There are four teams in Mets history that are instantly iconic, teams that don’t require an introduction to the world at large. The years they represent are de facto brands when you’re talking baseball with those who know baseball.
The 1962 Mets.
The 1969 Mets.
The 1973 Mets.
The 1986 Mets.
Bring any of those up to somebody who isn’t a Mets fan and chances are very good they’ll have at least an idea of who and what you’re talking about.
The Mets celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Mets’ Miracle world championship in 2009 and the 20th anniversary of the 1986 Mets’ Dominant world championship in 2006 by gathering most of the players from those teams and honoring them at Citi Field and Shea Stadium, respectively. The Mets didn’t invite the living members of the 1962 Original Mets back in 2012 (perhaps for fear of eliciting unflattering comparisons) but they did wear a patch commemorating their 50th anniversary as a franchise and used the occasion to update their uniforms to better reflect their classic look.
For the 40th anniversary of the 1973 You Gotta Believe Mets, the team that roared from last place on August 30, to a division title on October 1 and a pennant on October 10, the Mets in 2013 handed out a deck of playing cards on August 3.
Mine was missing the 5 of diamonds.
I’ve been over the recent lack of organizational appreciation for 1973 before, but it still bothers me. It got me wondering if the 1973 Mets had gone just a wee bit further four decades earlier, would have they been given their historical due last year? There had been celebrations of the 1973 Mets in 1983, 1993 and 2003. It had been established that despite losing the World Series they were secure within the canon of Metsiana; that when you sat down to tell or listen to stories about the most famous of Mets teams — the iconic ones — they would always be in the conversation. The 1973 Mets, like those of 1962, 1969 and 1986 were long ago chiseled onto the face of Mount RushMora.
Yet the Mets in 2013 all but ignored 1973.
And the Mets in 2010 paid the shortest of shrift to the 2000 National League champions, the only National League champions the Mets have produced in the past quarter-century.
And the Mets in 2009 paid no homage to the 1999 Wild Card & National League Division Series winners, whose bulkily described feats by no means detract from their status as the most beloved Met ensemble since 1986.
And the Mets in 1998 and 2008 didn’t as much as tip a cap to the 1988 National League Eastern Division champions, the club that finished the regular season with a 15-game bulge over their closest opponents and the second-highest winning percentage in team history.
And, if form holds, the Mets will never lift a finger to officially recall the 2006 National League East champions, the team that broke an 18-year first-place drought and energized Shea Stadium like crazy across the spring, the summer and the early fall.
What, I wondered, does a team have to do to be taken to heart by a franchise that isn’t exactly dripping in postseason experiences? Is it really no longer enough to have given millions of New Yorkers an indelible thrill ride? Is making the playoffs that slight an accomplishment in the new historical math? Are the rare teams that made you open your gates beyond the first week of October truly not worthy of a “thank you” every ten or so years? Are the fans who adored those teams not worth indulging for roughly one home date out of every 810?
Is it really as simple as we only care about the big prize? That if all you could bring us is a silver or bronze from the final rounds of autumnal competition, that lesser medal should be shoved in a drawer forever more?
In case you were wondering, that’s why I asked the question the other day that apparently struck some sort of chord in the Mets fan soul, because we haven’t had anything on Faith and Fear generate this much response since Johan Santana struck out David Freese. Usually the Mets have to blow an enormous September lead, fire a manager in the dead of night, stand by innocently as their two most despised rivals engage each other’s skills or play ball while an international terrorist is hunted down and killed to get people really going around here.
This was something else altogether. This was you, like me, not forgetting that we are the sum of all the seasons that have come before the one that’s coming together at present…especially the ones that came oh so close to paying off in spades that it didn’t seem silly to ask which one you most deeply wished had hit the historical jackpot.
Thanks again to all who offered a choice for the New York Mets’ retroactive third world championship or, for that matter, their multiple choices. Yesterday we published a de facto oral history of the five postseasons when the Mets didn’t win the World Series. Today, before tossing in my nickel’s worth, I’ll share a few sentiments that didn’t quite answer the question that was posed but I enjoyed reading nonetheless.
Like those belonging to the less decisive:
• “This is a beautiful thing to think about. Although, what Met-respecting fan could pick anything other than ’99 or ’00?”
• “Gotta go with 2006. Was at Game 7. 20-year anniversary synergy would have been sweet. Or 2000…ultimate trump card…argh.”
• “Split between ’99 and ’06: 2 authentically great teams (nothing against other 3 yrs) + history (back from 3-0 down vs Braves, Endy). It’s so easy, too! Benitez gets 2 more outs in the 10th, Valentin brings home the run from 3rd with 1 out in the 6th, etc.”
• “(2000 pitching + 1999 offense) ^ (1999 defense) = juggernaut.”
• “’99 is the best team, ’06 was better than its opponents, ’73 = 2 rings for Seaver in 2 CY years, 2000 means Yankees lose. Tough…”
• “I wonder if you’d be surprised if I told you it’s a tie, ’73 & ’88. Both years we thought it was it beginning. It was really the end.”
• “I’d have to take either ’99 or 2000…loved that team…the greatest IF, Olerud and Robin and of course the Monster outta the cage…”
• “’88 for nostalgia, ’06 for pain relief.”
• “2006 for my 13 year-old-son. 1988 for my brother. 1999 for the Bellerose Boys who I watched every game with. 2000 for all that’s right with the world. 1973 for me.”
In addition, as I read the FAFIF comments section as well as the responses on Facebook, Twitter, the Crane Pool Forum, a very fine blog and in my own e-mail, I found a boomlet on behalf of non-nominated squads, particularly 1985. Those 98-win wonders were supported by the sense that one of the best Mets teams ever was robbed by being born too soon to take advantage of the Wild Card. As someone who, at 22, considered 1985 the season to which my entire life was leading, I sympathized. But I didn’t include it in the article because it seemed catapulting a non-playoff team from three games back in the division standings to a world championship required too much cosmic grace from the baseball gods.
I also found a write-in vote for 1962 that imagined “a ragtag team winning games right out of the box, brilliantly managed by an Old Perfesser seeking vengeance on the Yankees for blithely tossing him on his ear for the crime of reaching 70, vanquishing those self-same Yankees in October,” and concluded, “Oh, to have had that!”
Oh, indeed, to have had that. Despite having spent the Mets’ first season in utero, I wouldn’t mind having that in our backstory. A younger, newer fan, however, wasn’t quite as selfless and asked the third world championship be achieved “this year” — which would make it not at all retroactive — because then “I would get a chance to witness it first-hand.”
Nice sentiment for going-forward purposes, but that — as more than one English teacher liked to tell me — was not the assignment. Still, hats off to anybody who became a Mets fan after 2006 and hasn’t had as much as a spoonful of postseason to tide him over.
One reader agonized more than most of his fellow fans because he was worried about disrupting the Mets’ time-space continuum. He wrote, “I’m still torn on which team to choose. Every one except for the 1999 team saw the franchise move toward rock bottom after losing in the playoffs.” Eventually, citing the havoc wrought in Back To The Future 2, he decided that the potential ripple effects of tinkering with the past were too daunting and took a pass on the whole idea.
Somebody else drove a bullpen cart through my loophole that you were welcome to speculate about how succeeding Met fortunes might be affected by the historical do-over, but you had to leave 1969 and 1986 alone. I figured I was safe with that caveat since 1969 preceded all five seasons in question and a thirteen-year gap separated 1973 and 1986. But, this thought-provoking reader countered, if the Mets win in ’73 and consequently have their act together just a little more in the late ’70s, then maybe they don’t finish with the worst record in the National League in 1979 and then they don’t get to draft Darryl Strawberry in 1980…and where’s your undisturbed 1986 then? “I feel,” he admitted, “as if I’m now in one of those ‘who would win a fight between Aquaman and Wonder Woman?’ discussions.”
Point taken. (And if it’s 1974 Lynda Carter vs. 2006 Vincent Chase, Wonder Woman, I sure hope.)
A few of you worried Mike Hampton being persuaded to stay at Shea by a 2000 world championship would mean no compensation pick in 2001, thus meaning no David Wright selected with that pick. On the other hand, someone was willing to ponder an “unscrambling of the eggs” to such an extent that “maybe at the private owner’s party” following the 1999 world championship, “Bernie Madoff gets drunk and comes clean.”
Somebody else preferred to know if we could instead pick a season to “toss in the wastebasket forever” and then nominated two from the ’90s and three from the ’00s. Another reader suggested that if I really wanted to do over history, “How about the Mets don’t trade Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi?” One fellow, while being very civil about it, copped to “this entire topic” making him “sick to my stomach”. And not surprisingly, someone played the old standard, “I’d say this guy has too much time on his hands,” though he was nice enough to leaven his dismissal with, “except he really does make inspiring use of it, doesn’t he?”
Hey, I couldn’t have done it without all of you. We don’t have too much time on our hands. We just don’t have enough Mets. Or enough Mets champions, apparently.
Yet we’re still here. We’re still rooting for the Mets, we’re still reading blogs about the Mets and Jason and I are still writing a blog about the Mets exactly nine years after we started this one. When we began, we had six postseason appearances and two world champions in our shared memory. Since February 16, 2005, we’ve upped the former number by one and the latter by none.
Yet we’re still here.
How great it would have been to have blogged a world championship on Faith and Fear in Flushing. It’s been great to have blogged the pair we have in Flashback form. It’s been great to revisit the near-misses as events and impulse have warranted. I wasn’t ten posts into my FAFIF life before I was pivoting from the present of February 25, 2005, and dwelling on what went wrong on October 9, 1988. Before that first year of blogging was over, I’d gone back over 1973, 1999 and 2000 with all manner of fine-toothed combs, too, making sure to leave each file open for further inspection.
But the playoff year I got the biggest kick writing about was the one I got to do while it was in progress — which is why 2006 has my vote in this non-binding celestial primary.
I thought there’d be more to this little display.
I have some of the same reasons you who chose 2006 did. The most recent span of Mets baseball would have been more palatable, even delectable. Endy’s catch would have occurred in service to a transcendent cause. Called Strike Three and its lingering fallout would have never occurred. New York would’ve been a better place to cheer. It was the perfect 20-year bookend to 1986. We’d remember a team that owned April through September more lovingly and frequently. El Duque would’ve come back from his calf injury and stymied the Tigers. Delgado would’ve gone deep. Chris Woodward or Julio Franco would’ve come off the bench and done something significant. Endy would’ve made another catch. Wagner would’ve gotten the last out and embraced Lo Duca. Wright would have a ring. Reyes would have a ring. Every Mets fan sentient that October would have the moral equivalent of a ring let alone a winter spent plucking ticker-tape out of our clothes.
On some level the same could be said for all the prematurely truncated playoff years preceding 2006. Undesirable results could’ve been reversed. The Yankees could’ve been overshadowed (a not insignificant factor for the 2000 crowd, I noticed). The one play or pitch or move that’s haunted the premises for too long could’ve been dispatched into the cornfield. Players with whom you empathize would’ve been rewarded. And the current Mets management would be forced to fully acknowledge something spectacular happened. If we could do over 1973 or 1988 or 1999 or 2000 (or 1985 or 1962), hell yes, let’s do it over.
But if I can only do over one that came so close, give me the one I could’ve blogged about on Faith and Fear in Flushing. Give me the one Jason could’ve blogged about on Faith and Fear in Flushing. Give me the one the best damn readers in all of Metsopotamia could’ve shared with us while it was happening. Give me one that would’ve stayed stuck in the collective consciousness for seasons to come, whether or not it kickstarted 2007 and 2008 toward greater heights (it certainly wouldn’t have made the subsequent seasons substantially worse).
Give us one in the general vicinity of now while I’m doing this. That would edge all other factors. I’m a Mets fan and blogger since this date in 2005. The two are hopelessly (or should that be hopefully?) intertwined.
I truly loved the 2006 Mets, though not necessarily more than the other seasons in question. Nothing could top 1999 for My Favorite Met Year consideration, which may be why I’m willing to deny it a theoretical world championship. How could something I love more than any other thing get any better? With two more NLCS wins over the Braves and a World Series won against the Yankees, of course, but you know what I mean. It’s not that I’m at peace with how those playoffs ended, exactly. Yesterday, in a bit of correspondence with someone who’d just read the Do-Over post, I found myself right back on the razor’s edge of the early morning hours of October 20, 1999:
“I would’ve started Reed in Game Six — two days’ rest would not have bothered him after throwing 77 pitches in Game Four, three nights earlier — and reserved Leiter for Game Seven; that’s not hindsight, that was my plan right after Ventura’s ball went deep enough to score Cedeño from third. Then I would’ve opened the World Series with Rogers, who was unbeatable at Shea.”
So no, I have not found inner peace 14 years and four months later, even if 1999 is the non-championship team whose journey (if not destination) strikes me as the most satisfying. I learned to live with how 1999 turned out. Though its ghosts would come out of the woodwork 32 years after the fact, I learned to live with 1973’s one-game shortfall, which seems a pittance compared to the un-Believable bounty of happiness that preceded it. Though I hate that we didn’t win the only Subway Series in which we ever played…let’s just say that although I always thought losing the World Series to the Yankees would be the end of the world, it wasn’t. It only felt like it. The sun came up on consecutive mornings, somehow, and the earth continued its spinning unabated. 1988 is still a disgusting outcome, but at least it taught me something about hubris and expectations. I guess.
There are valuable lessons embedded into my faith not being fully rewarded in 1973, 1988, 1999 and 2000 and I can still appreciate the successes they let me revel in en route to the edge of the cliff from whence the Mets and I plunged together. I appreciate the 97 wins and NLDS sweep from eight years ago as well, yet other than “don’t let your setup man get into a cab late at night in Miami” and “have more starting pitching in case two of your projected starters go down with injuries at the last minute,” I don’t know what the lesson was from 2006’s unfinished symphony. I was ready for another world championship. I was ready from April onward. I was ready to skip upstairs to this very spot and write about what it meant to have secured the third world championship in New York Mets history.
I’m still ready. I hope you’ll be here when I get that opportunity.
Didn’t even need to read it. Matt Franco game? Grand Slam Single? Olerud & Fonzie?
Never a chance in hell Greg would pick any year over 1999.
So obvious.
That is, if you know your FAFIF like I do.
My thought process went from 2006 because I believe we as a people need the most recent world championship possible, to 1973 because I was so touched by the pure love expressed by those who never forgot it, to 2000 because the direct wiping away of that WS loss was overpowering to consider, to 1999 because it’s 1999 (Jon Weber’s piece really moved me), back eventually to 2006 for the overriding reason stated. And along the way I didn’t exactly gloss over 1988, which packed a ton of talent and momentum onto that jet to L.A., but it lands fifth in my personal retroactive standings.
I never got back to the “iconic” point at the beginning of the above post but it would’ve been nice (to say the least) for one of the Bobby V teams to have gone all the way if only to be able to center that era’s defining year. One of the cited comments that effectively merged 1999 and 2000 is kind of the way it’s destined to go down, I think. And that’ll have to do, but it sort of prevents one of those years from breaking out brandwise. To us, 1999 will always be the cult sensation, 2000 the one that got the big break but never fully capitalized.
And though nobody ever brings it up except for me and my friend Kevin, if we had the setup back then that exists today, the 1997 Mets would’ve tied the Dodgers for the second Wild Card. Tell me they couldn’t have beaten the frigging Marlins in October!
No, you kinda did need to read it roundrockmets.
Great topic and enjoyed the comments here and the conversation at the POOL.
Your choice is very understandable Greg.
Appreciate it, Z. Maybe you can put together a commemorative card set for the five would-be world champions?
The esoteric Twilight Zone reference is one of the reasons you remain a master of your craft.
Thanks, though on this blog, I’d contend nothing is esoteric.
I didn’t become a Mets fan until 1972 so I missed the ’69 celebration. Every “almost” year was as a fan on the other side of the fruited plain. Never really hated the Yankees until 2000. Best playoff series to me was beating the SF Giants that year and I like the Giants. 2006 was my pick to retro change.
Having only found this blog early last year, I certainly look forward to the next historic winning season and reading FAFIF during spring training, opening day, the all-star break, dog days of summer, and the stretch drive to a round of playoffs that will put a third Mets World Championship pennant on the man cave wall.
Greg, as always you bring such a wealth of Mets memories to the forefront of our blue and orange craniums.
Thanks Skid. We’ll be getting back to 2014 any minute now.
The infamous Duaner Sanchez late night run for Dominican food.
Damn.
Recalls a sad symmetry between 2000 and 2006; that is, late-season panic induced trades that did far more harm than good.
Hold on to Melvin Mora. Pass on Mike Bordick.
Keep Xavier Nady around in the event Scott Spiezio hits an eminently catchable fly ball into the rightfield corner at Shea in game 2 of the NLCS.
Damn.
Geez, I just spent a week on this, and I never drew that parallel.
I told ya we had great readers!
There are several reasons why the 1973 “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets were not acknowledged in 2013. Too many of the main players are from 1969; Tug McGraw is dead; others came back when we said goodbye to Shea. Also that with the Yankees success many Mets fans themselves have less interest in seeing these events. I’ve been to several of these type of events and Shea/Citi were half empty. Even Seaver didn’t show up for his own night! I think you pegged it that many in today’s society where the Yankees ran off 5 World Championships in 15 years, it’s all or nothing at all. Many fans dismiss it like Mick Jagger getting no satisfaction. That doesn’t stop real fans like you, Jason and all of us who read and post to yours and other blogs dedicated to the Mets. All the Mets teams that I’ve watched all my life live within me. The Mets players and moments tug at our hearts – those 99 Mets so close – who can forget Todd Pratt’s homerun? I’ll celebrate that any day! All the little moments that make up a winning season, and even the lousy one’s too! I recently completed a Mets collage and noticed that in the center I paid tribute to the mediocre Mets of the late 70’s and early 80’s – but I loved those teams win or lose. And that is what it comes down to for me. Win or lose I’m still here ready to cheer the Mets on, wearing my orange and blue. Thanks for the do over Greg, looking forward to 2014!
Thanks very much, Ed. We really appreciate the kind words. I wil counter on a couple of points:
1) Seaver did show up on his own night, which was drenched by rain, 8/11/92. They sold a reported 40,000 tickets for Tom Seaver Hall of Fame Night. About half showed up because of weather. Seaver abbreviated his speech. The Mets, without consulting him, scheduled a do-over. They picked a date when he was broadcasting a game for the team that then employed him.
2) The Mets learned from their ’90s “half empty” mistakes by scheduling these events closer to game time, usually at the listed game time. Everything since the 10 Greatest Moments celebration in 2000 has followed that plan and it’s worked very well. Prior to 2000, they were doing stuff at 11:30 in the morning, which was self-defeating. There were maybe 5,000 in the house for the 25th anniversary of 1969. I think the Mets mistook logistics for interest. Contrast that with the Piazza ceremonies last September when they held off until about 1 PM and had a full house in their seats.
3) The goal, I believe, should be not just a nice event to commemorate stray successes but an overall commitment to What The Mets Mean To Us, with their history a big part of that. The Mets are more likely to draw Mets fans more often, not people just looking for something to do once. Cultivate what you’ve got.
Anyway, hope to see you at the 10th anniversary of the 2014 World Champion Mets celebration.
Ok you got me on the Seaver ‘do over night’. I think that was the one I attended. Got a nice t-shirt and I think it rained then too. I’ll have to keep better tabs on how they commemorate Mets moments in the future. While I believe the organization should focus on the product on the field, a gesture of good faith to fans would be more events like Piazza’s – arranged as you indicated right before the game – even if they did it Seventh Inning Stretch (though that could mess with pitchers) but such an idea as having a “Met Moment” every month would be nice. Note to self see if those bobbleheads given out the last few years are available at Mets store. BTW does anyone know what happened to those Mets Clubhouse shops? The ones in Roosevelt field and Manhattan Mall are gone.
42nd St. location still in business as far as I know. Too bad there aren’t more. But I suppose much of that function is taken up by online sales.
Mets haven’t put their excess bobbleheads on sale, which is a shame. Blue Jays do that. Cyclones did that (don’t know if they still do).
In terms of ‘props’ I don’t give nearly enough to 99′..Perhaps it was just the personal problems I was experiencing at the time. (97′ 98′ 99′) was relatively competitive and I have never forgotten it..
88′ was at the dizzying heights of 80’s hubris ( Greg’s word ) and I wanted it more than 2000..Yes I admit it I did!! I wanted a multiple championship team- perhaps to rival the great Reds teams of the 70’s ( my yardstick ) I to this day find my mind drift back to that moment in time for the team ( as well as 73′ ) but perhaps the snow and cold is to blame for that!!
In 2014 Kiner must get and on-going tribute..I need to feel that love all year long…
We had better pitching than the BRM. Gullett, Billingham, et al got the job done, but they couldn’t have compared to Gooden, Cone and the rest of our 1988 staff. Probably why in a battle of dynasties I’d go with the ’70s A’s over the ’70s Reds…though the ’70s Reds were certainly formidable.
1973 notwithstanding.
If I ever wondered why I loved your blog so much, Greg, this thread would have answered it. First, 1999 will always be my favorite team–although I’d never want the 73 team to know. Second, although I’d missed the voting, I was going to write in about 1997. It was my first year back in New York, the first time I could go to a game anytime I wanted. I don’t know the exact number, but they had an insane amount of come-from-behind wins that year. I will never forget a Sunday afternoon Sept. 13–thanks baseball-reference.com) listening to Gary on the radio (God I miss him on radio) as the Mets came to bat in the bottom of the 9th–down 6-0 to the Expos. Why would anyone listen to the last frame of a 6-0 game? Because that team never quit. Ever. (And really, Gary was so good on radio, even a blowout was a pleasure to listen to.) In no time it was 6-2, and then there was Carl Everet (yep, that Carl Everet) up with the bases loaded. Boom: 6-6. Then Bernard Gilkey hit another in the 11th sending everyone home happy. I went to the last game that year, afterward the team came on the field with boxes of gear and threw hats and batting gloves to those who stuck around. Who knew it was the beginning of a beautiful few years to be a Met fan.
One other year I didn’t see mentioned: 1984. I was 21 and living in Los Angeles. The last time the Mets had been even mediocre was 8 years before, when I was 13. And here they were on July 31, in first place! Everyone remembers 85 and of course 86, but that team was 90-72 after going 68-94 the year before. It felt every bit the miracle that 69 was to me.
Thanks, as always, Greg for all you do.
You’re most kind. Thank you. And glad to know another member of the secret society of 1997, the year that now three people seem to remember as incandescent. If you’re interested, I wrote about the Everett game here and the final game of that season (a real tearjerker) here.
1969, 1984 and 1997 are three of a kind, albeit with diminishing returns each time. We could use another one of those out-of-nowhere type years right about…now.
I know for a fact I “had something in my eye” after that last game in 1997–had I not been there with two acquaintances (or if they’d been close friends), I’d have been the other guy bawling at Shea that day. My memory had grown a bit fuzzy; I’d completely forgotten that, like you, I truly believed they were still in it. I’d figured I’d kept listening to the Carl Everett game at 6-0 simply because I’d grown up listening right to the end. I was 15 in 1977–I’m pretty sure I listened to a few ninth innings when they were down by more than 6. (Only game I attended that I left early was in 2009, when I brought my 3 year old daughter to an afternoon game. I figured she’d be done by the 4th. She loved it. Made it to the middle of the 9th. We left only because she was falling asleep.)
And yes, we could use an out-of-nowhere year right now. The last–jeez, is it 7 years now?–have taken a lot out of me. The loss of Shea (you knew, of course, I’d be one of the 4 or 5 people living who consider the destruction of Shea a loss), the called third strike, 2007-08, now Ralph… Had the Mets and WOR not rehired Howie Rose, I might have washed my hands of them. At least until, say, a 5-game winning streak in mid-May pulled them within 3 games of first.
I agree with you for pretty much all the same reasons. 2006 just HURT SO BAD. 1973 is the only other comparable choice in terms of pain*, but at least we had the thrilling regular-season finish become part of folklore and there’s even a roundabout satisfaction in contributing to the A’s dynasty becoming baseball’s other threepeat team. 2006, on the other hand, offers no similar consolations: the Mets led wire to wire and then simply went phfft, like a candle being blown out. It was the 20-year anniversary, it was The Catch, it was based loaded two outs bottom of the ninth, it was Floyd imitating Gibson, it was facing one of two TERRIBLE PITCHERS whom they inexplicably could barely solve that postseason (Jeff Weaver and Jeff Suppan combined for a 20-21 4.89 record during the regular season and 2-1 1.69 in the NLCS), it was avoiding suffering the most absolutely whimpering possible end to any game there is a.k.a. the Called Third Strike… I am implacably convinced that we are simply living in a universe parallel to 999,999 others where that game ended with the Mets on top and then steamrolling the Tigers as easily as St. Louis did. (Plus the Cards do go on to win a World Series a few years later anyway, so I have asbolutely no guilt about denying them this one.)
* ’88 was very close to ’86 and dynasties, while nice, are overrated, not to mention they were outclassed in the pre-WS round; ’99 and ’00 never came as close as being up 3 games to 2
Avoid pitchers and owners named Jeff seems to be the lesson. No offense, to the Innises.
Hi Greg,
Sorry I’m so late getting into this because you know the subject is close to my heart but if I had to pick a special year other than the obvious ones mentioned – 1962, 1973, 1986, etc. it would have to be 1963. Why?
Because it was that second year that the Mets and the New Breed really began taking off. The first year was like 1968 – we were getting to know each other. 1963 was like 1969 – we had all come together and were ready to rock. That’s when the banners really took hold, the “let’s go Mets” chant was louder than the sound of the jets that would fly over the new home the following year, when national league baseball coming back to New York was no longer a novelty and instead of fan interest going down, they instead drew close to 160,000 more fans – a tremendous increase for the time let alone a losing team. To put it in perspective, the novelty of the Colt 45s (aka Astros)wore off somewhat for them in 1963 when they drew 205,000 few fans.
And the Yankees drew close to 185,000 fans less that year as well.
But not the Mets. 1962 was the courting period and 1963 was when the love affair went full bloom and bonded forever. Wasn’t that the year that Howard Cosell called the Mets a fraud? I’m sure the surge of love going on at the Polo Grounds was pushing his arrogant buttons no end.
I’ll buy every bit of that!
I picked 1973, but maybe it is better the way it turned out. A second championship so close to 1969 might have lessened the special unbelievability that 1969 even happened. A 1973 Championship team would be remembered more for winning the series than coming from last place to make it to the series. The way it turned out, we are remembered as both the biggest Cinderella story ever and one of the guttiest comebacks ever to almost make it.