NEW YORK — Craig Anderson pauses the telephone name. He’s were given to get his notes.
He returns with a sheet of paper he’s had for 62 years — the day-by-day efficiency of the 1962 Brandnew York Mets.
“Somebody gave this to me at the end of the ’62 season,” he says. “I’ve kept it all these years.”
The ledger paperwork the misfortunes of the losingest workforce in baseball historical past — a workforce at the cusp of yet another loss: its playground in historical past.
Month 9 participants of ’62 are nonetheless alive, Anderson and fellow pitcher Jay Hook are the one two who spent all of the season with the big-league membership. Few community know the load of historical past, the load of ignominious historical past, like Anderson. The top level of the rookie reliever’s season got here Might 12, when he earned the win in each video games of a doubleheader sweep.
The ones will be the utmost wins he’d ever file within the main leagues, and he all set a file by way of shedding his nearest 19 selections. It stood for 29 years, till every other Met, Anthony Younger, beggarly it in 1993.
“I didn’t want him to break my record. I didn’t want to wish it on him or anyone,” Anderson says. “That’s the way I felt then and that’s the way I feel now.”
At the telephone now, he’s homogeneous up the stream week — “the Mets started a 13-game losing streak right now,” he notes — era evaluating it to the stream file for the White Sox.
“I don’t want them to break it,” he says. “I want them to win at least 12 more games. I hope they do, for their sake.”
The Mets consult with the south facet of Chicago this weekend in the middle of a playoff chase. The White Sox input the layout chasing one thing grander: historical past.
The 1962 Mets all set the modern-era file for losses in a season with 120. With a fair past left within the season, Chicago has misplaced 104 video games, 3 losses forward even of the ’62 Mets’ life for the season. It’s simply essentially the most sustained problem to that workforce’s file for the reason that 2003 Detroit Tigers wanted 5 wins of their utmost six video games to keep away from it.
The White Sox want to journey 12-15 to keep away from tying the file. They haven’t accomplished that over a 27-game stretch since Might. On the time, they’ve misplaced 37 in their moment 41 contests.
There don’t seem to be many avid gamers who can relate to what that roughly season looks like. Anderson and Hook are two of them.
“It’s shattering when it’s happening to you,” Hook mentioned, his matter-of-fact pitch over the telephone belying that number of adjective, “and I’m sure the White Sox are feeling that right now. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. You don’t like to go through life thinking you were part of the worst team of whatever you did.”
To grasp the ’62 Mets, you need to perceive Marv Throneberry. Mercy me, Marvelous Marv Throneberry.
The Mets obtained Throneberry, a 28-year-old first baseman, from the Orioles in early Might for a participant to be named nearest. (A past nearest, that participant was once named as Hobie Landrith, who’d been Brandnew York’s first variety within the enlargement draft. Landrith had performed for the Mets between the business and the announcement, that means the 2 avid gamers traded for one every other performed in combination for a past.)
Throneberry obtained his ironic moniker with a penchant for misadventure. He mucked up rundowns. He faceplanted racing for the bag. He ignored first bottom — and perhaps 2d, too, the tale is going — on a triple. He received a ship he didn’t need in a season-long tournament — now not a lot significance for a ship in southwest Tennessee, he mentioned — and needed to claim it on his taxes.
“Things just sort of keep on happening to me,” he mentioned at one level.
“Marvelous Marv does more than just play first base for the Mets,” wrote Jimmy Breslin in “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets’ First Year.” “He is the Mets.”
Marv Throneberry made 17 mistakes in 97 video games in the beginning bottom for the Mets in 1962. (Related Press)
Throneberry, who retained his humorousness all through that tragic season, serves because the stand-in for the Mets’ condition as lovely losers. They balked in runs. They misplayed fly balls. They allowed just about one unearned run in step with duel — to journey in conjunction with greater than 5 earned runs in step with tournament. On moderate, their video games took quarter-hour longer than everybody else’s, which brought about one to be declared a connect as it went moment curfew. (“Curfew” right here was once dictated by way of the Mets’ flight back to New York from Houston.)
Factor is, Anderson and Hook idea the workforce might be nice-looking excellent. A yr previous, the growth Angels had received 70 video games, and the Mets had introduced in some enormous names — Gil Hodges and Roger Craig within the enlargement draft, Richie Ashburn in a do business in with the Cubs.
“I looked at the roster and thought, ‘Man, that’s a pretty dynamic list,’” mentioned Hook, who was once drafted clear of the reigning pennant-winner in Cincinnati. “Casey Stengel is the manager and he’d had great success. I really looked at it optimistically. I thought we could be a decent team.”
“I thought we were going to at least be competitive,” Anderson mentioned.
The nine-game shedding streak to begin the season quelled that optimism. When a 9-3 mark over two weeks in Might threatened to revive it, the Mets replied by way of shedding the ones 17 in a row.
“That was where I started to think that maybe we had some problems,” mentioned Anderson.
One participant then the season advised Breslin, “Forty games is about all we could win. After all, we were playing against teams that had all major leaguers on them.”
The Mets have been nonetheless liked. They drew just about one million enthusiasts to the Polo Gardens, completing in the course of the league in attendance — greater than Pink Sox and Phillies groups round .500.
“The New York fans are true baseball fans,” Anderson mentioned. “I won’t say they forgave us, but they never gave up on us.”
“You see,” Breslin wrote of the town’s affection for the workforce, “the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurance Rockefeller?”
It’s most likely disagree miracle, upcoming, {that a} positive feeling will get expressed a quantity by way of the ones invested within the Mets’ historical past.
The 2024 White Sox don’t seem to be significance of breaking the Mets’ file.
The Mets had disagree selection however to be sinister. Stricter regulations within the enlargement draft — since the AL’s enlargement groups had accomplished higher in 1961 — left Brandnew York with modest to choose between. The novice draft wasn’t round but, let unloved separate company. The Mets needed to manufacture via scouting and buying and selling. The White Sox, at the alternative hand, are 3 years got rid of from consecutive playoff appearances that have been intended to bring in a stretch of sustained rivalry. It’s all collapsed since.
Evan Roberts is the drivetime cohost for WFAN and writer of “My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom.”
“It’s not life and death, BUT I’d prefer they not break it,” he mentioned by means of direct message. “I grew up with legendary stories about how bad and hilarious the 1962 Mets were, and I would ideally not want to see a team pass the 120 losses.”
Devin Gordon is the writer of “So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazing True Story of the New York Mets — the Best Worst Team in Sports.”
“I suppose I should feel like it’s some kind of albatross around the franchise’s neck and that I should be relieved at the prospect of it finally getting lifted. But I don’t,” he wrote in an electronic mail. “That team was a storybook team in its own unique way, and I like that it’s enshrined in history. It’s also the perfect narrative bookend for what happened seven years later with the World Series win in 1969. It’s part of a much larger, more cinematic story for us in a way that one random catastrophic season by another team will never be.”
Certainly, the Mets’ championship in 1969 has retroactively uplifted that ’62 workforce as smartly.
“To have won a world championship seven years later provides the perfect bookend with the historic futility,” mentioned Mets broadcaster Howie Rose, who was once 8 years timeless observing the Mets’ debut season. “It all ties together. It’s all part of the heritage. ’69 is sweeter because of ’62. It’s just a nice piece of perverse symmetry.”
“To never have finished above ninth place and then to win it all in 1969, that narrative is a very heroic and comforting one for Mets fans,” mentioned Gary Cohen, Brandnew York’s tv broadcaster. “The White Sox breaking that record wouldn’t change that. However, I don’t want to see anybody lose 121 games because that’s a horrible thing for their franchise.”
Dave Bagdade wrote “A Year in Mudville: The Full Story of Casey Stengel and the Original Mets” concerning the ’62 Mets. He additionally occurs to be a lifelong White Sox fan.
“I don’t want to see their record eclipsed,” Bagdade wrote in an electronic mail. “I love the idea that they were the worst baseball team of the modern era, but that they lost with personality and humor and that they remain one of the most loved teams of any era despite (or possibly because of) their record. The ’24 Sox are just a steaming pile of baseball ineptitude. They don’t lose with personality and humor. They just lose. I don’t want anything about this Sox team to be enshrined in baseball immortality.”
In keeping with a casual ballot on X, which clearly skews more youthful, about 3 in 4 Mets enthusiasts did need the White Sox to fracture the file. More youthful enthusiasts really feel modest satisfaction in 120 losses.
Taking a look forward to this weekend, I’m curious: Do you as a Mets fan need the White Sox to fracture the ’62 workforce’s file for many losses in a season?
— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) August 28, 2024
Greg Prince, who pens the pervasive weblog “Faith and Fear in Flushing” and has written 4 books concerning the Mets, in the long run concurs with the bulk.
“I’ve been charmed by all that went into creating 40-120 my entire rooting life,” Prince wrote in an electronic mail. “The legend of the 1962 club will endure no matter who holds the record. All that being said, hell yes, let somebody else lose more than my team. Plus, you know, history. Somebody setting a mark like this while we’re here to witness it is worth a dozen Danny Jansens facing off against another dozen Danny Jansens.”
Jay Hook, proven right here on June 2, 1962, remembers having a look on the roster and pondering, “Man, that’s a pretty dynamic list.” (Harry Harris / Related Press)
There’s one alternative explanation why Hook and Anderson don’t need the file to be damaged. Taking part in for the 1962 Mets is part — a vital phase — in their non-public legacies in baseball.
Hook recorded the primary win in Mets historical past; there’s a ball displayed prominently at Citi Ground together with his identify written on it in massive letters. Anderson indicators virtually all his autographs with “Original Met.”
“If you’d asked me this back in the mid-60s, I would have said I was so happy to get it over with and get out of there,” Anderson mentioned. “But after 62 years now …”
Hook idea again to the Used Timers’ Hour the Mets held in 2022. The membership had requested him if he sought after to tone, and the then-85-year-old steered a primary tone rather. He labored out for weeks to get himself in environment, and upcoming, in entrance of greater than two batch participants of his community, he fired it to Mike Piazza at the fly.
“They had the best weekend going to New York and being at Citi Field,” he mentioned of his community. “I’ve had more publicity because I was on that team. That’s survived.”
It’s going to continue to exist even though the White Sox fail to win 12 video games over the general past of the season. If the ’62 Mets cede their long-held pedestal within the recreation, their legacy, person who’s grown in keenness with each and every passing yr, is reserve.
“With the passage of time, it has become increasingly difficult to accurately portray who and what those Mets were and what they represented,” Rose mentioned. “For those not of age when the Mets came about, they could not possibly understand what their impact was not only on baseball fans in New York but around the country.”
(Govern picture from the Polo Gardens on June 20, 1962: Related Press report)
