Manager Casey Stengel was ecstatic.
His expansion New York Mets had beaten the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 23, 1962, the franchise’s first win in their 10th game.
“Casey’s a Genius Again; Mets Win!” read the Chicago Tribune headline.
“Yahoo!” Stengel yelled in the visitors clubhouse. “I’m so excited I’m shaking. We sure was on a long nap. If we win 99 more we’ll take this pennant.”
To make a long story short, Stengel’s Mets would not win the National League pennant. In fact, they wound up losing 120 games to set the modern-era major league record for ineptitude.
That record would stand 62 years until the 2024 Chicago White Sox came along, a team so bad it tied that ’62 Mets record on Sunday, setting up a potential clincher at home at Guaranteed Rate Field.
A playoff-type atmosphere was in store for the Sox, though they were as far away from the postseason as humanly possible. And with Sox fans rooting for a loss the last two days, the players responded with back-to-back wins, including Wednesday’s 4-3, 10-inning win over the Los Angeles Angels on Andrew Benintendi’s walk-off single.
“It’s huge,” Benintendi said. “I think if we swept the final series of the year, it would be, not funny, but it’d give us all a chuckle.”
Photos: Chicago White Sox 4, Los Angeles Angels 3 (10 inn.) at Guaranteed Rate Field
Will the Sox get the last laugh in this tragic season? They still need to go 4-0 to avoid the Mets’ mark and have Chris Flexen on the mound Thursday for the series finale against the Angels.
It’s quite obvious now that Sox fans want to see the record broken. The “sell the team” chants were back Wednesday, along with some more vulgar chants aimed at Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. So the players are going to have to do this for themselves and interim manager Grady Sizemore, not the fans who came out hoping they’d lose.
Starter Davis Martin said they don’t talk about the fans cheering for the Angels or the record-tying number, 120. He noted that many of the players have only been here a short while and are just starting their careers.
“There’s a new wave of guys coming in, so you can sit there and dwell on it, or you can say these are the guys we have today, let’s go have some energy and try to win a ballgame,” Martin said.
The crowds are acting vastly different than they’ve been all year, the media is focused on one subject, and history is on the doorstep.
It’s do-or-die, White Sox-style.
“When you’re nudging up against history, it’s one of those deals for us that our backs are against the wall and we’re going to see who’s got it and who’s not,” Martin said. “I think everybody has kind of answered the bell.”
It’s too late for the players to fix the team’s reputation. The first 156 games can’t be erased. But a strong finish can at least end the season on a positive note and perhaps aid in their quest to help Sizemore return in ’25, a goal of several Sox players.
In the introduction to Jimmy Breslin’s book on the ’62 Mets, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” former White Sox owner Bill Veeck praised the author for “preserving for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure.”
The Sox are probably going to usurp the ’62 Mets as the standard bearers for abject failures, but are they really a worse team?
It depends on your point of view.
The ’62 Mets had a Pythagorean win-loss record of 50-110, according to Baseball Reference, suggesting bad luck led to 10 more losses than the team’s record indicated, based on run differential. The ’24 Sox had a Pythagorean win-loss record of 44-113 heading into Wednesday’s game, meaning they were seven games worse than they should’ve been.
Of course, Stengel was a Hall of Fame manager who won seven World Series titles with the New York Yankees. Sizemore, who took over for Pedro Grifol on Aug. 8, has a 10-31 record, a .244 winning percentage that would translate to a 40-122 record over a 162-game season.
He’s no Casey Stengel, but that doesn’t matter here. What matters is that he’s no Grifol, and that he’s stressing positivity and accountability to players on a daily basis.
“I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything,” Sizemore said before Wednesday’s game. “It’s been one of the highlights of my career. It’s obviously not what you guys want to hear, the fans want to hear, but I think that (the players’) support, just the way they’ve played and just the opportunity they’ve given me and this organization, has been great. It’s been fun.”
One man’s misery is another man’s fun.
There have been similarities between the ’24 Sox and the ’62 Mets besides their place atop the losing column in the record books:
• The Mets were treated to a ticker tape parade in Manhattan before their first game at the Polo Grounds in ’62. The White Sox players began the season on March 28 by riding in from center field in a car caravan, an annual tradition at Guaranteed Rate Field.
• The ’24 Sox have had 12 comeback wins, which is far fewer than the 25 by the ’62 Mets. But they also have 56 blown leads, which seems like a lot until you discover the ’62 Mets had 64 blown leads.
• The Mets were owned by Joan Payson, a New Yorker whom SABR reported was “a congenial, happy owner who loved to chat with (fans), wave, and sign autographs.” The Sox are controlled by Reinsdorf, a New Yorker who does not love to chat with fans, wave or sign autographs. Mets fans were happy to have Payson as an owner. Sox fans chanted “Jerry Sucks” in the eighth inning of Wednesday’s game.
The ’62 Mets snapped the previous all-time record of 117 losses held by the 1916 Philadelphia A’s on Sept. 26, 1962, with a 6-3 loss to the Braves in Milwaukee. A crowd of 3,239 showed up, and the media did not make a huge deal out of it. They lost No. 120 at Wrigley Field on Sept. 30, the final day of the season. The Cubs, who turned a triple play that day, finished with 103 losses, their worst season in franchise history.
When the Mets lost their 120th game, it seemed like a record that would never be broken. After the final loss, Stengel was asked whether the season had been fun.
“I would have to say no to that one,” Stengel replied.
Sox fans can relate, but they can’t say the last two days haven’t been entertaining.
