1962 Was the Year of Bad Beginnings for the Mets and Astros : New York’s New National League Entry, With Casey and Marvelous Marv, Lost 120

August, 1957: Horace Stoneham says he is taking the Giants out of New York and moving them to San Francisco.

October, 1957: Walter O’Malley says he is taking the Dodgers out of Brooklyn and moving them to Los Angeles.

New Yorkers say: We was robbed. They no longer have a National League baseball club . They demand another one.

They get one.

1962: The new New York Mets lose 120 of 160 games. Casey Stengel asks: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

1963: The first pitch of the season, by Roger Craig, is two feet outside. A fan behind home plate hollers: “Wait till next year!”

1964: The Mets take one from the Cubs, 19-1. A fan phones a New York newspaper. “How’d the Mets do today?” he asks. “They scored 19 runs!” he is told. “Great!” he replies. “Did they win?”

Many summers, many boys, have come and gone, but the Worst Team of All Time lingers on, in all its splintered splendor. Oh, how wonderfully awful they were, the ’62 Mets, and how awfully wonderful.

Their pitchers could do everything but throw, their hitters everything but bat. Beyond that, they were not good, not good at all.

They played at the Polo Grounds, and a polo team could have beaten them. Practically everyone else did. They lost their first nine games. They had three losing streaks even longer.

They never once won on a Thursday. Sandy Koufax no-hit them. Two of their pitchers were 20-game losers. Another lost only 19. A good day for this team was a rainout.

If, for some sentimental reason, lovers of good baseball have saved places in their hearts for these makers of bad baseball, these masters of disaster, this no-star team as famous in its own peculiar way as the 1927 Yankees, it can only be because even klutzes need love. And nobody before and nobody since has out-klutzed the original New York Mets.

They finished 60 1/2 games out of first place.

Their leading hitter was Richie Ashburn, who retired as soon as the season was over, and their leading pitcher was Roger Craig, who was involved in 34 decisions and led the staff in wins--with 10.

They tried Gil Hodges, a 38-year-old first baseman, and Ed Kranepool, a 17-year-old first baseman. They tried Ken MacKenzie, a pitcher from Yale, and Wilmer Mizell, a pitcher from Vinegar Bend. They tried men beyond their prime and men who would never have a prime.

They had two Bob Millers, both of them pitchers. They had catcher Harry Chiti, whom they acquired for a player to be named later, who turned out to be Harry Chiti, thereby being traded for himself. They had Hot Rod Kanehl and Choo Choo Coleman and the one, the only Marvelous Marv Throneberry, a baseball player who had difficulty with the ball part, but usually remembered to touch all the bases.

“Marv was like a lot of us,” recalled Jay Hook, the man who pitched the New York Mets to their first victory. “We really wanted to be better than we were. But when you get right down to it, I suppose we brought new meaning to the word ‘terrible.’ ”

By the time The Worst Team of All Time was through, it had dropped 16 of 18 games against the Dodgers, 16 of 18 against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and even 13 of 16 against the Houston Colt 45s, baseball’s other expansionists. In the eighth inning of the season’s final game, catcher Joe Pignatano hit into a triple play. Some of the Mets, Pignatano included, never batted in the majors again.

When they returned to the clubhouse after the game, a record of 40-120 having become their permanent scar, Casey Stengel, who managed to manage the Mets throughout this mess without losing humor or mind, said: “Fellers, don’t feel bad. This was a team effort. No one or two players could have done all this.”

Never have so many done so much to accomplish so little.

In the seasons that followed, the Mets did not get much better, although it was a mathematical improbability not to. Six years after birth, they already had lost 648 games. This is why most Americans were so amazed when the 1969 Mets won everything in baseball there was to win--the first divisional race, the National League pennant, the World Series, the works. The world’s ugliest human had won the beauty pageant.

The Mets have won still another World Series since, and, of the four clubs in the running for the 1986 title, they are the only ones to have won it since 1918. Not only is the standup comedy of 1962 forgotten, but these days the New York Mets are a heck of a lot closer to a record of 120-40 than they are to 40-120.

Those who lived through the bad times can smile in their mirrors now, understanding that most of those who speak of a ’62 Met speak as they would of a ’57 Chevy, with nostalgic reverence. It is a team, as Ashburn has come to realize, that “has developed a cult following.”

“We didn’t see any humor in the situation back then,” said Craig, now manager of the San Francisco Giants. “We never saw ourselves as something comic. When we lost a game, we felt lousy, not funny. But the older you get, the more distance you put behind you, you can look back on it with, well, amusement, I guess you’d say.”

The story of the laugh-a-minute ’62 Mets was five years in the making.

As soon as Stoneham and O’Malley dropped their bombs and took their goods to California, New York started lobbying for another team. Mayor Robert Wagner appointed a four-man committee to look into the matter, and one of the four, the young attorney William Shea, aggressively took charge, huddling first with representatives of the Reds, Pirates and Phillies to see if any of them would consider relocating.

Loathe to do unto others what Stoneham and O’Malley had done unto New York, Shea and the committee took a different route. First, he found a financial backer in Joan Whitney Payson, who had owned a piece of the Giants. Then, Shea and Branch Rickey, then 77, began to form a rival league, having detected baseball’s unwillingness to expand.

The Continental Baseball League was to have eight franchises, and five of them--including the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, Inc.--were completely organized by the summer of 1959, as the league prepared for an April 1961 start. Alas, it fell through. Baseball bigshots still had enough clout in Congress that anti-trust laws were upheld, blocking the progress of Rickey’s proposed league.

Rickey said he would stop challenging the majors if they would take four of his new teams into the fold. The American League expanded but resisted the Continental League franchises, inviting two other groups instead, one from Los Angeles (the Angels) and the other from Washington (which had lost the Senators to Minnesota). The National League, though, welcomed two of Rickey’s teams, one from Houston, the other New York.

Stengel, put to pasture by the Yankees, told he was too old, was asked to manage the new team. He accepted. The “Mets” were christened, from the corporate name, although there had been some support for the “Empires,” New York being the Empire State.

An owner, a manager, a name--all the Mets needed were players.

They picked from an expansion pool on Oct. 10, 1961, and their first pick was a catcher, Hobie Landrith, from the Giants. “You gotta have a catcher or you’ll have all passed balls,” Stengel said.

They picked a mix of graybeards and prospects, most of whose names Stengel mangled or forgot, and went to work. “Casey held the first meeting, and all the things I’d heard about ‘Stengelese’ were true,” said Ashburn, who for many years has been a successful broadcaster and columnist in Philadelphia. “Nobody comprehended most of what he said, but it came out like: ‘Some’s gonna be here, some’s gonna be coming, some’s gonna be going, but the ones that don’t won’t.’ ”

Said Hook, now a business executive in Detroit: “I loved Casey and felt he was a very quick-witted guy. My recollection of Stengelese was that it was kind of a staggered speech. He’d talk about one thing, then talk about another thing, then jump to something else, then remember what point he was making in the first place, then eventually come full circle. If you just stuck with him long enough, he’d come back to it.”

The Mets had no illusions of winning the pennant, but no clue to the insanity ahead. They beat the Yankees in a Florida exhibition game, and Payson took the whole team to dinner as a reward.

The team’s home games for 1962 would be played at the fabled Polo Grounds, deserted since 1957, with those amazing dimensions: 279 feet down the left-field line, 480 to deepest center, 257 down the line in right.

First came the first game, though, Opening Day, April 11, 1962, at St. Louis. Stengel’s lineup: Ashburn, cf; Felix Mantilla, ss; Charlie Neal, 2b; Frank Thomas, lf; Gus Bell, rf; Hodges, 1b; Don Zimmer, 3b; Landrith, c; Craig, p.

Hodges and Neal homered, but Julian Javier had four hits and Stan Musial three, and Larry Jackson pitched the Cardinals to an 11-4 win. Jackson would go on to defeat the Mets 21 times in his career.

Due to a rainout, this was the only game the Mets played before returning home. And to what did they return? A ticker-tape parade and a party at City Hall. National League baseball had come back to New York.

The only thing professional about it, though, was that the Mets got paid. They lost the home opener to the Pirates, 4-3, in front of a shivering “crowd” of 12,447. They lost the next game, and the next, and the next, until one day they found themselves in Pittsburgh, looking at the standings. The Pirates were 10-0. The Mets were 0-9. Their season was nine games old and they were 9 1/2 games back.

Hook finally went out and beat the Pirates, 9-1, with a five-hitter. He gave himself the runs he needed, with a two-run single in the second. “I had a good laugh about that recently,” Hook said. “We went back to New York this summer for a reunion, and they showed us a movie: ’25 Years of the Mets.’ And the only scene they showed from that game was my hit. They didn’t show a single pitch.

“I didn’t think much of that game at the time, except for the fact that we finally won one after 0-9. But I’ve come to get a big kick out of it since. When you look back on a pretty mediocre career, you’d have to say that’s my highlight.”

Hook went 8-19 that season, Craig 10-24, Al Jackson 8-20. Stengel, meanwhile, ran players in and out, particularly pitchers and catchers. On May 6, he traded for “Vinegar Bend” Mizell, who would be gone by August. Three days later, the Mets traded for the player who would come to symbolize their ineptitude.

Throneberry was a 28-year-old first baseman from Collierville, Tenn., who had gone 2 for 2 for the Yankees at the end of 1955, then tore up the minors for two more years without a call to the bigs. In three seasons at Denver, 1955-57, Throneberry had 118 home runs and 386 RBIs. “One thing you have to realize, Marv Throneberry had come up through the minors assessed by some people as another Mickey Mantle,” Hook said.

But his error totals ran high, and his batting averages, in limited duty with the Yankees from 1958-59, ran low. When the ’59 season ended, Throneberry was sent to Kansas City, along with pitcher Don Larsen and outfielder Hank Bauer, in the deal that brought Roger Maris to the Yankees.

From Kansas City to Baltimore moved Marv, and then on to the Mets. The price: A player to be named later. (It turned out to be Landrith.) Such a small price to pay for one of the cult figures of baseball’s modern era.

The Mets needed help. When they lost by a run to the Colt 45s on May 21, it set them off on a 17-game losing streak. Even a triple play against the Dodgers didn’t help, or a crowd of 54,360 that night at the Polo Grounds, largest National League crowd of the season. The Dodgers swept a doubleheader.

Hook had to end the skid again, beating the Cubs, 4-3. By now, people were beginning to notice the husky first baseman, Throneberry, who makes every fielding play an adventure. (He eventually tied Dick Stuart of the Pirates, “Dr. Strangeglove,” for errors by first basemen with 17.)

One day, Throneberry came to Hook.

“Jay, you’re an engineer, aren’t you?” Throneberry inquired. Hook had taken engineering courses at Northwestern.

“Yeah, Marv. Why?”

“Engineers can print real well, can’t they?” Throneberry asked.

“ Print real well?” Hook asked.

Throneberry extracted his cardboard nameplate from the top of his locker.

“Write ‘Marvelous Marv’ on this,” Throneberry instructed.

“Marvelous Marv?”

“Yeah.”

So, he did. And Throneberry hit a home run late in the game. And when the New York writers entered the clubhouse, the first thing they spotted was the nameplate.

The legend took root. And on June 17, it flowered. During an 8-7 loss to the Cubs at the Polo Grounds, Throneberry connected for a two-run triple. But as he rounded the bases, his teammates in the dugout noticed that he wasn’t bothering to step on them.

The Cubs appealed at second base, and Throneberry was called out. Stengel, whose eyesight was not as keen as his players’, stormed from the dugout. First-base coach Cookie Lavagetto tugged him by the sleeve. “Don’t argue, Case,” he said. “He missed first, too.”

Stengel moped back to the dugout.

“Well, I know damn well he didn’t miss third,” Stengel said. “He’s standing on it.”

The next batter, Charlie Neal, homered. Stengel sprang back out of the dugout, ran to first base, pointed to it until Neal stepped on it, ran behind home plate to third base, then pointed to it until Neal stepped on it.

Weeks to come for The Worst Team of All Time were fairly uneventful. Al Jackson threw the franchise’s first one-hitter against the Colt 45s--Joe Amalfitano got the hit--but on June 30 at Los Angeles, Koufax struck out Ashburn, Kanehl and Mantilla in the first inning on nine pitches, then proceeded to no-hit the Mets, striking out 13.

The Mets were a mess. They were so bad that when they did win, as when they took a twin bill from Cincinnati on Aug. 4, it so depressed the losing side that Manager Fred Hutchinson sat forlornly in the dugout, by himself, for 30 minutes after the second game.

Stengel was preening on Aug. 15 when he sent a pinch-hitter against the Phillies, Coleman, who homered, then pinch-hit for Coleman next time up with Jim Hickman, who also homered. “Genius at work,” Stengel said, index-fingering his forehead.

He decided to dazzle the Mets with his managing. When third-base coach Solly Hemus was ejected Aug. 21, Stengel, 63, took a few innings in the coaching box himself. Then he got a better idea: He told Throneberry to coach.

The Mets were trailing the Pirates in the bottom of the ninth, 4-2. They had two men on. Stengel told Throneberry to get out of the coaching box and grab a bat. Marvelous Marv hit a three-run homer off Elroy Face to win the game.

Well, the rest of the season was pretty routine. By September, Stengel was experimenting at first base with the Bronx teen-ager, Kranepool, who had just been signed to an $85,000 bonus. The front office, meanwhile, was agitated that work had fallen behind at the new stadium at Flushing Meadow, the one to be named after attorney Shea, the stadium that, according to a news report of the time, would “incorporate ultra-modern innovations such as moving stairways and mercury vapor-lighting” and could cost as much as $18 million.

The triple play on the final day was appropriate. “That’s the kind of season it was,” Craig said. “It wasn’t going to get any better, right down to the last drop.”

Said Hook: “We never thought anyone would ever want to remember that season. We thought they’d want to forget it. But now I’ll go to one of the reunions in New York, and I’ll take my kids with me, and the fans are shouting at me for autographs, and my kids are asking me: ‘What is this? Why in the world would they want autographs from you guys? You guys were the worst team of all time.’ I just laugh. I guess the ’62 Mets have a place in history, for whatever reason.”

They got together one more time this summer, at the reunion in New York, to play one more game.

They were rained out.

METS YEAR-BY-YEAR

Year W L Pct. Pos. GB 1962 40 120 .250 10 60 1/2 1963 51 111 .315 10 48 1/2 1964 53 109 .327 10 40 1965 50 112 .309 10 47 1966 66 95 .410 9 28 1/2 1967 61 101 .377 10 40 1/2 1968 73 89 .451 9 24 1969* 100 62 .617 1 +8 1970 83 79 .512 3 6 1971 83 79 .512 3 14 1972 83 73 .532 3 13 1/2 1973 82 79 .509 1 +1 1/2 1974 71 91 .438 5 17 1975 82 80 .509 3 10 1/2 1976 86 76 .531 3 15 1977 64 98 .395 6 37 1978 66 96 .407 6 24 1979 63 99 .389 6 35 1980 67 95 .414 5 24 1981** 17 24 .415 5 15 24 28 .462 4 5 1/2 1982 65 97 .401 6 27 1983 68 94 .420 6 22 1984 90 72 .556 2 6 1/2 1985 98 64 .605 2 3 1986 108 54 .667 1 +21 1/2

*Start of divisional play. **1981 totals reflect first and second half standings.

METS’ FIRST GAME

April 11, 1962 Cardinals 11, Mets 4

NEW YORK ST. LOUIS ab r h bi ab r h bi Ashburn cf 5 1 1 0 Flood cf 4 3 2 1 Mantilla ss 4 1 1 0 Javier 2b 5 3 4 1 Neal 2b 4 1 3 2 White 1b 4 1 2 3 Thomas lf 3 0 0 1 Musial rf 3 1 3 2 Bell rf 3 0 1 0 Landrum cf 1 0 0 0 Hodges 1b 4 1 1 1 Boyer 3b 4 0 1 2 Zimmer 3b 4 0 1 0 Minoso lf 4 0 1 1 Landrith c 4 0 0 0 Oliver lf 4 1 2 0 Craig p 1 0 0 0 Gotay ss 4 1 0 0 Bouchee ph 0 0 0 0 Jackson p 4 1 1 1 Moorhead p 1 0 0 0 Moford p 0 0 0 0 Labine p 0 0 0 0 Marshall ph 0 0 0 0 Totals 33 4 8 4 Total 37 11 16 11

New York 002 110 000 -- 4 St. Louis 203 014 01x -- 11

E--Boyer, Neal, Landrith, Mantilla. DP--St. Louis, 2. LOB--New York 7, St. Louis 5. 2B--Oliver 2, Musial, Boyer, Mantilla. HR--Hodges, Neal. SB--Flood 2, Javier. SF--Thomas, Flood, White.

IP H R ER BB SO New York Craig L, 0-1 3 8 5 5 0 1 Moorhead 3 6 5 2 1 1 Moford 1 1 0 0 0 0 Labine 1 1 1 0 0 0 St. Louis Jackson W, 1-0 9 8 4 4 4 2

Balk--Craig. T--2:53. U--Gorman, Jackowski, Sudol, Forman. A--16,147.

Bouchee ph

Moorhead p