The Miracle Mets of 1969

The New York Mets lost 120 games in their first season. That was 1962, the year the National League returned to New York after the departures of the Dodgers and Giants, and the expansion Mets were assembled from castoffs, retreads, and minor leaguers who had been left unprotected for a reason. Their manager was Casey Stengel, 71 years old and recently fired by the Yankees, who surveyed his roster and asked, "Can't anybody here play this game?"

Nobody could. The 1962 Mets went 40-120, the worst record in modern baseball history. They lost their first nine games. They committed errors that defied physics. First baseman Marv Throneberry became a folk hero because of his inability to do the basic things a first baseman is supposed to do. The team drew over 900,000 fans to the Polo Grounds anyway, because New York had missed National League baseball and because losing, when done spectacularly enough, has its own entertainment value.

The Early Years

The Mets did not improve quickly. They lost 111 games in 1963, 109 in 1964, and 112 in 1965. Stengel broke his hip during the 1965 season and retired, replaced by Wes Westrum and then Gil Hodges. The franchise moved from the crumbling Polo Grounds to Shea Stadium in 1964, a modern concrete bowl in Flushing, Queens, that gave the team a permanent home but did not solve the talent deficit.

The losses accumulated into a kind of identity. The Mets were lovable losers, the anti-Yankees, the team you rooted for because sympathy was all they could generate. Their fans were loyal in the way that only fans of terrible teams can be, bonded by shared suffering and gallows humor. The franchise finished last or next-to-last in the National League every season from 1962 through 1968.

The foundation shifted beneath the losing. The Mets' farm system, initially barren, began producing real players. In 1966, the team signed a 21-year-old right-hander from Fresno, California, named George Thomas Seaver. He arrived in the majors in 1967 and won 16 games for a team that won only 61. Seaver threw with a delivery that generated tremendous power from his legs, his right knee nearly scraping the mound on his follow-through. He was immediately the best pitcher the franchise had ever had, which was a low bar, but he was also one of the best young pitchers in baseball, which was a revelation.

Jerry Koosman arrived in 1968 and won 19 games. Nolan Ryan showed flashes of the unhittable fastball that would define his later career. Cleon Jones hit .340 in 1969. Tommie Agee, acquired from the White Sox, became a legitimate center fielder. Bud Harrelson anchored the infield at shortstop with defense that compensated for a light bat. The pieces were gathering.

Gil Hodges

Gil Hodges became the Mets manager in 1968, brought over from the Washington Senators, where he had managed for five seasons. Hodges was a Brooklyn Dodger, a first baseman who had hit 370 career home runs and played in seven World Series. He was quiet, imposing at six feet two and 200 pounds, and absolutely in command of his clubhouse.

Hodges did not tolerate losing as entertainment. He installed discipline, platooned his players based on matchups, and managed the pitching staff with a patience that the Mets had never experienced. He pulled Cleon Jones out of a game in mid-inning for failing to hustle, walking to left field to retrieve him in front of the Shea Stadium crowd. The message was clear. Effort was not optional.

The 1968 Mets went 73-89, a modest improvement that masked the more significant changes in roster quality and team culture. They entered 1969 as a long shot to contend but no longer as a joke.

1969

The National League split into two divisions that year, and the Mets were placed in the East with the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Philadelphia Phillies, and the newly created Montreal Expos. The Cubs, managed by Leo Durocher and led by Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, and Ferguson Jenkins, were the clear favorites. By mid-August, Chicago held a nine-and-a-half game lead over the Mets.

Then the Mets started winning and did not stop. They won 38 of their last 49 games. Seaver won his last ten decisions. Koosman won eight of his last nine starts of the regular season. The bullpen, anchored by Tug McGraw and Ron Taylor, held leads. Jones, Agee, and Art Shamsky provided enough offense. The defense was exceptional.

The Cubs collapsed simultaneously. They went 8-17 in September. Santo, who had been clicking his heels after victories all season, stopped clicking. Jenkins, who had been brilliant, lost five of his last seven starts. The combination of the Mets' surge and the Cubs' implosion erased the deficit in three weeks. On September 10, the Mets took first place. They never gave it back.

The final record was 100-62. The Mets had won 27 more games than the previous season, the largest single-season improvement in National League history at the time. Seaver finished 25-7 with a 2.21 ERA and won the Cy Young Award.

The Playoffs and the World Series

The National League Championship Series, a new format created by the divisional split, matched the Mets against the Atlanta Braves. The Mets swept in three games. Seaver won Game 1, and the lineup pounded Braves pitching for 27 runs across the series. It was the first time the Mets had been in a postseason of any kind.

The World Series opponent was the Baltimore Orioles, who had won 109 games and were considered one of the great teams in American League history. Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Boog Powell, and Jim Palmer anchored a roster that was deeper, more experienced, and better at every position except pitcher. The Orioles were heavy favorites.

Baltimore won Game 1 easily, 4-1, behind Mike Cuellar. Don Buford hit a leadoff home run off Seaver, and the Orioles controlled the game from start to finish. The result seemed to confirm what most observers expected.

Then the Mets won four straight.

Koosman and Taylor combined for a 2-1 victory in Game 2. Agee made two spectacular catches in Game 3, one a diving grab in left-center that saved at least two runs, and Gary Gentry and Ryan combined on a 5-0 win. Game 4 was won 2-1 on a Donn Clendenon home run and a controversial play at first base on a bunt by J.C. Martin. Game 5 produced one of the Series' most debated moments when Cleon Jones was awarded first base after a pitch from Dave McNally hit him on the foot, a call made only after Gil Hodges retrieved the ball from the Mets dugout and showed the umpire a shoe polish mark on it. The Mets rallied from there to win the clincher.

Game 5 was the clincher. Koosman pitched a complete game, allowing five hits. The Mets scored five runs in the late innings after trailing 3-0. When Cleon Jones caught the final fly ball in left field, he dropped to one knee, and the Shea Stadium crowd poured onto the field. Fans tore up the turf in chunks. The scoreboard read METS WIN. Nobody had predicted this outcome at any point during the season, the Series, or the first inning of Game 5.

Why It Endures

The Miracle Mets resonate because the story defies every pattern baseball fans had learned to expect. Bad teams do not become champions in one season. Expansion franchises do not beat 109-win juggernauts. Pitching staffs led by 24-year-olds do not shut down lineups as deep as Baltimore's. The 1969 Mets violated all of these conventions, and the fact that they did it in New York, the largest media market in the country, guaranteed the story would be told and retold until it became myth.

The timing helped. The Mets won the World Series three months after the Apollo 11 moon landing and in the same year that 400,000 people gathered at Woodstock. The country was in the middle of the Vietnam War, and New York City was struggling with crime, budget problems, and racial tension. The Mets gave the city something uncomplicated to celebrate, and the celebration was enormous. An estimated 1.3 million people lined Broadway for the ticker-tape parade.

Gil Hodges managed two more seasons before dying of a heart attack on April 2, 1972, two days before his 48th birthday. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2022, fifty years after his death, through the Golden Days Era Committee. Tom Seaver was inducted in 1992 with 98.84% of the vote, the highest percentage in Hall of Fame history at the time. The 1969 season was the foundation of both legacies.

The Mets had spent seven years as a punchline. They spent one season as a miracle. The word still fits.