NEW YORK — Craig Anderson pauses the telephone name. He’s bought 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 one more 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 Could 12, when he earned the win in each video games of a doubleheader sweep.
These could 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 need to want it on him or anybody,” Anderson says. “That’s the best way I felt then and that’s the best way I really feel now.”
On the telephone 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 facet 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 because the 2003 Detroit Tigers wanted 5 wins of their final six video games to keep away from it.
The White Sox must go 12-15 to keep away from tying the report. They haven’t executed that over a 27-game stretch since Could. In the mean time, they’ve misplaced 37 of their previous 41 contests.
There aren’t many gamers who can relate to what that form of season seems like. Anderson and Hook are two of them.
“It’s shattering when it’s occurring to you,” Hook mentioned, his matter-of-fact tone over the telephone belying that alternative of adjective, “and I’m positive 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 know 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 Could 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 enlargement draft. Landrith had performed for the Mets between the commerce and the announcement, which 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 possibly second, too, the story goes — on a triple. He received 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 form of carry on occurring 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 Sport?: The Inconceivable 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 recreation — to go together with greater than 5 earned runs per contest. On common, their video games took quarter-hour longer than everybody else’s, which brought on 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 could possibly be fairly good. A 12 months earlier, the enlargement Angels had received 70 video games, and the Mets had introduced in some massive names — Gil Hodges and Roger Craig within the enlargement draft, Richie Ashburn in a take care of the Cubs.
“I appeared on the roster and thought, ‘Man, that’s a fairly dynamic listing,’” 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 could possibly be a good workforce.”
“I assumed we had been going to not less than be aggressive,” Anderson mentioned.
The nine-game dropping streak to begin the season quelled that optimism. When a 9-3 mark over two weeks in Could threatened to revive it, the Mets responded by dropping these 17 in a row.
“That was the place I began to assume that possibly we had some issues,” mentioned Anderson.
One participant after the season informed Breslin, “Forty video games is about all we might win. In any case, we had been enjoying towards groups that had all main leaguers on them.”
The Mets had been nonetheless beloved. They drew practically 1,000,000 followers to the Polo Grounds, ending in the course of the league in attendance — greater than Purple Sox and Phillies groups round .500.
“The New York followers are true baseball followers,” Anderson mentioned. “I received’t say they forgave us, however they by no means gave up on us.”
“You see,” Breslin wrote of the town’s affection for the workforce, “the Mets are losers, identical to practically all people else in life. It is 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 off the 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 discuss 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 loads by these invested within the Mets’ historical past.
The 2024 White Sox aren’t worthy of breaking the Mets’ report.
The Mets had no alternative however to be unhealthy. Stricter guidelines within the enlargement draft — as a result of the AL’s enlargement groups had executed higher in 1961 — left New York with little to select from. The beginner draft wasn’t round but, not to mention free company. The Mets needed to construct by scouting and buying and selling. The White Sox, however, 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 writer of “My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom.”
“It’s not life and loss of life, BUT I’d want they not break it,” he mentioned by way of direct message. “I grew up with legendary tales about how unhealthy and hilarious the 1962 Mets had been, and I might ideally not need to see a workforce cross the 120 losses.”
Devin Gordon is the writer of “So Many Methods to Lose: The Superb True Story of the New York Mets — the Greatest 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 approach, and I like that it’s enshrined in historical past. It’s additionally the right 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 approach 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 received a world championship seven years later supplies the right 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. Nevertheless, I don’t need 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 need 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 some of the liked 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 an off-the-cuff 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 satisfaction 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 someone else lose greater than my workforce. Plus, you recognize, 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 towards 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 listing.” (Harry Harris / Related Press)
There’s one different motive Hook and Anderson don’t need the report to be damaged. Taking part in for the 1962 Mets is part — a major half — of their private legacies in baseball.
Hook recorded the primary win in Mets historical past; there’s a ball displayed prominently at Citi Area together with his identify written on it in massive letters. Anderson indicators virtually all his autographs with “Unique Met.”
“When you’d requested me this again within the mid-60s, I might have mentioned I used to be so completely happy to get it over with and get out of there,” Anderson mentioned. “However after 62 years now …”
Hook thought again to the Previous Timers’ Day the Mets held in 2022. The membership had requested him if he needed to pitch, and the then-85-year-old urged a primary pitch as a substitute. 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 perfect weekend going to New York and being at Citi Area,” 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 12 months, is safe.
“With the passage of time, it has turn 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 happened, they might not probably perceive what their influence was not solely on baseball followers in New York however across the nation.”
(High photograph from the Polo Grounds on June 20, 1962: Related Press file)