Miracles And Magic:
A Season Celebrating
40 Years Of The NY Mets

By STEPHEN McGUIRE

Forty years ago this baseball season, a fledgling team of loveable losers took to the field at the Polo Grounds.

The game and the lives of millions of New Yorkers would never be same.

It was 1962 - the same year John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, the year of the Cuban Missile crisis and the year the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club was created.

Met fans continue to believe in miracles as the Queens Boys of Summer celebrate 40 years at bat. PRESS Photo By Stephen McGuire

It was the hope of then-New York City Mayor Robert Wagner and an Attorney named William Shea to bring a National League baseball team back to the Big Apple after New Yorkers’ hearts were broken by the departure of the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers.

Dubbed the Mets by owner Joan Payson, the team was a hit with New Yorkers even before they played their first game.

On April 12, 1962, the City threw the team a parade on Broadway.

And On Opening Day it became clear that the team was “Amazin’”  - even if it was only in their own minds.

“Can’t anybody here play this game?” asked Mets manager Casey Stengel.

It was the expression that later became the title of a book by newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin.

The book detailed how, despite their losing record, New York City was infatuated with the Mets.

In their debut season, the team shattered baseball attendance records by drawing approximately 2 million fans - a figure virtually unheard of at the time.

He may not have been at the bat, but from the dugout and in front of the cameras and microphones, Casey Stengel - the gnarly baseball veteran with the craggy face who had just been released by the New York Yankees after a 12-year stretch of unprecedented managerial success with the Bronx Bombers - was approached by Mets president George Weiss in 1961 to manage the new baseball team.

Stengel was less than enthusiastic.

He had already turned down a job offer as manager of the Detroit Tigers and expressed little interest in heading up a baseball team again.

But Weiss, a former Yankee general manager, refused to give up.

As far as he was concerned, there was only one man could fill the spiked shoes of the New York Mets’ first manager.

 With persistence and not-so-gentle persuasion, Weiss convinced Stengel to get back into the game and on September 29, 1961, 72-year-old Casey Stengel made it official.

Stengel became the first manager of the New York Mets and would take aim at structuring the new team when they took to the field for the first time in 1962.

He had no illusions about his new club, he told the media.

He had located the spirit and character of his new players, calling them “Amazin’” - even before the team had completed or played their first game.

An irrepressible phrasemaker in his own right, Stengel had tossed off a moniker that has become synonymous with Big Apple baseball.

In 1964, the Mets were given the shiny new Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows.

But what really needed polishing were the lackluster baseball skills of this rag-tag team.

Season after season Mets fans grew accustomed to the team’s blunders on the diamond - and stayed away from home games.

The fans who did show up knew what to expect - and often it wasn’t good news.

But in 1969, what can only be described as a miracle happened.

The Mets were losers no more.

As the world’s attention was focused on men walking on the moon and turmoil in Southeast Asia, the Mets quietly got better.

The team began to win and the word of their victories began to spread.

As more fans began to show up at Shea and optimism about their chances of winning was growing, the Mets captured the hearts of the city when they won the pennant.

“Amazin’ Amazin’ Amazin’ Amazin’,” Stengel - by then the former Mets skipper - waxed again.

Unbelievably, the team in the baseball basement just seven years before was now in a World Series.

With their ears glued to transistor radios, everyone in the city and across the country - from school kids to stockbrokers - was captivated by the “Miracle Mets.”

In a win that pushed a City right out of the graveyard and straight into baseball heaven, the Mets won the World Series.

For a short-lived moment the win gave the tumultuous world of 1969 a breather - a moment to rejoice.

After the Mets win, Stengel said of the team, “They come from behind by runnin’ out the ball and hittin’ it over the fences which the manager platoons them amazin’ly that he has an old team on the bench and a young team on the bench and they all came through for him.”

After all the team had been through, Stengel still wasn’t making sense.

But baseball in the Big Apple did.

In 1986, the Mets showed New York that miracles can happen again.

The team wound up with a winning record of 108-54 - the best in club history.

Again they found themselves in the World Series.

But after tying up the series against the Boston Red Sox and losing Game 5 in Boston, the stage was set for the Mets elimination as they returned home to Shea Stadium for Game 6.

The Red Sox led in the top of the 10th inning of the game.

But the Mets were able to come back and tie it up in the bottom half of the inning but with two outs against them, it looked like the rally had come to an end.

Then, the unbelievable happened again.

Outfielder Mookie Wilson hit a weak ground ball through the legs of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner.

“He probably took his eyes off the ball for a split second, to see where I was,” Wilson said of what has become known as one of baseball’s most legendary moments.

That split second was all it took.

The Buckner error allowed third baseman Ray Knight to score the winning run.

It gave the Mets a fighting chance in game 7 which the Mets won to take home a second World Series trophy.

For the fans, the Mets were amazin’ once again.

On Opening Day in 2002, in large block letters, the slogan “Always Believe” was visible on top of the Mets dugout.

The slogan seemed to sum up the hopes of fans and the Mets team with a vastly different look from 2001.

During the off-season, Mets General Manager Steve Phillips worked to acquire new sluggers including Roger Cedeño, Alomar, Mo Vaughn, Jeromy Burnitz and starting pitchers Pedro Astacio and Shawn Estes.

The team with new additions and previous fan favorites like Leiter, Mike Piazza, Edgardo Alfonzo and John Franco have some baseball experts predicting a winning season and fans hoping that history can repeat itself and saying “You Gotta Believe!”

— Liz Goff contributed to this story

The Mets Logo

The circular Mets logo, designed by sports cartoonist Ray Gatto and unveiled on November 16, 1961, has gone virtually unchanged throughout the history of the club. The shape of the insignia, with its orange stitching, represents a baseball, and the bridge in the foreground symbolizes that the Mets, in bringing back the National League to New York, represent all five boroughs. It’s not just a skyline in the background, but has special meaning. At the left is the church spire, symbolic of Brooklyn, the borough of churches. The second building from the left is the Williamsburg Savings Bank, the tallest building in Brooklyn. Next is the Woolworth Building. After a general skyline view of midtown comes the Empire State Building. At the far right is the United Nations Building.