Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Congrats to the Detroit Tigers for not breaking or tying the MLB record for most losses in a season. This is a special record & it belongs to the Mets. It's not enough to be merely bad, like the Tigers. To have this record, a team should be magically, lovably, memorably awful. The Mets accomplished it in the first year of their existence, with much hype. The record was, in a sense, validated in 1969, when they won the World Series with an equally oddball collection of players.
But what makes the '62 Mets so special is that they played in the same city as the Yankees, attracted Dodgers & Giants fans who loathed the Yankees, & functioned as a kind of alternate universe Yankees. Compare the records:
The Yankees went 96 - 66, beating out a very good Twins formerly known as the Senators.
Mantle won the MVP.
Tom Tresh was Rookie of the Year.
Ralph Terry went 23-12, pitching nearly 300 innings
The Yanks beat the Giants 4-3 in one of the most evenly matched series ever played. It was just another typically great ho hum year for the Yanks.
The Mets were 40-120, finishing 60 games out in a 10 team league
Pitcher Roger Craig went 10-24.
Richie Ashburn & Frank Thomas were on the team (both had good years). Also Marv Throneberry, Gil Hodges, Choo Choo Coleman, Vinegar Bend Mizell & Don Zimmer. & of course, the Mets had Casey Stengel, just one year removed from managing a Yankee team that had out-hit & out-scored the Pirates & still lost the '60 series (Bobby Richardson was the MVP, Whitey Ford pitched two complete game shutouts). Casey made the Mets. He gave the Mets their primary inverse connection to some of the greatest teams & players in baseball history, past & future. Casey rooted the team in baseball tradition, in the Polo Grounds, in a city still mourning the loss of the Giants & Dodgers, thus making the Mets more than just an expansion franchise. For the Mets in '62, losing was winning. For the Tigers in '03 it was just losing.
LETTERMAN had one of his best music shows tonight. Randy Newman sat in with the band. Then the Philharmonic performed the "Marriage of Figaro" overture on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater, 60 players in evening dress conducted by Loren Maazel, a late afternoon sun illuminating the windows of surrounding buildings. Good camerawork, too. A very "New York" occasion. From previous stunts, I've been under the impression that the roof can only be reached by ladder; which would've made the set up tricky indeed, including passing up several dozen very valuable stringed instruments.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
But what makes the '62 Mets so special is that they played in the same city as the Yankees, attracted Dodgers & Giants fans who loathed the Yankees, & functioned as a kind of alternate universe Yankees. Compare the records:
The Yankees went 96 - 66, beating out a very good Twins formerly known as the Senators.
Mantle won the MVP.
Tom Tresh was Rookie of the Year.
Ralph Terry went 23-12, pitching nearly 300 innings
The Yanks beat the Giants 4-3 in one of the most evenly matched series ever played. It was just another typically great ho hum year for the Yanks.
The Mets were 40-120, finishing 60 games out in a 10 team league
Pitcher Roger Craig went 10-24.
Richie Ashburn & Frank Thomas were on the team (both had good years). Also Marv Throneberry, Gil Hodges, Choo Choo Coleman, Vinegar Bend Mizell & Don Zimmer. & of course, the Mets had Casey Stengel, just one year removed from managing a Yankee team that had out-hit & out-scored the Pirates & still lost the '60 series (Bobby Richardson was the MVP, Whitey Ford pitched two complete game shutouts). Casey made the Mets. He gave the Mets their primary inverse connection to some of the greatest teams & players in baseball history, past & future. Casey rooted the team in baseball tradition, in the Polo Grounds, in a city still mourning the loss of the Giants & Dodgers, thus making the Mets more than just an expansion franchise. For the Mets in '62, losing was winning. For the Tigers in '03 it was just losing.
LETTERMAN had one of his best music shows tonight. Randy Newman sat in with the band. Then the Philharmonic performed the "Marriage of Figaro" overture on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater, 60 players in evening dress conducted by Loren Maazel, a late afternoon sun illuminating the windows of surrounding buildings. Good camerawork, too. A very "New York" occasion. From previous stunts, I've been under the impression that the roof can only be reached by ladder; which would've made the set up tricky indeed, including passing up several dozen very valuable stringed instruments.
