It should not be a surprise that the New York Mets needed almost a decade to find their footing in the National League, considering they were born in an atmosphere of contentiousness, they had to fill the spikes of not one, but two storied franchises, and they had to compete for fans and media time in the same city as the Yankees, the game's most successful franchise.
When the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants vacated New York City for the west coast, it left America's largest city with no National League team. When baseball's hierarchy showed no urgency in filling this gap, a New York attorney named Bill Shea teamed with notables including Branch Rickey and proposed a third Major League called the Continental League, featuring an anchor franchise in New York City.
After more than a year of rancorous negotiations, Major League Baseball suppressed the potential competition of a new league by agreeing to award a franchise to New York City as part of a four-team expansion. In return, Shea agreed to shut down the Continental League.
Thus in this turmoil was born the New York Mets in 1962. The team immediately tapped into nostalgia by populating its roster with veteran New York baseball stalwarts including Casey Stengel as manager, Gil Hodges, Gene Woodling, Don Zimmer, and eventually Duke Snider (in 1963) and Yogi Berra (1965).
These past-their-prime players combined with an unimpressive first generation of prospects to drag the Mets to a 40-120 inaugural season, still a record for futility. While their second season record of 51-111 could be seen as equally dismal, it was a ten game improvement in the standings.
After these two seasons in the creaky Polo Grounds, the Mets moved to Shea Stadium in 1964. A few seasons later, a glimmering batch of pitching prospects began making their way to the major league roster and eventually turned the Mets from laughing stock to prime stock.
Tom Seaver, and Jerry Koosman were the vanguard of the Mets' pitching armada, which also included Gary Gentry, Jim McAndrew and a fire-balling rookie named Nolan Ryan. In 1969, they led the Mets to an improbable World Championship, forever earning them the moniker "Miracle Mets." The team stayed in contention through the first half of the year, and then went 44-18 over their last sixty-two games to leave the favored Chicago Cubs in the dust. Incredibly, seventeen of those forty-four wins were shutouts.
New York Mets History
