Welcome to Saturday Seasons, where every week, we take a trip through the rollercoaster that is New York Mets history—one season at a time. Whether it's a championship run or a year so painful you’d rather pretend it never happened (looking at you, 1993), we’re covering it all.
Being a Mets fan is like being in a long-term relationship with someone who forgets your birthday but occasionally shows up with diamonds. There have been moments of glory, like '69 and '86, and then there have been, well... other moments. (Remember when Mo Vaughn was our big acquisition? Yeah, we’re going to talk about that too.)
So, grab a cup of coffee—or something stronger if we’re discussing the early '60s—and let’s relive the highs, the lows, and the downright bizarre. After all, being a Mets fan isn’t just about wins and losses—it’s about the stories. And trust me, the Mets have plenty of them.
The 1962 New York Mets were not just bad. They were historically, epically, mind-numbingly bad. They weren’t so much a baseball team as they were a traveling comedy act, except the punchlines usually involved an error, a strikeout, or a base-running blunder of biblical proportions.
Their 40-120 record remains the gold standard for modern-day baseball futility—at least until the 2024 Chicago White Sox decided to get in on the act. And while the Sox managed to lose 121 games, their .253 winning percentage still couldn’t quite match the Mets’ sparkling .250 mark. That’s right: the Mets managed to be worse at winning than a team that actually lost more games. A true accomplishment.
For the record, the 1962 Mets weren’t just historically awful—they were also deceptive. Nearly a quarter of their wins came in a bizarre two-week stretch in May when they briefly resembled an actual baseball team, going 9-3. Subtract that miracle run, and they were 31-117, which is probably the sort of record that gets you relegated to the International League if baseball had such a thing.
Then there was Marv Throneberry. If you looked up “lovable loser” in the dictionary, his picture would be there, wearing a Mets cap slightly askew. Throneberry’s legend was cemented on June 17, 1962, in the first game of a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds against the Cubs. He laced what should have been a triple, only to be called out for missing first base. When manager Casey Stengel ran out to argue, the umpire shut him down with, “Don’t bother, Casey, he missed second too.” That’s right, he missed not one but two bases. It was a rare kind of incompetence, like locking yourself out of your house while still inside it.
But that was just the warm-up act. Earlier in the game, Throneberry had managed to obstruct a runner in a rundown, a play so absurdly wrong that it probably made the rules committee reconsider its existence. His gaffe led to four unearned Cubs runs, and then, just to tie a bow on the disaster, he struck out with the tying run on base in the ninth. In the annals of baseball bloopers, Throneberry might be the patron saint.
Of course, Marv wasn’t alone in his misery. Craig Anderson started the season with a promising 3-1 record, briefly offering hope that he might escape the fate of most Mets pitchers. That hope didn’t last long. Anderson went on to lose his next 16 decisions, finishing the year at 3-17. His streak of misfortune became one of the defining examples of the team’s struggles, a record future Mets squads would revisit as a cautionary tale.
Even the Mets’ goodbyes were a spectacle. On the last day of the season, catcher Joe Pignatano took his final big league at-bat and lined into a triple play. Adding to the poetic misery, both runners in the play—Richie Ashburn and Sammy Drake—were also playing their last MLB games. Ashburn’s Hall of Fame career literally ended in a bang-bang-bang out sequence. Not exactly how you want to ride into the sunset.
So why were the Mets so bad? Simple. The players were bad, and the people picking the players were worse. Management, led by George Weiss and Casey Stengel, was obsessed with nostalgia, scooping up any former Dodger or Yankee they could find, regardless of whether the player could still, you know, play. Opening Day featured four ex-Brooklyn Dodgers, and as the season dragged on, they added former Yankees Marv Throneberry and Gene Woodling, as well as a washed-up Clem Labine. Their strategy seemed to be assembling an Old-Timers' Day roster and hoping nobody noticed.
Meanwhile, the expansion Houston Colt .45s, who entered the league at the same time, built a much more balanced roster with a mix of veterans and prospects. They won 24 more games than the Mets and finished a respectable eighth. The Mets, on the other hand, cornered the market on players whose best days were behind them and whose worst days were, unfortunately, still ahead.
To make matters worse, the Mets ignored players who actually could have helped. On April 27, 1962, the Yankees released Robin Roberts, and instead of making a move, a Mets official reportedly quipped, “If he couldn’t help the Yankees, how could he help us?” Roberts, of course, went to Baltimore and won 37 games over the next three seasons. The Mets? They signed Dave Hillman, who pitched to a 6.32 ERA and promptly disappeared from the majors forever.
The Mets also missed out on a young lefty named Mike Cuellar, who had 185 wins ahead of him, because they were too busy trading for Harry Chiti, the only player in baseball history to be traded for himself. If that’s not the perfect metaphor for the 1962 Mets, I don’t know what is.
Even Don McMahon, a reliable reliever the Houston Colts picked up for cash, wasn’t on their radar. The Mets, who needed pitching like a drowning man needs a life preserver, opted instead for Vinegar Bend Mizell, who went 0-2 with a 7.34 ERA before washing out of baseball altogether. Meanwhile, McMahon pitched until 1974.
Among the other statistical lowlights, Roger Craig, the team’s ace by default, led the league with 24 losses, finishing with a 10-24 record and a 4.51 ERA. Al Jackson, another overworked starter, wasn’t far behind, going 8-20 with a 4.40 ERA. Meanwhile, slugger Frank Thomas provided one of the few bright spots, hitting 34 home runs and driving in 94 RBIs, a herculean effort on a team that barely seemed to score.
The 1962 Mets weren’t just bad; they were a masterclass in how not to build a baseball team. They were the guys who studied for the test by reading the wrong book. They weren’t just losing games; they were redefining what it meant to be terrible. And yet, somehow, they became beloved. Maybe it was their charm, their absurdity, or just the fact that, in some ways, they made the rest of us feel a little better about our own mistakes.
They were, after all, the Amazin’ Mets—even if the only thing amazing about them was how often they lost.
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