MEETING THE METS

Hello, fellow Mets fans. Welcome to my little corner of Kiner’s Korner, where I hope to bring you some fun Mets moments and memories along the way.

Yes, I am a Mets fan—from all the way back to Day One in 1962. Actually, even before Day One. And if you’ll allow me a few moments to become self-indulgent, perhaps you’ll recognize what it was like back in the beginning—if you were there as well—or maybe I can paint the picture for those who are relative rookies to the Flushing Faithful.

Full disclosure: in the days of my youth, when I began to recognize baseball as a wonderful sport to play and follow, I was a Yankees fan. And it was my Yankee fandom that led to my being a Mets fan. Huh? Yes.

I had a very valid excuse for being devoted to the likes of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Bobby Richardson, and the rest of the Bronx Bombers when I was 7, 8, 9 years old.

As it were, my dad was a HUUUUUGE Yankees fan. He had grown up rooting for the legendary Joe DiMaggio and those championship-caliber teams. For him, being a Yankees fan was practically a family affair. My father grew up in Astoria, and one of his boyhood friends—who lived literally diagonally across the street from him—was Edward “Whitey” Ford. Dad and Whitey actually played on the same sandlot teams back in the day and even went to the same high school (where Whitey played first base, believe it or not). So, of course, his Yankees roots ran deep.

And if you were a Yankees fan back in the early ’60s, that meant you were also a Casey Stengel fan—the Yankees’ clever and quirky manager.

I enjoyed reading about Yankee exploits each day in the Daily News and Long Island Press, and of course, beat writers like Dick Young and Jack Lang stayed close to Stengel, knowing that at any moment a verbal gem might spill out.

I recall coming home from school in October of 1960 so I could watch the end of the World Series between the Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates (afternoon telecasts—how about that!). It was a crazy seven-game affair that shocked the baseball world when the underdog Buccos won it all on a walk-off home run by Bill Mazeroski.

And then the Yankees had the nerve to fire Stengel—after taking his club to the World Series every year between 1949 and 1960, save just two.

So here’s the turning point. I don’t recall how my little nine- or ten-year-old brain could have found the means to rationalize all this, but I do remember reading the slant by the likes of Young and Lang in the dailies, who suggested that Stengel was mostly dispatched just for being 70 years old. That somehow irked me—perhaps because I had a grandfather about the same age who also loved baseball and, along with my father, taught me about the game.

It wasn’t long after—or maybe around that time—that details began to emerge about a new league preparing to debut, and that New York would be involved.

Wow! Wouldn’t that be something? A new baseball team to follow. I couldn’t wait.

Then that new league kinda got bought out by MLB—the payoff being that they would absorb new teams: two in the American League, two in the National League.

National League baseball was back in New York, just a few years after the Dodgers and Giants bolted for the West Coast. And this new New York City ballclub would be called… The Skyliners. No, The Burros. No, the Jets. Or who-knows-what.

We are grateful these days that they settled on… The Metropolitans—with its built-in nickname: The Mets.

And look who was going to be their first manager: Casey Stengel.

I also had a distinct advantage in switching my allegiance to the Mets. In addition to being proverbially young and impressionable, eager to follow a brand-new baseball team from its inception, I lived in Flushing, not far from Queens College. So what are the odds? Not only was this a new team to root for—they’d soon be playing “in my backyard.”

Yes, those first two years would hail from the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, and my dad did take me to a few games there in those early years. But from the start, it had been established that a new ballpark would soon be built on the site next to the World’s Fair, which was also under construction.

Gee, I wonder what they’ll call it? Probably Mets Stadium.

And that brings me to the spring of 1962. Anticipation was building for this new ballclub. They’ll probably be in the World Series every year—just like the Yankees.

In March of that year, WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York—the new television home of the Mets (which had previously been the broadcast network for the Dodgers, though I didn’t know that at the time)—planned a special one-hour preview of this new team from its Florida base in St. Petersburg. The hosts were three guys I didn’t know much about at the time: Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner.

I was glued to our little black-and-white television. So here they are—some guys named Richie Ashburn, Frank Thomas, Roger Craig, Jay Hook, Elio Chacón, Felix Mantilla, Rod Kanehl, Jim Hickman, Joe Christopher, and Hobie Landrith (what’s a Hobie?)—all being promoted by the guy wearing number 37 in that clean, white Mets uniform: Casey Stengel.

“The Ol’ Perfessor” was quite a salesman. I was hooked. And I’ve been a Mets fan ever since.

Thanks for letting me share an ancient memory. Perhaps some of you enjoyed a similar experience. I welcome your comments and your own memories.

See you again “on Kiner’s Korner.”