NEW YORK — Craig Anderson pauses the cellphone name. He’s received 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 New York Mets.
“Anyone gave this to me on the finish of the ’62 season,” he says. “I’ve saved all of it these years.”
The ledger paperwork the misfortunes of the losingest workforce in baseball historical past — a workforce on the cusp of yet another loss: its place in historical past.
Whereas 9 members of ’62 are nonetheless alive, Anderson and fellow pitcher Jay Hook are the one two who spent the complete season with the big-league membership. Few folks know the burden of historical past, the burden of ignominious historical past, like Anderson. The excessive level of the rookie reliever’s season got here Might 12, when he earned the win in each video games of a doubleheader sweep.
These can be the final wins he’d ever report within the main leagues, and he set a report by dropping his subsequent 19 selections. It stood for 29 years, till one other Met, Anthony Younger, broke it in 1993.
“I didn’t need him to interrupt my report. I didn’t wish to want it on him or anybody,” Anderson says. “That’s the way in which I felt then and that’s the way in which I really feel now.”
On the cellphone now, he’s matching up the present date — “the Mets began a 13-game dropping streak proper now,” he notes — whereas evaluating it to the present report for the White Sox.
“I don’t need them to interrupt it,” he says. “I would like them to win not less than 12 extra video games. I hope they do, for his or her sake.”
The Mets go to the south aspect of Chicago this weekend within the midst of a playoff chase. The White Sox enter the sequence chasing one thing grander: historical past.
The 1962 Mets set the modern-era report for losses in a season with 120. With an excellent month left within the season, Chicago has misplaced 104 video games, three losses forward even of the ’62 Mets’ tempo for the season. It’s simply probably the most sustained problem to that workforce’s report for the reason that 2003 Detroit Tigers wanted 5 wins of their final six video games to keep away from it.
The White Sox have to go 12-15 to keep away from tying the report. They haven’t carried out that over a 27-game stretch since Might. For the time being, they’ve misplaced 37 of their previous 41 contests.
There will not be many gamers who can relate to what that form of season appears like. Anderson and Hook are two of them.
“It’s shattering when it’s taking place to you,” Hook mentioned, his matter-of-fact tone over the cellphone belying that alternative of adjective, “and I’m certain the White Sox are feeling that proper now. I wouldn’t want that on anyone. You don’t wish to undergo life considering you had been a part of the worst workforce of no matter you probably did.”
To grasp the ’62 Mets, it’s a must to perceive Marv Throneberry. Excuse me, Marvelous Marv Throneberry.
The Mets acquired Throneberry, a 28-year-old first baseman, from the Orioles in early Might for a participant to be named later. (A month later, that participant was named as Hobie Landrith, who’d been New York’s first choice within the growth draft. Landrith had performed for the Mets between the commerce and the announcement, that means the 2 gamers traded for each other performed collectively for a month.)
Throneberry acquired his ironic moniker with a penchant for misadventure. He mucked up rundowns. He faceplanted racing for the bag. He missed first base — and perhaps second, too, the story goes — on a triple. He gained a ship he didn’t need in a season-long contest — not a lot use for a ship in southwest Tennessee, he mentioned — and needed to declare it on his taxes.
“Issues simply kind of carry on taking place to me,” he mentioned at one level.
“Marvelous Marv does extra than simply play first base for the Mets,” wrote Jimmy Breslin in “Can’t Anyone Right here Play This Recreation?: The Unbelievable Saga of the New York Mets’ First Yr.” “He is the Mets.”
Marv Throneberry made 17 errors in 97 video games at first base for the Mets in 1962. (Related Press)
Throneberry, who retained his humorousness all through that disastrous season, serves because the stand-in for the Mets’ standing as lovable losers. They balked in runs. They misplayed fly balls. They allowed practically one unearned run per sport — to associate with greater than 5 earned runs per contest. On common, their video games took quarter-hour longer than everybody else’s, which brought about one to be declared a tie as a result of it went previous curfew. (“Curfew” right here was dictated by the Mets’ flight again to New York from Houston.)
Factor is, Anderson and Hook thought the workforce might be fairly good. A yr earlier, the growth Angels had gained 70 video games, and the Mets had introduced in some large names — Gil Hodges and Roger Craig within the growth draft, Richie Ashburn in a take care of the Cubs.
“I regarded on the roster and thought, ‘Man, that’s a fairly dynamic checklist,’” mentioned Hook, who was drafted away from the reigning pennant-winner in Cincinnati. “Casey Stengel is the supervisor and he’d had nice success. I actually checked out it optimistically. I assumed we might be an honest workforce.”
“I assumed we had been going to not less than be aggressive,” Anderson mentioned.
The nine-game dropping streak to start out the season quelled that optimism. When a 9-3 mark over two weeks in Might threatened to revive it, the Mets responded by dropping these 17 in a row.
“That was the place I began to assume that perhaps we had some issues,” mentioned Anderson.
One participant after the season informed Breslin, “Forty video games is about all we might win. In spite of everything, we had been enjoying in opposition to groups that had all main leaguers on them.”
The Mets had been nonetheless beloved. They drew practically one million followers to the Polo Grounds, ending in the midst of the league in attendance — greater than Pink Sox and Phillies groups round .500.
“The New York followers are true baseball followers,” Anderson mentioned. “I gained’t say they forgave us, however they by no means gave up on us.”
“You see,” Breslin wrote of town’s affection for the workforce, “the Mets are losers, identical to practically everyone else in life. This can be a workforce for the cab driver who will get held up and the man who loses out on a promotion as a result of he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss sufficient. It’s the workforce for each man who has to get away from bed within the morning and go to work for brief cash on a job he doesn’t like. And it’s the workforce for each girl who appears up ten years later and sees her husband consuming dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this man speak her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does nicely sufficient to root for them, Laurance Rockefeller?”
It’s maybe no shock, then, {that a} sure feeling will get expressed rather a lot by these invested within the Mets’ historical past.
The 2024 White Sox will not be worthy of breaking the Mets’ report.
The Mets had no alternative however to be dangerous. Stricter guidelines within the growth draft — as a result of the AL’s growth groups had carried out higher in 1961 — left New York with little to select from. The novice draft wasn’t round but, not to mention free company. The Mets needed to construct by way of scouting and buying and selling. The White Sox, then again, are three years faraway from consecutive playoff appearances that had been imagined to herald a stretch of sustained rivalry. It’s all collapsed since.
Evan Roberts is the drivetime cohost for WFAN and creator of “My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom.”
“It’s not life and dying, BUT I’d desire they not break it,” he mentioned through direct message. “I grew up with legendary tales about how dangerous and hilarious the 1962 Mets had been, and I might ideally not wish to see a workforce go the 120 losses.”
Devin Gordon is the creator of “So Many Methods to Lose: The Wonderful True Story of the New York Mets — the Finest Worst Group in Sports activities.”
“I suppose I ought to really feel prefer it’s some form of albatross across the franchise’s neck and that I needs to be relieved on the prospect of it lastly getting lifted. However I don’t,” he wrote in an electronic mail. “That workforce was a storybook workforce in its personal distinctive means, and I like that it’s enshrined in historical past. It’s additionally the proper narrative bookend for what occurred seven years later with the World Collection win in 1969. It’s a part of a a lot bigger, extra cinematic story for us in a means that one random catastrophic season by one other workforce won’t ever be.”
Certainly, the Mets’ championship in 1969 has retroactively uplifted that ’62 workforce as nicely.
“To have gained a world championship seven years later offers the proper bookend with the historic futility,” mentioned Mets broadcaster Howie Rose, who was eight years previous watching the Mets’ debut season. “All of it ties collectively. It’s all a part of the heritage. ’69 is sweeter due to ’62. It’s only a good piece of perverse symmetry.”
“To by no means have completed above ninth place after which to win all of it in 1969, that narrative is a really heroic and comforting one for Mets followers,” mentioned Gary Cohen, New York’s tv broadcaster. “The White Sox breaking that report wouldn’t change that. Nonetheless, I don’t wish to see anyone lose 121 video games as a result of that’s a horrible factor for his or her franchise.”
Dave Bagdade wrote “A Yr in Mudville: The Full Story of Casey Stengel and the Unique Mets” in regards to the ’62 Mets. He additionally occurs to be a lifelong White Sox fan.
“I don’t wish to see their report eclipsed,” Bagdade wrote in an electronic mail. “I like the concept they had been the worst baseball workforce of the trendy period, however that they misplaced with persona and humor and that they continue to be one of the vital cherished groups of any period regardless of (or probably due to) their report. The ’24 Sox are only a steaming pile of baseball ineptitude. They don’t lose with persona and humor. They only lose. I don’t need something about this Sox workforce to be enshrined in baseball immortality.”
In response to a casual ballot on X, which clearly skews youthful, about three in 4 Mets followers did need the White Sox to interrupt the report. Youthful followers really feel little pleasure in 120 losses.
Looking forward to this weekend, I am curious: Do you as a Mets fan need the White Sox to interrupt the ’62 workforce’s report for many losses in a season?
— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) August 28, 2024
Greg Prince, who pens the favored weblog “Religion and Concern in Flushing” and has written 4 books in regards to the Mets, in the end agrees with the bulk.
“I’ve been charmed by all that went into creating 40-120 my whole rooting life,” Prince wrote in an electronic mail. “The legend of the 1962 membership will endure irrespective of who holds the report. All that being mentioned, hell sure, let any person else lose greater than my workforce. Plus, , historical past. Anyone setting a mark like this whereas we’re right here to witness it’s value a dozen Danny Jansens going through off in opposition to one other dozen Danny Jansens.”
Jay Hook, proven right here on June 2, 1962, recollects trying on the roster and considering, “Man, that’s a fairly dynamic checklist.” (Harry Harris / Related Press)
There’s one different cause Hook and Anderson don’t need the report to be damaged. Enjoying for the 1962 Mets is part — a big half — of their private legacies in baseball.
Hook recorded the primary win in Mets historical past; there’s a ball displayed prominently at Citi Discipline together with his identify written on it in massive letters. Anderson indicators nearly all his autographs with “Unique Met.”
“In case you’d requested me this again within the mid-60s, I might have mentioned I used to be so glad to get it over with and get out of there,” Anderson mentioned. “However after 62 years now …”
Hook thought again to the Outdated Timers’ Day the Mets held in 2022. The membership had requested him if he needed to pitch, and the then-85-year-old steered a primary pitch as an alternative. He labored out for weeks to get himself in form, after which, in entrance of greater than two dozen members of his household, he fired it to Mike Piazza on the fly.
“That they had the very best weekend going to New York and being at Citi Discipline,” he mentioned of his household. “I’ve had extra publicity as a result of I used to be on that workforce. That’s survived.”
It is going to survive even when the White Sox fail to win 12 video games over the ultimate month of the season. If the ’62 Mets cede their long-held pedestal within the sport, their legacy, one which’s grown in fondness with every passing yr, is safe.
“With the passage of time, it has develop into more and more troublesome to precisely painting who and what these Mets had been and what they represented,” Rose mentioned. “For these not of age when the Mets took place, they might not probably perceive what their impression was not solely on baseball followers in New York however across the nation.”
(Prime photograph from the Polo Grounds on June 20, 1962: Related Press file)
