Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing #55 : Kathy Kersch, Baseball, and the First Mets Scandal

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush the dust off the bubble-gum cards, flip through curling yearbooks, and rediscover the names that once made you stop mid-knish and say, “Hold on… he was a Met, right?”

Last week’s lesson took a slight detour from the usual roll call of orange-and-blue alumni. Instead of Mets who were, we studied Mets who almost were, a half-dozen draft picks whose names were once written on Mets cards, whose rights briefly lived in a Flushing filing cabinet, and then drifted off into baseball history wearing someone else’s uniform: John Tudor, Darin Erstad, Matt Williams, Ron Cey, Rafael Palmeiro, and Roger Clemens.

That’s not a typo, that’s a Hall of Fame-caliber lineup of “what might have been.” Six stars who, for a fleeting moment, were Mets on paper before slipping through the franchise’s fingers like rosin on a humid Shea Stadium night.

It was a reminder that Mets history isn’t just about who played here, it’s also about who didn’t, and how often destiny took a wrong turn somewhere between the draft room and Shea Stadium.

Which brings us to this week’s lesson.

Before there were almost-Mets, before there were missed draft picks and lost signatures, there was another kind of near-miss in Flushing, one that had nothing to do with batting averages or ERAs. This week we rewind to the very first year of the New York Mets and the first woman ever crowned Miss Rheingold of the Mets era. Her name was Kathy Kersch.

Before the Mets had a winning season, before they had a star, before they even had reliable pitching, they had Kathy, the smiling, photogenic face of New York baseball’s most famous beer, posing in the shadow of a brand-new team that was still learning how to exist. And like so many forgotten figures from those early Mets years, her story, like the team, didn’t quite go the way anyone expected. Class is back in session.

If you ever find yourself in a trivia contest and someone asks, “What American election draws the most votes?” you answer “The presidential election” and feel very proud of yourself. But if they ask, “What comes in second?” the correct response is Miss Rheingold. Yes, the beer girl.

By the mid-1950s, more people were voting for the face of a Brooklyn lager than for most governors. In 1956 alone, more than 23 million votes were cast for Miss Rheingold, which means that for every American worrying about Eisenhower and Khrushchev, there was another American far more concerned about which smiling blonde should hold a stein.

From 1941 through 1964, the Miss Rheingold contest wasn’t just a promotion, it was a seasonal ritual, right up there with opening day and arguing about the Yankees. All across New York and New England, from Manhattan to Maine, the same six faces stared out from bar walls, grocery stores, billboards, and beer cases.

No matter where you went, there they were, smiling, wholesome, politely glamorous young women who looked like they’d happily bring your mom a cup of tea before stealing your boyfriend. Everybody voted, and nobody voted just once. You could stuff as many ballots as you wanted into those Rheingold boxes, which were strategically placed at the ends of supermarket aisles, on bar tops, and anywhere else a thirsty human might wander. There were so many ballots that Rheingold eventually stopped counting them and just weighed them instead — democracy by the pound.

The whole thing was the brainchild of Philip Liebmann, whose family had been brewing beer in Brooklyn since before anyone knew what a Mets fan was. Rheingold wasn’t the biggest brewery in town until Liebmann got the brilliant idea to turn his beer into a beauty pageant. He picked a starlet named Jinx Falkenberg as the first Miss Rheingold in 1940 and then threw the contest open to the public. Suddenly it wasn’t just advertising, it was civic duty with a six-pack.

Each year, celebrity judges, actors, gossip columnists, Madison Avenue ad men, would narrow hundreds of hopefuls down to six finalists. Those six would then campaign for six weeks, smiling from every billboard and beer cooler in the Northeast, like politicians who promised nothing but good looks and a cold lager. Television got in on the act too. The finalists were rolled out with full showbiz flair, often introduced by the era’s most famous dance duo, Marge and Gower Champion, as if they were Broadway stars instead of beer mascots.

Miss Rheingold had a very specific image. She was the all-American girl next door, friendly, wholesome, warm, and about as threatening as a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Her version of beauty was narrowly defined, polished to fit the era’s tidy standards, and reflected the mainstream ideals of 1950s America — a look that left little room for difference. Any hint of individuality or diversity was quietly edited out. Nobody complained, and if they did, nobody listened.

Once crowned, Miss Rheingold became a year-round presence. One month she’d be planting flowers, the next she’d be picnicking, then hunting, then opening Christmas presents in the snow, all while holding or standing near a bottle of beer, because nothing says festive holiday spirit like lager.

At its peak, Rheingold spent the modern equivalent of about $60 million a year on this spectacle, and beer sales exploded. The contest became so famous it spilled into movies, radio shows, magazines, and late-night television. If you wanted to signal “this story takes place in the 1950s,” you just had someone mention Miss Rheingold and everyone instantly got it.

By the time the calendar flipped to 1962, the same year the Mets were busy inventing new and exciting ways to lose baseball games, Rheingold had a brand-new queen. Her name was Kathy Kersch. Born Kathleen Kroeger Kersch, somewhere in the general direction of the Pacific Ocean, sources argue over whether it was Los Angeles or Hawaii, which feels very on-brand for Hollywood, Kathy grew up aiming for spotlights. She trained in dance and acting, won the Miss Junior Rose Bowl title in 1959, and quickly slid into the world of modeling, television, and the kind of showbiz hustle where you’re always one screen test away from being famous.

When Rheingold crowned her Miss Rheingold for 1962, she suddenly found herself holding a beer in one hand and a slice of New York culture in the other, even though she was very much a West Coast kid. Her life, like the Mets that year, moved fast and took a few sharp turns. After her Miss Rheingold reign, she married TV heartthrob Vince Edwards, Dr. Ben Casey himself, only for the marriage to flame out in about the time it takes to play a doubleheader. Kathy became a single mother soon after, then kept rolling, landing roles on shows like Burke’s Law, My Favorite Martian, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., plus a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it movie part in The Americanization of Emily.

She even tried her hand at pop stardom, releasing a couple of singles in the late 1960s, and later popped up on Batman as one of the Joker’s henchwomen. That role led to her second famous husband, Burt Ward, TV’s Robin, in a marriage that lasted about two seasons before Kathy did something far more unusual for Hollywood, she went to business school and built a successful career in commercial real estate, a long way from beer billboards and bathtubs full of ballots.

But in 1962, Kathy Kersch was everywhere, including in the brand-new world of the New York Mets. Rheingold was one of the Mets’ very first major sponsors, which meant Miss Rheingold herself was suddenly part of baseball’s newest circus. Kathy appeared in Mets programs, posed for promotions, and even took the field at the Polo Grounds alongside the team’s rumpled ringmaster, Casey Stengel.

Early in that inaugural season, Rheingold rolled out an advertisement showing Casey in a Mets uniform, bat in hand, with Kathy Kersch beside him holding the ball, a cute, sponsor-friendly image meant to link the beer, the girl, and the brand-new ballclub. There was just one problem. Baseball rules said you absolutely could not appear in beer or cigarette ads while wearing a team uniform.

So Commissioner Ford Frick came down like a school principal and fined Casey Stengel $500, a tidy sum in 1962. Rumor had it Rheingold happily picked up the tab because the publicity from the scandal was worth far more than the fine. The Mets got attention, Rheingold got attention, Kathy Kersch got attention. And for a brief, fizzy moment in April 1962, the face of New York beer and the face of New York’s newest baseball team were officially, hilariously, and slightly illegally linked, which might be the most Mets thing to ever happen in their very first season.

By 1964, the party was over. Beer sales sagged, expansion plans failed, and America was changing. A country that was marching for civil rights and women’s equality wasn’t buying the idea that a smiling, almost-married, picture-perfect blonde could still represent everybody. So the ballots were put away, the billboards came down, and Miss Rheingold slipped into nostalgia, a bubbly, slightly ridiculous reminder of a time when New York’s biggest beauty contest was sponsored by a beer, and everyone was very happy pretending that was normal.