If you search for Amazin’ Mets on the Internet you may find, as I did, that auto-correct calls them the Amazon Mets. Be that as it may, the New York Mets are the antithesis of the team that was forever attached to the adjective.
For one thing, the real Amazin’ Mets lost 120 games when their manager, Casey Stengel, dubbed them “amazin’” and, yes, it’s possible that “ing” was not part of Stengel’s rather bizarre vocabulary, which is forever known as Stengelese. That modern-era record stood for 62 years until the 2024 Chicago White Sox took them off the hook by losing 121. That many losses when there are 32 teams…now, that’s amazing (or amazin’).
For another, this year’s Mets are one step from the World Series. When Stengel’s team reached and won the World Series, three managers and four years later, the Ol’ Perfessor decreed they were the Miracle Mets. The current edition is more deserving of “miracle” than “amazin’.”
As No. 6 of six National League seeds, the Mets aren’t expected to beat anybody but the Savannah Bananas, or maybe the White Sox, neither of which was invited or allowed in post-season play. Since baseball expanded the playoffs to six teams three years ago, there has been a No. 6 seed in both World Series.
The original Miracle Mets were the first expansion team to make the playoffs in the first season there were playoffs (1969). They needed only three games to sweep the Atlanta Braves in the best-of-five League Championship Series, then restricted to division winners only. Against the American League champions, the Baltimore Orioles, the Mets were huge underdogs because Baltimore had won 109 games and the East Division by a whopping 19 games. The Orioles won the first game, the Mets won the next four to become the first expansion team to win the World Series. The player who powered them to the pennant become World Series MVP, Donn Clendenon, was acquired in mid-season from, of all teams, the Montreal Expos.
However, those Mets won primarily with pitching. Tom Seaver headlined a pitching staff so deep that Nolan Ryan was sixth in the rotation. Pitching in relief, Ryan would make the only World Series appearance of his career.
The 1973 Mets, the franchise’s only World Series team to lose, is being worn on the sleeves in 2024. The “24” patch on their uniforms is for the number worn by the late Willie Mays, who concluded his 24-year career with them. Inching closer to a fourth Series appearance, underdogs as always, the Mets could invoke “Win it For Willie” as a rallying cry.
As somebody who watched from the press box the day Mays stroked his final base hit, in that World Series of ’73, I hope not. He broke in with the New York Giants six years before they moved to San Francisco and his first game in the majors, like his last, was in The Big Apple. But Mays was much more a Giant than a Met, playing most of his career and living the last 66 years of his life in San Francisco.
To position him a “Mr. Met” would be an insult to his “amazin’” memory.
