Baseball Musings

Being a Mets fan has a particular, bi-polar torture associated with it, which is a blend of the horrible and the amazing. I became a Mets fan when I was a little runt in the 80's, so my initial impression of the team was akin to marrying the prom queen; young and beautiful with unlimited potential, and people even mentioned the word "dynasty" in thinking of their future.

However, someone forgot to tell me that the Mets of the 80's were like the plot of movies from the 80's: white-trash girl at the bottom gets make-over, becomes super-slammin' hot and wins the heart of the shallow, but somewhat dense good-looking guy and they live happily ever after. Or do they? The sequel to this movie was left on the cutting room floor, where they would have portrayed the prom queen's fading makeover, as the somewhat dense by good-looking guy, who ended up married to here, realizes he has to spend the rest of his life with white-trash.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to compare my pain with the absolute misery of say, Cubs fans, who haven't even been able to garner so much as a phone number for the past 90 years. But there is a special pain that sees great potential in their lovable losers becoming somebody, only to have to accept them as lovable losers again.

So, it always warms my heart that my favorite team to this day holds the record for incompetence. The 1962 Mets compiled a record-setting 120 losses in their first year as a franchise while donning the combination blue and orange uniforms--which was a tribute to New York's two previous greats, the Dodgers and the Giants. During this period of futility, legendary manager Casey Stengel had a way of putting it all in perspective. Three of my favorite stories are as follows:

• Marvelous Marv Throneberry electrified the crowd with a triple, but was called out when he missed first base. Stengel went out to argue and the umpire tells him, "Don't bother. He missed first, too." And Casey said, "Well, I know he didn't miss third. He's standing on it."
  

• During batting practice, Casey Stengel provided a few tips on assesing talent, "See that fella over there? He's twenty years old. In ten years, he's got a chance to be a star. Now see that fella over there, he's twenty years old too. In ten years, he's got a chance to be thirty."
  

• Demonstrating the effects of courting on the play of a baseball player, Casey said, "Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in."

Just seven years later, the Mets would go from the "Amazing Mess" to the "Miracle Mets" by winning the World Series. Unfortunately, Casey wasn't the manager anymore, yet I doubt that he would have provided such colorful analysis about a Mets team that was actually capable of winning.