Artist Tom Sarrantonio was an avid Mets fan as a teen in the late 1960s. He went off to school and lost the bug somewhat, but he does still play softball on Sundays in the Hudson Valley (sometimes with me!). His once beloved Mets books, bought and devoured in 1969 and 1970, remained for years in his beautiful artist’s studio. So he did what others have done when it is time to get rid of stuff like this: “Let’s get Matt to take them.” I gladly accepted the donation of a dozen Mets books from that era. I’ve written a few books on the team I grew up with—coming of Mets age after the glow of ’69 had dulled to something like a communicable disease in the late 1970s. One caveat: Tom expects book reports! This was one area I excelled in at school. So now I pull these books off the pile in my office in the order I originally placed them on the shelf. Keep in mind there are 100+ other unread books piled in my office. This could take some time.
The Mets Will Win the Pennant by William C. Cox (New York: G.P. Putnam Son’s, 1964: $3.50)
But they won’t win the pennant this year. In case you have not been paying attention.
The book in question comes from the dawn of Mets creation. It may be the first book—OK, one of the first—to explain what needs to happen for the Mets to put together a team that could one day win the pennant. Written during the 1963 season, however, the franchise was so new and so deep in ineptitude that the players that the author posits will be part of the solution will be out of the game by the time the Mets finally compete in 1969. At its publication in 1964: Lyndon Johnson is president, the landmark civil rights and labor law has yet to be passed, man has not gone anywhere near the moon, the Mickey Mantle Yankees are still a dynasty—and Mets competency is still a long time away. Nonetheless, there are some good stories in the book about the early Mets along with entertaining tales dating back to the Gashouse Gang of the 1930s, courtesy of Ernie Orsatti, Cardinals teammate of Dizzy and Daffy Dean, Ducky Medwick, Leo Durcoher, etc.
Books that are of a specific time and place, which many of the books in this Mets pile from Tom are, can sometimes butt heads with the reality that you know is coming. Sometimes while reading I want to say, “No, Al Moran is not part of the answer! Those rookies you pump up will never make it! The team will only get better after George Weiss and Casey Stengel retire!” (Though one young player he lauds, a college kid named Ron Swoboda that the Mets stole from under the gaze of his hometown Baltimore Orioles, will have a pivotal role in bringing down those same Orioles in the 1969 World Series.)
Often, your first attempt at a new venture doesn’t pan out. In this case it did not pan out at all. The Mets, who lost 120 games their first year, dropped 111 the year this book took place. They aren’t going anywhere for a while: five 100-loss seasons in all will pile up before the end of the decade. Even the game that holds this short book together, a 5-1 win over the Dodgers in Los Angeles that July—is the club’s first win in 11 games, and that comes after a 15-game losing streak earlier in the month. (The ’63 Mets would have a 4-25 July.) The pitcher who goes the distance in the drought-ender for the Mets, Tracy Stallard (best known for allowing the record-breaking 61st home run to Yankees slugger Roger Maris in 1961 as a member of the Red Sox) will go 6-17 with a 4.71 ERA for the 1963 Mets. A year later he will win four more games, drop a full run off his ERA… and lose 20 times.
One thing that author William Cox provides is vision. “But the Mets remain the Mets, they have crowd appeal,” he wrote during the team’s second season, when the Polo Grounds were still home. “There is no question that when they do climb the ladder, when they do reach the top, they will still command that kind of affection and loyalty.”
Fast forward six decades and that is still the case. As mediocre as the Mets have been historically, their few but memorable landmark seasons can keep the faithful warm in winter, even as the team keeps fans exasperated and overheated during the summer. The quarter century that followed the book’s release resulted in the kind of seasons that kept people coming back: the 1969 Miracle world championship, any season by Tom Seaver in his first decade, the “Ya Gotta Believe” 1973 pennant, the sudden explosion of teenaged Dwight Gooden as the long dormant club won 90 games in 1984, the 1986 domination of the National League and then with one out to go and nobody on, pulling out the World Series in as shocking a way as any team in history.
The author died during the 1988 season (a year that disintegrated in October). Cox cranked out 81 novels in his 87 years. This book is not listed on his Wikipedia page, but plenty of paperback pulp westerns and mysteries are included. (Ironically, my copy of The Mets Will Win the Pennant is a hardcover.) Cox got the prestigious publishing house Putnam to sign on for this one—shame on them for the factual errors that slipped through during an era when houses had dozens of young editors working for $4-5,000 per year. William R. Cox – Wikipedia
The Mets remain a source of enjoyment and angst for the fans who have maintained their “affection and loyalty” (sounds like the “hearts and minds” America claimed to be winning in Vietnam, which was just heating up when this book was published). We can’t see into the future any better today than William C. Cox could in 1964, but so long as we don’t blow up the planet or MLB doesn’t finally succeed in destroying the game, the title still holds water: The Mets Will Win the Pennant. We just don’t know when. It is more fun when it is a surprise. Or at least we keep telling ourselves that.