In the introduction, Bill Veeck says "Jimmy Breslin has written a history of the Mets, preserving for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity and abject failure."
"The Mets is a very good thing. They give everybody a job. Just like the WPA." Billy Loes, the only pitcher in the history of baseball to be defeated in a World Series game because he lost a ground ball in the sun.
Ebbets Field had had a sign that said "Hit sign and win a suit". The Polo Grounds, in 1962, had two signs offering the award of a boat at the end of the season. Marvelous Marv Throneberry, the Mets first baseman from landlocked Tennessee, won the prize and was advised by the League that he had to pay income taxes on the value of the boat. During the season when Marv hit a triple, and was called out, it was because he had missed both first and second base. The man considered the epitome of the team's failure had a boat he didn't need, and not the money to pay the taxes on it.
Soon after the Dodgers and Giants left town, Mayor Wagner called attorney Bill Shea and asked him to start an effort to bring a NL team to town. After taking a run at the Reds, Pirates and Phillies, he decided expansion was the route. The Mets and Houston were to be the 9th and 10th teams in the league. Joan Whitney Payson was the owner and she demanded that two men who had worked for the Yankees become Mets. Thus GM George Weiss and manager Casey Stengel joined the team. As for players, the NL set up the expansion draft to ensure that the new teams were going to draft from a pool of unwanted old-timers and occupy the second division for years. Casey's inspiring first team speech was "We got rich owners. They got plenty of money. If anybody does any good around here, I'll see to it that we get money off the owners. There's a lot of money around here. You got to go and get it." They certainly did not get it. They had two pitchers who lost 20 games and gave up 192 home runs on their way to a team ERA of 5.04. They committed 210 errors. They lost their 120th game on a triple play at Wrigley. They were simply 'amazin'. The most important and closing point that Breslin makes is that they were loved, seldom booed and drew almost a million fans because they were in the NL. They appealed to the former Dodger and Giant fans who simply could never root for the Yankees. As the son of a Giant's fan who played in the Dodger minor league system and the grandson of a man who took me to Ebbetts Field in 1955, I completely get it.
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