Posted on Thu, Sep. 25, 2003
Amazin' MESS
The Tigers are close to matching the futility of the 1962 Mets, but they aren't having as much fun
By DICK KAEGEL
The Kansas City Star
The sportswriters were viciously attacking the Detroit Tigers in one of those screaming matches that passes for a TV show these days. They're the pits! They stink! They're the worst team in professional sports history!
Worse (shudder) than the 1962 New York Mets!
This was two days ago in the visitors' clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium. Curiously, the ensemble of Tigers took little notice, or pretended not to notice, as they stared blankly at the TV screen or perused their newspapers.
They took the ripping in stony silence.
“We're kind of numb to it,” said catcher Matt Walbeck.
There's not much fun around the 2003 Tigers, who have lost 118 games and are on the cusp of eclipsing the 1962 Mets' post-1900 record for most losses in a season, 120.
Ah, but those Mets of 41 years ago were fun. They epitomized the term “lovable losers.”
For the last few weeks, some of those Mets have been following the Tigers' travails. If they hadn't noticed, newspapermen rang them up and brought them up to speed.
Pitcher Jay Hook, who lost 19 times for the Mets, returned from a Colorado vacation to find 10 messages from reporters at his northern Michigan farm. He's become sort of an unofficial spokesman for the '62 club.
“My only thought for them breaking the record is I have empathy for them,” Hook said. “I just hope people aren't too rough on them. If they do break our record, who knows? Forty-one years from now, they may have sportswriters calling and asking them, ‘How does it feel to lose 122?' ”
Roger Craig, who lost 24 games for those Mets, has been an adviser this year to Tigers manager Alan Trammell. As the Tigers neared the record, Craig became reticent to comment, but about a month ago he told a reporter:
“The record's there. Leave it, there's nothing we can do about it now. But there is something the Tigers can do about theirs. I don't want to see Alan be labeled, and he will be, no matter how great a manager he becomes.”
Ken MacKenzie, the Mets' only winning pitcher that year (5-4), noted that the team was put together from scratch in about six months.
“I don't think our record surprised many people,'' MacKenzie said. “But if an organization's had 103 years to develop, you have to ask how can they put a team together that can't catch the ball or hit the ball?”
***
The two teams are from different poles.
The Mets were a first-year expansion team, and because they'd play two years in the homer-friendly Polo Grounds, they loaded up on power hitters like Gil Hodges, Frank Thomas, Jim Hickman and Gus Bell. Unfortunately, most were past their prime. The pitching staff was shopworn as well. But the Mets were embraced by jilted Giants and Dodgers fans, who had seen their National League clubs scurry to the West Coast after the 1957 season.
For good measure, Casey Stengel, who had directed the Yankees to 10 pennants and seven World Series titles, was hired to bring his irrepressible showmanship to the manager's position.
As the losses mounted in 1962, Stengel accepted his share of responsibility but gallantly added: “I couldn't have done it without my players.”
These Tigers are part of a legacy in the American League that has included nine pennants and four World Series titles and Hall of Famers such as Ty Cobb, Mickey Cochrane, Hank Greenberg and George Kell.
After 10 straight years of losing games, the good fans of Detroit are losing interest despite the addition of a new ballpark.
They have a rookie manager in Trammell, who is serious and intense and not given to flamboyant statements.
Times have changed, as Yankees manager Joe Torre observed recently.
“I don't wish it on the Tigers. I don't wish that on anyone,” Torre said. “I'd rather let Casey have the stigma than Alan. Casey knew how to deal with it, and it wasn't that much of a stigma.
“You used to be able to laugh about losing. Not anymore. Losing doesn't go over anymore — not like it did in '62.”
***
MacKenzie, a retired baseball coach at Yale, believes that the intense New York coverage of the Mets by several newspaper reporters helped create Mets lovers.
“They tapped into the zany quality of the club and somehow made it palatable,'' he said.
They had a lot of good material.
Hook, who had engineering degrees from Northwestern and became a successful businessman in Detroit, recalled being asked by New York Times columnist Bob Lipsyte to explain how a pitcher made a baseball curve.
Hook did so, using aerodynamic examples (“That was the time of Sputnik and spheroids coming back in the atmosphere,” he said), and Lipsyte wrote a prize-winning column.
“About two weeks later, I'm pitching a game and get knocked out in the third or fourth inning,” Hook said.
He was chatting with Lipsyte after the game when Stengel ambled by.
“He looks at me,” Hook said, “and he looks at Lipsyte and he says, ‘If Hook could only do what he knows.' ”
Stengel's advice to MacKenzie, a Yale graduate, was: “Make believe you're playing the Harvards.”
That merely showed that Casey was not only funny but foxy.
“My record was 6-0 against Harvard, and I think Casey knew that,” MacKenzie said.
Before long, the Mets came up with one of the biggest folk heroes in the history of losing, first baseman Marv Throneberry. He never met a ball he couldn't butcher. During a game against the Cubs, he lost a triple by neglecting to touch first base and second base in his hurry to reach third.
“It wasn't a triple,” Throneberry explained, “because I cut across the infield.”
Throneberry once complained of not getting a piece of a teammate's birthday cake.
“We was afraid you'd drop it,” Stengel said.
One day, Ed Bouchee was stationed at first base instead of Throneberry and dropped two pickoff throws from pitcher Craig that would have nabbed runner Orlando Cepeda of the Giants.
When the Mets returned from the trip to San Francisco, the New York fans were all over Bouchee.
“What are you trying to do?” Throneberry complained. “Trying to steal my fans?”
Hook unwittingly helped Throneberry's rise to legendary status.
“He asked me if I was an engineer,” Hook said. “And I said, ‘Yeah.' He said, ‘Well, engineers can print, can't they?' ”
Throneberry removed the name placard over his locker and turned it over.
“He asked if I could print real good. I said, ‘Yeah, I've taken some drafting courses.' He said, ‘Well, print Marvelous Marv on there,' ” Hook said.
“I think he got a home run in the eighth or ninth inning to win the game or at least make us close. All the reporters came in and gathered around the locker, and they looked up and there's Marvelous Marv. So the next day in the paper, it's all ‘Marvelous Marv Hits Home Run.' So he named himself.”
***
The Mets earned themselves the name of the biggest losers of the 20th century.
“We lost games every way you could lose them,” said Thomas, the Mets' biggest hitter with 34 homers and 94 RBIs. “It was a misadventure.”
They finished 60½ games out in a 10-team league.
“If I had it to do over again, I'd do it again,” Hook said. “The fans were terrific. We got there and had a tickertape parade before we played a game. The Dodgers and Giants had left, and there was a lot of pent-up demand for a National League club. I think we outdrew the Yankees or came very close to their attendance, and they won the pennant.”
Not quite. The Yankees actually outdrew the Mets' 922,530 total by more than a half-million. But the Mets' fans were no less fervent.
The early Mets inspired a number of books, including Jimmy Breslin's Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? — supposedly an anguished quote from Stengel — and Maury Allen's Now Wait a Minute, Casey!
Inside the somber Tigers' clubhouse the other day, this information was passed to Walbeck.
“I wonder if anybody will write a book about us?” he said.
Don't think so. It doesn't sound like fun reading.
Amazin' MESS
The Tigers are close to matching the futility of the 1962 Mets, but they aren't having as much fun
By DICK KAEGEL
The Kansas City Star
The sportswriters were viciously attacking the Detroit Tigers in one of those screaming matches that passes for a TV show these days. They're the pits! They stink! They're the worst team in professional sports history!
Worse (shudder) than the 1962 New York Mets!
This was two days ago in the visitors' clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium. Curiously, the ensemble of Tigers took little notice, or pretended not to notice, as they stared blankly at the TV screen or perused their newspapers.
They took the ripping in stony silence.
“We're kind of numb to it,” said catcher Matt Walbeck.
There's not much fun around the 2003 Tigers, who have lost 118 games and are on the cusp of eclipsing the 1962 Mets' post-1900 record for most losses in a season, 120.
Ah, but those Mets of 41 years ago were fun. They epitomized the term “lovable losers.”
For the last few weeks, some of those Mets have been following the Tigers' travails. If they hadn't noticed, newspapermen rang them up and brought them up to speed.
Pitcher Jay Hook, who lost 19 times for the Mets, returned from a Colorado vacation to find 10 messages from reporters at his northern Michigan farm. He's become sort of an unofficial spokesman for the '62 club.
“My only thought for them breaking the record is I have empathy for them,” Hook said. “I just hope people aren't too rough on them. If they do break our record, who knows? Forty-one years from now, they may have sportswriters calling and asking them, ‘How does it feel to lose 122?' ”
Roger Craig, who lost 24 games for those Mets, has been an adviser this year to Tigers manager Alan Trammell. As the Tigers neared the record, Craig became reticent to comment, but about a month ago he told a reporter:
“The record's there. Leave it, there's nothing we can do about it now. But there is something the Tigers can do about theirs. I don't want to see Alan be labeled, and he will be, no matter how great a manager he becomes.”
Ken MacKenzie, the Mets' only winning pitcher that year (5-4), noted that the team was put together from scratch in about six months.
“I don't think our record surprised many people,'' MacKenzie said. “But if an organization's had 103 years to develop, you have to ask how can they put a team together that can't catch the ball or hit the ball?”
***
The two teams are from different poles.
The Mets were a first-year expansion team, and because they'd play two years in the homer-friendly Polo Grounds, they loaded up on power hitters like Gil Hodges, Frank Thomas, Jim Hickman and Gus Bell. Unfortunately, most were past their prime. The pitching staff was shopworn as well. But the Mets were embraced by jilted Giants and Dodgers fans, who had seen their National League clubs scurry to the West Coast after the 1957 season.
For good measure, Casey Stengel, who had directed the Yankees to 10 pennants and seven World Series titles, was hired to bring his irrepressible showmanship to the manager's position.
As the losses mounted in 1962, Stengel accepted his share of responsibility but gallantly added: “I couldn't have done it without my players.”
These Tigers are part of a legacy in the American League that has included nine pennants and four World Series titles and Hall of Famers such as Ty Cobb, Mickey Cochrane, Hank Greenberg and George Kell.
After 10 straight years of losing games, the good fans of Detroit are losing interest despite the addition of a new ballpark.
They have a rookie manager in Trammell, who is serious and intense and not given to flamboyant statements.
Times have changed, as Yankees manager Joe Torre observed recently.
“I don't wish it on the Tigers. I don't wish that on anyone,” Torre said. “I'd rather let Casey have the stigma than Alan. Casey knew how to deal with it, and it wasn't that much of a stigma.
“You used to be able to laugh about losing. Not anymore. Losing doesn't go over anymore — not like it did in '62.”
***
MacKenzie, a retired baseball coach at Yale, believes that the intense New York coverage of the Mets by several newspaper reporters helped create Mets lovers.
“They tapped into the zany quality of the club and somehow made it palatable,'' he said.
They had a lot of good material.
Hook, who had engineering degrees from Northwestern and became a successful businessman in Detroit, recalled being asked by New York Times columnist Bob Lipsyte to explain how a pitcher made a baseball curve.
Hook did so, using aerodynamic examples (“That was the time of Sputnik and spheroids coming back in the atmosphere,” he said), and Lipsyte wrote a prize-winning column.
“About two weeks later, I'm pitching a game and get knocked out in the third or fourth inning,” Hook said.
He was chatting with Lipsyte after the game when Stengel ambled by.
“He looks at me,” Hook said, “and he looks at Lipsyte and he says, ‘If Hook could only do what he knows.' ”
Stengel's advice to MacKenzie, a Yale graduate, was: “Make believe you're playing the Harvards.”
That merely showed that Casey was not only funny but foxy.
“My record was 6-0 against Harvard, and I think Casey knew that,” MacKenzie said.
Before long, the Mets came up with one of the biggest folk heroes in the history of losing, first baseman Marv Throneberry. He never met a ball he couldn't butcher. During a game against the Cubs, he lost a triple by neglecting to touch first base and second base in his hurry to reach third.
“It wasn't a triple,” Throneberry explained, “because I cut across the infield.”
Throneberry once complained of not getting a piece of a teammate's birthday cake.
“We was afraid you'd drop it,” Stengel said.
One day, Ed Bouchee was stationed at first base instead of Throneberry and dropped two pickoff throws from pitcher Craig that would have nabbed runner Orlando Cepeda of the Giants.
When the Mets returned from the trip to San Francisco, the New York fans were all over Bouchee.
“What are you trying to do?” Throneberry complained. “Trying to steal my fans?”
Hook unwittingly helped Throneberry's rise to legendary status.
“He asked me if I was an engineer,” Hook said. “And I said, ‘Yeah.' He said, ‘Well, engineers can print, can't they?' ”
Throneberry removed the name placard over his locker and turned it over.
“He asked if I could print real good. I said, ‘Yeah, I've taken some drafting courses.' He said, ‘Well, print Marvelous Marv on there,' ” Hook said.
“I think he got a home run in the eighth or ninth inning to win the game or at least make us close. All the reporters came in and gathered around the locker, and they looked up and there's Marvelous Marv. So the next day in the paper, it's all ‘Marvelous Marv Hits Home Run.' So he named himself.”
***
The Mets earned themselves the name of the biggest losers of the 20th century.
“We lost games every way you could lose them,” said Thomas, the Mets' biggest hitter with 34 homers and 94 RBIs. “It was a misadventure.”
They finished 60½ games out in a 10-team league.
“If I had it to do over again, I'd do it again,” Hook said. “The fans were terrific. We got there and had a tickertape parade before we played a game. The Dodgers and Giants had left, and there was a lot of pent-up demand for a National League club. I think we outdrew the Yankees or came very close to their attendance, and they won the pennant.”
Not quite. The Yankees actually outdrew the Mets' 922,530 total by more than a half-million. But the Mets' fans were no less fervent.
The early Mets inspired a number of books, including Jimmy Breslin's Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? — supposedly an anguished quote from Stengel — and Maury Allen's Now Wait a Minute, Casey!
Inside the somber Tigers' clubhouse the other day, this information was passed to Walbeck.
“I wonder if anybody will write a book about us?” he said.
Don't think so. It doesn't sound like fun reading.
