/ Courtesy John Baiata

The author, John Baiata, and his dad at a Mets spring training game in Port St. Lucie, Fla. in 2007.

‘Miracle Mets’
The fans’ delirium was to be short-lived. After the 1957 season, the Brooklyn Dodgers packed up and moved to Los Angeles. A month later, my parents were married.  The New York Giants followed the Dodgers out to the west coast and suddenly, the Yankees were literally the only game in town.

For some fans, my father included, rooting for the “Los Angeles” Dodgers was just not the same. And as the players who had been mainstays in Brooklyn began to retire, it became even more difficult.         

In 1962 National League baseball returned to New York in the form of the New York Metropolitans. Their colors were borrowed from the two former New York teams – blue from the Dodgers, orange from the Giants.  Former Yankee and Dodger manager Casey Stengel was tapped to manage the team, and former Dodger stars like Gil Hodges and Duke Snider returned as players in the early years of the franchise.

But the old magic could not be restored so easily. The 1962 Mets set a modern-day, all-time record for futility, one that still stands today. They went  40-120 and the fans loved them. 

My father, now working and raising a family on Long Island, became a regular in the stands. On Memorial Day, 1964, my parents, along with my aunt and uncle, attended a double-header against the San Francisco Giants at the Mets new ballpark, Shea Stadium.

Giants pitcher and future hall of famer Juan Marichal beat the Mets, 5-3, in the first game. The second game went 23 innings and lasted almost seven and a half hours, at the time the longest game in history. As the innings dragged on, my father and my Uncle Jack – who had played minor league ball and was another baseball nut – refused to leave.

Courtesy John Baiata John Baiata and his dad poolside at a retirement community in West Palm Beach in 2008.

The women steamed.  The hot dogs didn’t – the concession stands had run out of food.  And the Mets lost, 8-6.  It was the last game my mother would ever attend – and technically my first, as she was pregnant with me at the time.       

The Mets continued to lose, and lose often, for the better part of the decade. 

But in 1969, with Hodges now managing the club, they were still in contention in August – though nine and a half games behind the Chicago Cubs. They went on a tear, ended up winning 100 games, and swept the powerful Atlanta Braves for the National League pennant. Still, they were given virtually no chance against the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. That October, my parents had packed up the family car for a cross-country move to Arizona.

On October 16, the “Miracle Mets” season ended with a game 5 victory, and the Mets took the series, four games to one. That day forms one of my earliest childhood memories of my father, glued to the radio and shushing my sisters and I in the back of our Buick.

Dad hated that he wasn’t in New York for it, but when the last out fell into Cleon Jones’ glove, it did not dampen his enthusiasm. I can still see him, pulled over to the side of the road, running in circles and screaming like a lunatic.

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