FROM THE DIMNESS OF the past to our highly illuminated present, each troubadour, jongleur, and soothsayer, whether from the glittering court of Fernando and Isabella or the glass and mortar confines of Madison Avenue, has sung his paean of praise to record for a breathless posterity—or a quick buck— the wondrous and daring deeds of the mighty. Few are the voices raised in defense of peasant, peon, or .179 hitter, and these few are soon stilled by the pitchman’s glowing accounts of another “winner.”
At long last the flood of excellence is dammed. The trend reversed. The losers have their day. Jimmy Breslin has written a history of the Mets, preserving for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure.
It’s stories like his that are important. They spur the losers of the world to take heart—to rise and lose again. Without losers, where would the winners be? So who, in the final analysis, is most entitled to historic memory?
I feel eminently qualified to write the introduction to a history of the Mets. I operated the St. Louis Browns. It was our image that was toppled from its niche in the darkest recess of Cooperstown. It was from us that the Mets, with pitiful ease, wrested the title of The Worst Club in Baseball History.” It was, in truth, the Brownies who made possible the Mets’ only victory.
I must admit, in fairness, that the Mets deserve the title. They won it fair and square. They achieved total incompetence in a single year, while the Browns worked industriously for almost a decade to gain equal proficiency. We employed Patkin and Price, both professional clowns. They beat us again; they had Marv Throneberry. We had the help of the American League, they the wholehearted cooperation of the National, plus the assistance of the league’s expansion committee, of inestimable advantage in any drive for the bottom. Here, in clear focus, is the rock being thrown to the sinking swimmer.
Here’s Mrs. Payson, who justifiably emerges as a lady of courage and class, if not acumen; Casey Stengel, whose reputation needs no burnishing from this writer; and New York baseball fans, who unquestionably deserved a far better shake. But the philosophy of baseball, like that of the late Texas Guinan, precludes fair shakes. In this game when they’re down you tromp ’em—good—lest they someday get up to annoy the winners. Competition is for professional football and amateurs. Furthermore, according to Walter O’Malley, it’s socialistic.
So the Mets started with the worst pitching, backed by the most deplorable infield and outfield, ever assembled on a single diamond. While “selecting” their players they didn’t (as the expansion committee professed so loudly to fear) dilute the talent pool of the major leagues, but dealt almost a death blow to the Sally.
The caliber of the Mets’ play could easily have earned for them other honors. That of “Games Played Most Often in Secret,” for instance. In this, as in almost all else, they failed dismally, ending the season with well over 900,000 paying customers—a tribute to Casey Stengel’s sure knowledge of public relations and the enduring fanaticism of Giant and Dodger fans. It is unrecorded how many paid more than once to see baseball—Met style. It is, however, quite possible that more different individuals saw the National League teams than wandered from Coogan’s Bluff to watch the more skillful exhibitions in Yankee Stadium.
It is my understanding that Mrs. Payson, the club’s principal angel, has both money and real staying power. I hope so. I hope too that both of these equal Mr. Weiss’s prospective tenure in office. Now, lest the reader feel I am picking unfairly on the Met general manager, let me explain. I am. Intentionally. Mr. Weiss took the bows during a long and successful career with the Yankees. I would be the last to deprive him of equal rights with the Mets. He helped to conceive them. Why shouldn’t he nurse them along? Boy! What a picture that makes.
Bill Veeck