victories, Bobby Thomson hit "The Shot Heard 'Round the World," and Willie Mays made "The Catch." It was also where Fred Merkle failed to touch 2nd base, and Marv Throneberry failed to touch 1st and 2nd base an inning after a key error.
The Harlem Horseshoe would host the New York Jets' 1963 season and a Latin American All-Star baseball game, before being closed. In April 1964, the same demolition company that tore down Ebbets Field 4 years earlier would tear it down, using the same wrecking ball, painted like a baseball. A few days later, the Mets moved into Shea Stadium -- which almost wasn’t ready in time.
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September 18, 1963 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that the sitcom The Patty Duke Show premiered. I have a separate entry for that event.
These other MLB games were played:
* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Washington Senators, 5-4 at District of Columbia Stadium (later Robert F. Kennedy Stadium) in Washington.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Billy Cowan hit a 2-run home run in the top of the 9th inning, to turn a Buccos lead into a Cubbies win. Ernie Banks did not play. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-4. Willie Stargell went 1-for-4.
* The Houston Colt .45s beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. John Weekly went 3-for-5 with a home run and 4 RBIs. Frank Robinson did not play. Rookie Pete Rose went 2-for-4 with a walk. In 1965, the Colt .45s became the Houston Astros.
* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the Boston Red Sox, 8-3 and 4-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Pete Ward hit a home run in each game. Gene Stephens went 4-for-6 with a walk and an RBI. For the Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski went 3-for-5 with an RBI in the 1st game, but didn't play in the 2nd game.
* The Milwaukee Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 6-4 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Hank Aaron went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Eddie Mathews went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Willie Mays went 3-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Willie McCovey went 0-for-3 with a walk.
* The Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers, 10-0 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Camilo Pascual pitched a 2-hit shutout. Harmon Killebrew hit a home run. Al Kaline did not play.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-5 at the 1st Busch Stadium (formerly the last Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. In the top of the 13th inning, a Maury Wills groundout got Willie Davis home with the winning run. Ron Perranoski was the winning pitcher, in relief of Pete Richert. Lew Burdette was the losing pitcher, in relief of Bob Gibson. Stan Musial, in his last month as a player, went 2-for-3 with a walk.
* And the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians were rained out at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Since the Yankees had already clinched the American League Pennant, the game wa snot made up.
* The Baltimore Orioles swept a doubleheader with the Los Angeles Angels, 3-1 and 7-5 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, where the Angels were groundsharing until their Anaheim stadium could be built. Over the 2 games, Brooks Robinson went 0-for-6 with a walk.
* And the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians were rained out at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Since the Yankees had already clinched the American League Pennant, the game was not made up.
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