These Vintage Mets Will Get Fans Through Next Month -5

1/30/2014

Craig, Hook, Miller (aka Nelson), Anderson, Jackson

One fine day in Florida in 1962, Casey Stengel lined up five prospective starters. Sometimes when he released a player, he said he had to do it because the Mets expected to be contenders.

At one point the Mets were 12-19. Then they lost 17 straight.

These five pitchers were professionals, good people, a pleasure to be around.

Roger Craig was the ace with a 10-24 record.

Jay Hook was 8-19.

Robert L. Miller was 1-12. (The Mets later acquired a left-hander named Robert G. Miller. Casey solved it by calling the righty “Nelson.”)

Craig Anderson won both ends of a doubleheader in May. His record was 3-1. He finished with a 3-17 record that year, and lost three more decisions over the next two years. This is what I wrote about Anderson in 1993:

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/13/sports/sports-of-the-times-horrid-mets-can-t-match-originals.html

Alvin Jackson finished with an 8-20 record. He kept the ball low and Casey loved him. He was impossible to cover in autumn touch football games on Long Island. He still works for the Mets.

The Mets finished with a 40-120 record.

These hopeful faces invoke instant spring.

(The Mets’ records for 1962)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYM/1962.shtml

Mendel

1/30/2014 01:19:51 am

Hi George. To be a Mets fan is to cherish hope. Ya Gotta Believe.
Thanks for reminding us of Spring.

George Vecsey

1/30/2014 02:21:35 am

Dear Mendel: Thanks, that is what I am trying to do, conjure up some warmth from the images and the memories.
Repeat the mantra: pitchers and catchers!
GV

Mike Anderson link

1/30/2014 01:29:30 am

Hi George this is Craig Anderson's son and I would like to hear more stories about the 62 Mets. That was a great story. Thanks

George Vecsey

1/30/2014 02:24:53 am

Mike, regards to your family.
I wasn't at that doubleheader...I remember seeing the 12-19 record and thinking, maybe....
As I recall, Bobby Bragan, manager of the Braves, referred to the Polo Grounds as "the chamber of horrors."
Ask your dad about pitching there...he was a lowball pitcher, but still, anybody was in danger of a 257-foot home run.
I saw one the first game I ever saw in the PG -- in 1948!!!
GV

Ed Martin

1/30/2014 02:48:11 am

"Anderson threw three-quarters style, which induced a lot of ground balls. That was a problem on the 1962 Mets, but then again, so were fly balls."

Priceless.

George Vecsey

1/30/2014 04:04:57 am

Ed, thanks for noticing. Even then, there was no point in taking the Mets too seriously, although surely Casey did most of the time, despite his act. The players had pride, did the best they could. Richie Ashburn ran into walls, raged against umpires. Roger Craig was as nice as could be, but hated to lose. Rod Kanehl got hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, made $50 -- Casey's standing offer; Hot Rod was so happy. GV

Alan Rubin link

1/30/2014 03:07:18 am

George

I do not think that any terrible team was more beloved than the initial Mets.

Although a Yankee fan almost since birth, I loved them. Casey was the perfect manager as he was already a legend, which went back to his early playing days in Brooklyn.

Also, the Polo Grounds was my favorite ballpark. What better than seeing a quirky team in a quirky park.

Both of my kids followed they Yankees, I guess because of all my stories, but they were true Mets fans.

This does warm things up a bit, but you need to add a little more for my Madison, WI daughter who is struggling with wind chill temperatures of -35F.

Craig Oren

1/30/2014 03:52:15 am

This entry brought a smile to my face. It is very cold here; hard to believe that pitchers and catchers will report soon. I was an eleven-year old in 1962. I was a Yankees fan, but I would occasionally watch the Mets on WOR. I am sorry I cannot remember the names of the announcers. (Was Lindsay Nelson one?) I do recall that there was a camera directly behind home plate, and so I could get a good look at the hitter.

George Vecsey

1/30/2014 04:00:23 am

Ralph Kiner, Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy.
And on the post-game show, an emerging presence named Cosell, with his cohort Ralph (Big No. 13) Branca. They criticized Casey.
GV

NFL

1/30/2014 05:27:36 am

Look Vecsey this is Superbowl Week and you are writing about baseball. We have intimidated MLB into silence in January and February and you will be next. WE OWN NYC, and have already arranged for prostitutes to be arrested and Weiner and Spitzer to be under house arrest until after the game. We want to present a good image. If you dont cooperate we will send a certain Staten Island Congressman after you to throw you into Manhasset Bay. This is your last warning.

Alan Rubin link

1/30/2014 07:57:33 am

George

You must be doing something right if the NFL is worried. Maybe they have realized the more kids are playing youth soccer than peewee and Pop Warner football combined.

I thought they would have been relieved now that your storm threat will probably not materialize.

George Vecsey

1/30/2014 10:52:38 am

Dear NFL: I think Grimm played FB as a kid and therefore is suffering from mood swings and premature aging, like so many of the players you assured could not get hurt from helmet collisions.
Besides, look at it this way, at least I'm writing about an American sport this week. Wait til I get into my furrin mode with Real Football, very soon. GV

George Vecsey

1/30/2014 10:55:56 am

Alan, I'm afraid my prognosis for weather got turned on Atlanta, where I have two sisters and a niece. My bad. I was there during the Atlanta Super Bowl, and watched the cars skidding all over the 75/85 corridor in downtown. I think this is payback for the Braves' move out to the boondocks, leaving the downtown area. GV

Mendel

1/30/2014 10:06:46 pm

My father, a Mets diehard, comments: "As the son of a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, we waited anxiously for a National League team. We were raised to hate the Yankees - it was terribly difficult attending games in the Bronx though we had no other way of watching live baseball. Roger Craig was our ace and we believed he would win every start, just like all other aces."

George Vecsey

1/31/2014 12:46:31 am

Mendel: Craig believed it, too. He also switched from No. 38 to No. 13 during a long losing streak. Eventually it worked. Jim Hickman hit a Polo Grounds homer -- a grand slam -- to end Craig's streak at 18.

Nice piece by Christian Red of the Daily News from 2012:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/50-years-ny-mets-pitcher-roger-craig-reveals-ankle-injury-inauguaral-opener-article-1.1059578

Mendel

1/31/2014 01:45:55 am

Friday night against the Cubs? We were happy when he was better with the Giants.

Michael Green

2/2/2014 08:26:04 am

Great piece, and great link. The story is that one day, Casey called the bullpen and told Joe Pignatano, "Get Nelson up." Piggy was fine with that until he realized that he didn't have anyone named Nelson. So he put the ball on the rubber and yelled, "Nelson," and the appropriate Bob Miller got up.

Near as anyone can tell, Casey decided to appropriate Lindsey's last name, and both he and Miller thought that was just fine.

George Vecsey

2/3/2014 03:41:23 am

Thanks. The righty (in the picture) could pitch...had a good career after leaving the Mets. The lefty joined the team in the summer. Didn't pitch for 3-4 days. Finally got in at Milwaukee, and first pitch to Del Crandall, boom, over a building (as Casey used to say.) I was there., GV Box score:
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1962/B07240MLN1962.htm

Michael Green

2/4/2014 01:37:08 pm

Thanks, Mr. Vecsey! I thought of a story Lindsey Nelson told, that one time Stengel said to him, "We gotta work on the little finesses." He talked about needing to bunt, hit behind the runner, etc. That day, the Mets lost something like 19-1. Lindsey saw him after the game and Stengel smiled a little and said, "The little finesses ain't gonna be the problem."

George Vecsey

2/5/2014 03:53:14 am

Great. After a truly dreadful game, Casey was known to say:
"The attendance got trimmed." (Meaning, in his dialect, the fans were short-changed. After a while, we talked like him. Called each other "Doctor.")

Brian Savin

2/5/2014 12:27:04 pm

Fun, but I don't think you did justice to the trauma suffered from the 0-9 start. And then the first home win. I prayed more fervantly to their expected HR hitter, Jim Hickman, than I ever had to Jesus Christ (may God, and Jim, forgive me for my blasphemy to both).

George Vecsey

2/6/2014 12:56:01 am

Brian, Hickman would have been the first to tell you your priorities were off. Nice guy, and had a good career. He was the last original Met.
Casey tried to get him to be more aggressive. Casey used to chant: "You-can't-improve-your-average-with-the-bat-upon-your-shoulder." GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

These Vintage Mets Will Get Fans Through Next Month -5

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