It Ain't What They Do It's the Way That They Do It

Things were bad enough last year, when Casey Stengel's fledgling New York Mets earned a certain immortality by losing more games (120) than any other team in the history of modern major-league baseball. They had their laughs, though--like the time "Marvelous Marv" Throneberry walloped a triple and failed to touch either first or second base. But all that was going to change this year. The lineup was full of fierce young rookies, Oldtime Slugger Duke Snider (389 lifetime homers) was on hand from the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Mets' owner, Mrs. Joan Whitney Payson, felt pretty optimistic. "I simply cannot stand 120 losses this year," she said. "If we can't get anything, we are going to cut those losses down--at least to 119."

But then, on the very first play of the very first game, Third Baseman Charley Neal rushed in to field a slow grounder, grabbed the ball and threw it into right field. The St. Louis Cardinals won 7-0, and the Mets got two hits. By last week the Mets had scored only ten runs and collected only 43 base hits. In their first eight games, they piled up eight losses, one away from their league record of last season.

Still, as the song goes, it ain't what they do, it's the way that they do it. In Milwaukee, they led the Braves 3-2, and were just one pitch away from victory. That pitch was a high hard one thrown by the Mets' Tracy Stallard to the Braves' Lee Maye, a professional rock 'n' roll singer. He hit it into County Stadium's right-field bleachers. "With any other ball team," sighed Met Alvin Jackson, "there might have been a chance that Maye would have flied out. But with us, the ball is gone as soon as it's hit."

And then, the Mets finally won one--practically the same way. Trailing the Braves, 4-3, they scored two runs in the ninth. MAZEL TOV! shrieked the New York Mirror, and all the city cheered. Flushed with victory, they won yet another, beating--of all people--Milwaukee's Warren Spahn, winningest pitcher (329 victories) in the major leagues.

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