June 17, 1962: The early days of the New York Mets are full of myths about their ineptitude, but this one actually happened.
It was the 1st game of a Sunday doubleheader, against the Chicago Cubs, at the Polo Grounds. The Cubs won, 8-7. Lou Brock, not yet a St. Louis Cardinal, not yet known as a base stealer, and never really known for his power, hits a home run in the 1st inning, into the center field bleachers at the Polo Grounds. Only 2 players had ever done that before: Joe Adcock, and, in a Negro League game, Luke Easter. Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves went on to do it the very next day.
Earlier in that inning, Marv Throneberry made an error at 1st base for the Mets. In the bottom of the inning, it looked like he'd redeemed himself: He hit a long drive, deep into the right-center field power alley, and he slid into 3rd base with a 2-run triple.
But the Cubs appealed, saying he didn't touch 2nd base. And 2nd base umpire Stan Landes ruled "Marvelous Marv" was out. Met manager Casey Stengel stormed out of the dugout -- as much as any 72-year-old man can storm, I suppose -- and was ready to argue. But 1st base coach Cookie Lavagetto told him, "Don't bother, Casey. He didn't touch 1st, either."
And Casey yelled, "Well, I know he touched 3rd, because he's standing on it!"
Ernie Banks also hit a home run. Billy Williams' triple gave the Cubs an 8-5 lead in the top of the 9th. In the bottom of the 9th, the Mets got an RBI double from former Yankee Gene Woodling, and an RBI single from Frank Thomas. But Don Elston got a strikeout to end it. Who was the last batter? Of course: Marv Throneberry.
The Cubs won the 2nd game, too, 4-3 when Ron Santo hit a home run off Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell in the top of the 9th. Williams also homered in this game. Throneberry didn't do so badly at the plate: He went 1-for-3, and had an RBI on a sacrifice fly. But he did also make an error.
Marv, once one of the Yankees' top prospects, and recipient of a 1958 World Series ring, but stuck at 1st base behind Moose Skowron and Joe Pepitone, became the symbol of the '62 Mets' ineptitude. Jimmy Breslin, then a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, wrote a book about the '62 Mets, titled after a quote of Stengel's: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? In it, he wrote, "Having Marv Throneberry play for your team is like having Willie Sutton work for your bank."
(From 1920 to until his arrest 1952, Sutton was America's most successful bank robber. He denied saying he robbed banks "Because that's where the money is," but later said he wished he'd said it, because it was true.")
He had enough power to be described with the old baseball cliché "oafish clout," which enabled him to hit 16 home runs down the close right-field line at the Polo Grounds. But he was nearly as bad a fielder at 1st base as Dick Stuart, later to be known as "Dr. Strangeglove" but a better power hitter. Still, Met fans loved Marv.
Early in 1963, he got sent down to the Buffalo Bisons, and was released from the Met organization early in the 1964 season. He never played a home game at Shea Stadium. He went back home to Tennessee, went into business for himself, returned to fame by making commercials for Miller Lite beer, and lived until 1994.
The Mets finished the season 40-120. The "winning" percentage of .250 was the lowest in Major League Baseball since the 1935 Boston Braves went 38-115, for .248. The 120 losses were the most since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders set the all-time low point in baseball performance by going 20-134.
And it wasn't just Throneberry. Stengel could point to any number of bad performers, but, instead, blamed them collectively. "Come and see my amazing Mets," he would say: "I been in this game for 100 years, but they've shown me ways to lose I never seen before." In good times and bad, they have been "the Amazin' Mets" or simply "The Amazin's" ever since.
Throneberry made 17 errors in only 97 games. Supposedly, on his birthday, September 2, Stengel told him, "We was gonna give you a cake, but we was afraid you would drop it." Rod Kanehl, who played pretty much any position, but none of them well, made 32 errors in 112 games.
Charlie Neal, a decent 2nd baseman for the Dodgers after Jackie Robinson retired, made 28 errors in 135 games. Shortstop Elio Chacón made 22 errors in 113 games. Félix Mantilla, their most-used 3rd baseman but a 2nd baseman by trade, made 20 errors in 129 games. Frank Thomas -- not the later Chicago White Sox Hall-of-Famer -- a left fielder with "oafish clout," but so big, slow and clumsy he was known as "Big Donkey," made 14 errors, an alarming total for an outfielder.
Part of the problem was that, knowing they couldn't attract fans with winning baseball, they tried to attract fans with familiar names. So they got as many former Yankees, New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers as they could. Throneberry was not a memorable Yankee, but Woodling was. From the Dodgers, they got Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and pitcher Roger Craig.
Craig had helped the Dodgers win the World Series in Brooklyn in 1955 and in Los Angeles in 1959. He later became a renowned pitching coach, and managed the San Francisco Giants to the 1989 National League Pennant. But in 2 seasons with the Mets, he went 10-24 and 5-22, despite not pitching all that badly. During a mound conference, he told Stengel he was doing the best he could, and Stengel told him, "You could strike them out. Don't you know we can't catch grounders?"
Their best player was center fielder Richie Ashburn, then 35 years old, a legend for the Philadelphia Phillies. When he was told he was named the team's Most Valuable Player, he decided being MVP for "the worst team ever" meant it was time to retire, and he went back to Philadelphia, and spent the last 35 years of his life in the Phillies' broadcast booth.
Aside from Throneberry missing the bases, the biggest '62 Mets story involved Ashburn and Chacón. A Venezuelan shortstop who had helped the Cincinnati Reds win the Pennant the year before, he kept backing up to catch pop-ups for which Ashburn had moved up and yelled, "I got it!" -- the universal signal to your teammates that you are going to catch the ball.
Well, maybe not so universal. Joe Christopher, an outfielder who had played on the Pittsburgh Pirates when they won the 1960 World Series (as had Mizell), had played Winter ball in a Caribbean league, and knew some Spanish. He reminded Ashburn that Chacón's English was bad, and that he should yell, "I got it!" in Spanish, which is, "¡Yo la tengo!"
So Ashburn practiced saying it. The next game, there was a pop-up, midway between the infield and center field. Ashburn moved up. Chacón moved back. Ashburn yelled, "¡Yo la tengo!" And Chacón stopped. He understood. But Thomas, in left field, didn't understand, and crashed into Ashburn. After the play, Thomas asked Ashburn, "What the hell is a yellow tango?" (In 1984, a group of Met fans formed a band named Yo La Tengo.)
And yet, the '62 Mets attracted 922,530 fans to their home games, 6th out of 10 teams in the NL. And it was a different kind of fandom. The media called these young Met fans, some of them too young to have gone to Giant or Dodger games on their own, but now old enough to do so, "The New Breed." In The New Yorker magazine, Roger Angell described them as follows:
Everybody thinks New York only cares about champions, but we cared about the Mets. I remember going to some games in June that year, and they were getting walloped, they were getting horribly beaten. But the crowds came out to Polo Grounds in great numbers and people brought horns and blew these horns.
After awhile I realized that this was probably anti-matter to the Yankees who were across the river and had won for so long. Winning is not a whole lot of fun if it goes on. But the Mets were human and that horn I began to realize was blowing for me because there’s more Met than Yankee in all of us. What we experience day to day in our lives, there’s much more losing than winning, which is why we love the Mets.
The Mets lost 111 games in 1963. They lost 109 games in 1964, their 1st season in Shea Stadium. They lost 112 games in 1965, their last with Stengel as manager. Slowly, they got better. When they finally got into contention for the first time, in 1969, going all the way and winning the World Series, the words "Amazin' Mets" were no longer ironic, they were fitting. But, based on how bad they were earlier, they were called the "Miracle Mets."
How bad were they? On May 26, 1964, they beat the Cubs 19-1 at Wrigley Field. This was before the Internet, and, with Wrigley Field not having lights, it was a day game, and some fan decided he couldn't wait for his evening newspaper to come out. So he called the paper -- which paper it is depends on who's telling the story -- and asked how the Mets did today.
The man on the other line said, "They scored 19 runs."
The caller said, "Did they win?"
I've also heard the story another way: Someone in the city room of the Herald Tribune yelled out that the Mets scored 19 runs, and it was Breslin who yelled out, "Did they win?"
Whoever it was asking, he knew his team. Until they became Tom Seaver's team in 1969, the Mets were Marv Throneberry's team, even in 1968.
But their fans loved them, whether at the crumbling old Polo Grounds or the brand-new, yet airplane-ridden, Shea Stadium. As Rihanna would sing, nearly half a century later, "We found love in a hopeless place."
*
June 17, 1962 was a Sunday. These other games were played in baseball:
* The New York Yankees also got swept, by the Cleveland Indians at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Indians won the opener, 6-1. Dick Donovan outpitched Bill Stafford, and rookie Jim Bouton allowed a run in 2 innings. The Tribe won the nightcap, 6-3. Pedro Ramos won, Bouton's future Seattle Pilots roommate Gary "Ding Dong" Bell got the save, and Jim Coates got shelled in 2 innings. Whitey Ford actually pitched a perfect 7th inning in relief.
Over the 2 games, Yogi Berra went 2-for-7 with a home run and 2 RBIs, Roger Maris went 2-for-7 with a walk and was hit by a pitch, and Mickey Mantle, battling injury, only appeared in the 2nd game, as a pinch-hitter, and struck out.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-2 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Frank Robinson went 1-for-3 with a walk.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Senators, 4-3 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.) Brooks Robinson went 1-for-5.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Milwaukee Braves, 7-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Hank Aaron went 2-for-4. So did Roberto Clemente, and he also had an RBI. Harvey Haddix outpitched Warren Spahn.
* A doubleheader was split at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The Detroit Tigers won the 1st game, 8-5. Purnal Goldy, playing in place of the injured Al Kaline, hit 2 home runs for the Tigers. The Boston Red Sox won the 2nd game, 5-0. Frank Malzone hit home runs in both games for the Red Sox. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-5 with 3 walks.
* The Los Angeles Angels swept a doubleheader from the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park in Chicago, 5-3 and 6-5.
* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Minnesota Twins, 10-6 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Harmon Killebrew hit a 2-run homer, but it wasn't enough.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Houston Colt .45s (who became the Astros in 1965), 6-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
* And the San Francisco Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-3 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Stan Musial went 0-for-3. Willie Mays went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs.
And the Final of the World Cup was held at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago, Chile. Defending Champion Brazil made it back-to-back World Cups, beating Czechoslovakia, 3-1. I have a separate entry for this event.
