Sports
White Sox might break record for losses. How should the 1962 Mets feel about it?
NEW YORK — Craig Anderson pauses the phone call. He’s got to get his notes.
He returns with a sheet of paper he’s had for 62 years — the day-by-day performance of the 1962 New York Mets.
“Somebody gave this to me at the end of the ’62 season,” he says. “I’ve kept it all these years.”
The ledger documents the misfortunes of the losingest team in baseball history — a team on the cusp of one more loss: its place in history.
While nine members of ’62 are still alive, Anderson and fellow pitcher Jay Hook are the only two who spent the entire season with the big-league club. Few people know the burden of history, the burden of ignominious history, like Anderson. The high point of the rookie reliever’s season came May 12, when he earned the win in both games of a doubleheader sweep.
Those would be the last wins he’d ever record in the major leagues, and he set a record by dropping his next 19 decisions. It stood for 29 years, until another Met, Anthony Young, broke it in 1993.
“I didn’t want him to break my record. I didn’t want to wish it on him or anyone,” Anderson says. “That’s the way I felt then and that’s the way I feel now.”
On the phone now, he is matching up the current date — “the Mets started a 13-game losing streak right now,” he notes — while comparing it to the current record for the White Sox.
“I don’t want them to break it,” he says. “I want them to win at least 12 more games. I hope they do, for their sake.”
The Mets visit the south side of Chicago this weekend in the midst of a playoff chase. The White Sox enter the series chasing something grander: history.
The 1962 Mets set the modern-era record for losses in a season with 120. With an even month left in the season, Chicago has lost 104 games, three losses ahead even of the ’62 Mets’ pace for the season. It is easily the most sustained challenge to that team’s record since the 2003 Detroit Tigers needed five wins in their last six games to avoid it.
The White Sox need to go 12-15 to avoid tying the record. They haven’t done that over a 27-game stretch since May. At the moment, they’ve lost 37 of their past 41 contests.
There are not many players who can relate to what that kind of season feels like. Anderson and Hook are two of them.
“It’s shattering when it’s happening to you,” Hook said, his matter-of-fact tone over the phone belying that choice of adjective, “and I’m sure the White Sox are feeling that right now. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. You don’t like to go through life thinking you were part of the worst team of whatever you did.”
To understand the ’62 Mets, you have to understand Marv Throneberry. Excuse me, Marvelous Marv Throneberry.
The Mets acquired Throneberry, a 28-year-old first baseman, from the Orioles in early May for a player to be named later. (A month later, that player was named as Hobie Landrith, who’d been New York’s first selection in the expansion draft. Landrith had played for the Mets between the trade and the announcement, meaning the two players traded for one another played together for a month.)
Throneberry acquired his ironic moniker with a penchant for misadventure. He mucked up rundowns. He faceplanted racing for the bag. He missed first base — and maybe second, too, the story goes — on a triple. He won a boat he didn’t want in a season-long contest — not much use for a boat in southwest Tennessee, he said — and had to declare it on his taxes.
“Things just sort of keep on happening to me,” he said at one point.
“Marvelous Marv does more than just play first base for the Mets,” wrote Jimmy Breslin in “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets’ First Year.” “He is the Mets.”
Throneberry, who retained his sense of humor throughout that disastrous season, serves as the stand-in for the Mets’ status as lovable losers. They balked in runs. They misplayed fly balls. They allowed nearly one unearned run per game — to go along with more than five earned runs per contest. On average, their games took 15 minutes longer than everyone else’s, which caused one to be declared a tie because it went past curfew. (“Curfew” here was dictated by the Mets’ flight back to New York from Houston.)
Thing is, Anderson and Hook thought the team could be pretty good. A year earlier, the expansion Angels had won 70 games, and the Mets had brought in some big names — Gil Hodges and Roger Craig in the expansion draft, Richie Ashburn in a deal with the Cubs.
“I looked at the roster and thought, ‘Man, that’s a pretty dynamic list,’” said Hook, who was drafted away from the reigning pennant-winner in Cincinnati. “Casey Stengel is the manager and he’d had great success. I really looked at it optimistically. I thought we could be a decent team.”
“I thought we were going to at least be competitive,” Anderson said.
The nine-game losing streak to start the season quelled that optimism. When a 9-3 mark over two weeks in May threatened to restore it, the Mets responded by losing those 17 in a row.
“That was where I started to think that maybe we had some problems,” said Anderson.
One player after the season told Breslin, “Forty games is about all we could win. After all, we were playing against teams that had all major leaguers on them.”
The Mets were still beloved. They drew nearly a million fans to the Polo Grounds, finishing in the middle of the league in attendance — more than Red Sox and Phillies teams around .500.
“The New York fans are true baseball fans,” Anderson said. “I won’t say they forgave us, but they never gave up on us.”
“You see,” Breslin wrote of the city’s affection for the team, “the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurance Rockefeller?”
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that a certain feeling gets expressed a lot by those invested in the Mets’ history.
The 2024 White Sox are not worthy of breaking the Mets’ record.
The Mets had no choice but to be bad. Stricter rules in the expansion draft — because the AL’s expansion teams had done better in 1961 — left New York with little to choose from. The amateur draft wasn’t around yet, let alone free agency. The Mets had to build through scouting and trading. The White Sox, on the other hand, are three years removed from consecutive playoff appearances that were supposed to herald a stretch of sustained contention. It’s all collapsed since.
Evan Roberts is the drivetime cohost for WFAN and author of “My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom.”
“It’s not life and death, BUT I’d prefer they not break it,” he said via direct message. “I grew up with legendary stories about how bad and hilarious the 1962 Mets were, and I would ideally not want to see a team pass the 120 losses.”
Devin Gordon is the author of “So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazing True Story of the New York Mets — the Best Worst Team in Sports.”
“I suppose I should feel like it’s some kind of albatross around the franchise’s neck and that I should be relieved at the prospect of it finally getting lifted. But I don’t,” he wrote in an email. “That team was a storybook team in its own unique way, and I like that it’s enshrined in history. It’s also the perfect narrative bookend for what happened seven years later with the World Series win in 1969. It’s part of a much larger, more cinematic story for us in a way that one random catastrophic season by another team will never be.”
Indeed, the Mets’ championship in 1969 has retroactively uplifted that ’62 team as well.
“To have won a world championship seven years later provides the perfect bookend with the historic futility,” said Mets broadcaster Howie Rose, who was eight years old watching the Mets’ debut season. “It all ties together. It’s all part of the heritage. ’69 is sweeter because of ’62. It’s just a nice piece of perverse symmetry.”
“To never have finished above ninth place and then to win it all in 1969, that narrative is a very heroic and comforting one for Mets fans,” said Gary Cohen, New York’s television broadcaster. “The White Sox breaking that record wouldn’t change that. However, I don’t want to see anybody lose 121 games because that’s a horrible thing for their franchise.”
Dave Bagdade wrote “A Year in Mudville: The Full Story of Casey Stengel and the Original Mets” about the ’62 Mets. He also happens to be a lifelong White Sox fan.
“I don’t want to see their record eclipsed,” Bagdade wrote in an email. “I love the idea that they were the worst baseball team of the modern era, but that they lost with personality and humor and that they remain one of the most loved teams of any era despite (or possibly because of) their record. The ’24 Sox are just a steaming pile of baseball ineptitude. They don’t lose with personality and humor. They just lose. I don’t want anything about this Sox team to be enshrined in baseball immortality.”
In response to an informal poll on X, which obviously skews younger, about three in four Mets fans did want the White Sox to break the record. Younger fans feel little pride in 120 losses.
Looking ahead to this weekend, I’m curious: Do you as a Mets fan want the White Sox to break the ’62 team’s record for most losses in a season?
— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) August 28, 2024
Greg Prince, who pens the popular blog “Faith and Fear in Flushing” and has written four books about the Mets, ultimately agrees with the majority.
“I’ve been charmed by all that went into creating 40-120 my entire rooting life,” Prince wrote in an email. “The legend of the 1962 club will endure no matter who holds the record. All that being said, hell yes, let somebody else lose more than my team. Plus, you know, history. Somebody setting a mark like this while we’re here to witness it is worth a dozen Danny Jansens facing off against another dozen Danny Jansens.”
There’s one other reason Hook and Anderson don’t want the record to be broken. Playing for the 1962 Mets is a part — a significant part — of their personal legacies in baseball.
Hook recorded the first win in Mets history; there’s a ball displayed prominently at Citi Field with his name written on it in large letters. Anderson signs almost all his autographs with “Original Met.”
“If you’d asked me this back in the mid-60s, I would have said I was so happy to get it over with and get out of there,” Anderson said. “But after 62 years now …”
Hook thought back to the Old Timers’ Day the Mets held in 2022. The club had asked him if he wanted to pitch, and the then-85-year-old suggested a first pitch instead. He worked out for weeks to get himself in shape, and then, in front of more than two dozen members of his family, he fired it to Mike Piazza on the fly.
“They had the best weekend going to New York and being at Citi Field,” he said of his family. “I’ve had more publicity because I was on that team. That’s survived.”
It will survive even if the White Sox fail to win 12 games over the final month of the season. If the ’62 Mets cede their long-held pedestal in the sport, their legacy, one that’s grown in fondness with each passing year, is secure.
“With the passage of time, it has become increasingly difficult to accurately portray who and what those Mets were and what they represented,” Rose said. “For those not of age when the Mets came about, they could not possibly understand what their impact was not only on baseball fans in New York but around the country.”
(Top photo from the Polo Grounds on June 20, 1962: Associated Press file)
Sports
Men’s college basketball Top 25: SEC’s dominance, depth takes over another weekend
Even SEC football is jealous of what SEC basketball is doing right now.
The league went 14-1 this weekend and has been so dominant that you’re going to hear a lot of “The SEC is the first league to (fill in the blank)” for the next few months. My Top 25 ballot this week includes 10 SEC teams, with five in the top 10. Three others — Missouri, Arkansas and Texas — have arguments to be included. Just going by the numbers, Auburn could be the best team at this point of the season in the last decade. (More on the Tigers below.)
Remember all of that preseason talk about how many Big 12 teams were in the top 10 and how ridiculously good that league was going to be? Well, the SEC is walking the walk.
This is going to be one fun league race to watch.
Reminder: Below my Top 25, I give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So when a team appears in the table but not in the text below, that’s why. Scroll on for notes on Auburn, Tennessee, Iowa State, Florida, Kentucky, Kansas, UConn, Texas A&M and Dayton.
1. Auburn
How good has Auburn been? After running previously Top 25 Ohio State off the floor in a 91-53 win in Atlanta on Saturday, Auburn now has an efficiency margin of 35.01 at KenPom. KenPom has this fun sorting tool that allows you to see the ratings at any point in the season dating back to the 2011-12 season. Turns out, Auburn is his database’s best team on Dec. 15 in the last 14 seasons — by a lot.
Now, you’ll notice that the best team at this point in time doesn’t always win the national championship. Three of the last 14 teams that were No. 1 on Dec. 15 went on to win it all: 2011-12 Kentucky, 2017-18 Villanova and 2022-23 UConn. What we can assume is that Auburn is probably going to have a No. 1 seed; 2016-17 Duke is the only team with a plus-30 efficiency margin at this snapshot in time that did not end up a No. 1 seed.
You’ll also notice this year’s Tennessee and Duke teams are also in this top-10, which is another way of saying that in just about any other year, those teams would be No. 1 at this point.
So, Auburn has been really, really, ridiculously good this season. I’m not going to argue against anyone ranking Tennessee No. 1, especially after the Vols won at Illinois on Saturday. But the Tigers have been historically dominant so far.
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2. Tennessee
The Vols started to close the resume gap with Auburn in a 66-64 win over the Illini in Champaign. (The one thing Auburn is missing is an impressive road win. Technically, beating Houston in Houston didn’t count because the game was played at the Rockets’ arena.)
Tennessee showed the value of a strong bench in its win at Illinois. Its best two players, Chaz Lanier and Zakai Zeigler, both fouled out. Zeigler barely played the second half. Starting center Felix Okpara was also limited to nine minutes because of foul trouble, and he just didn’t really fit in this game. The Vols still found a way, mostly because sixth man Jordan Gainey stepped up to score 23 points, including the buzzer-beating game winner.
[Fran Fraschilla voice] A lesson for young guards: Be able to drive either direction. Gainey has had 12 drives to the bucket this season — seven to the right, five to the left — and has now converted four out of the five times he’s gone left. This play was going to allow him to go either direction. The Vols placed Cade Phillips near the top of the key and had him try to set a butt screen. He didn’t make any contact, but it was just another obstacle for the defense. Illinois was in a tricky spot from the start, with Gainey getting a running start and Kasparas Jakucionis backpedaling and eventually opening his hips when Gainey hit him with an in-and-out dribble.
Ideally, Illini big man Tomislav Ivisic would have tried to contest this shot, but he stopped to box out Phillips, who is one of the best offensive rebounders in the country. If the Illini had it to do over again, Kylan Boswell probably would have plugged that gap since he’s guarding Jahmai Mashack, whom the Illini cheated off all night. It’s hard to make those quick decisions in such a hectic setting, and credit to the Vols for knowing exactly what they wanted and executing it. That’s why you practice special situations. (Also, credit to Rick Barnes for the play call, one he got from legendary high school coach Morgan Wootten.)
Iowa State’s offense continues to hum along as one of the best in college basketball, which isn’t something most had on the preseason bingo card. One big boost to the Cyclones has been the passing of power forward Joshua Jefferson, who had a season-high seven assists to go along with 19 points and 10 rebounds in a 89-80 comeback win over Iowa on Thursday.
Jefferson is such a good passer because he stays composed in traffic and understands passing angles. Iowa was doubling the post, and Jefferson was welcoming that double. Watch how he takes a wide step to his left to pull the second defender further up the floor and create a better angle to feed Dishon Jackson.
This inbound is an example of a hectic situation that had to go off-script. This looked like it was designed to go to Jefferson, but he wasn’t able to get it as easily because Drew Thelwell (No. 3) was not where you’d expect him to be. Jefferson realized Iowa’s defense was misaligned, looked middle to assess and then made the skip pass to Nate Heise.
Jefferson always has great awareness of where the help is coming from. This was a smart and timely cut from Heise, as well.
This final Jefferson assist iced the game for the Cyclones. Iowa’s Josh Dix saw the short roll develop and came down from above the 3-point line to tag Jefferson. Again, Jefferson calmly assessed the floor, realized where Dix came from and got Curtis Jones a wide-open look:
Florida is the top-10 team you could most easily argue against because its schedule doesn’t compare to the others in this range. But the Gators have been dominant enough to justify their placement, off to a 10-0 start with every win by double-digits, and they have a star emerging in Walter Clayton. Averaging 23 points over the last four games, Clayton is one of the scariest volume scorers in the country because he can shoot with range and get it off quickly. During that four-game stretch, he has made 19 of 47 from 3-point range. Getting off 47 3s in four games and knocking them down at better than a 40 percent clip is an impressive feat.
A note to future opponents: Do not play a 1-3-1 zone when Clayton is in the game. Arizona State tried that twice on Saturday. This happened the first time:
And this happened the second time:
Clayton, by himself, is a zone buster.
6. Kentucky
Kentucky point guard Lamont Butler is arguably the team’s most important player because the Wildcats play faster when he’s on the floor. This is a team that thrives in transition: Kentucky scored 28 points on 14 transition opportunities against Louisville and is now scoring 1.32 points per transition opportunity, which is third-best in the country (per Synergy).
Butler is great at pitching it ahead, and he puts pressure on the defense with his speed, getting quick paint touches like this one that usually end in an easy bucket.
With Butler on the floor, Kentucky has an effective field goal percentage of 61.1 percent, per CBB Analytics. That’s higher than any eFG percentage in the history of KenPom, which dates back to 1997. In other words, Kentucky is a historically great offense with Butler on the floor.
Kansas looked like Kansas again in its win over NC State on Saturday. And if there’s a key to KU looking top-10 good compared to whatever it was against Creighton and Missouri, it’s Dajuan Harris Jr. and Zeke Mayo playing with confidence and making shots. Teams are usually willing to let Harris shoot, but the scouting report has been to try to take away Mayo. The Jayhawks need to find ways to get the South Dakota State transfer 3-point looks because in games when he has attempted five or more 3s — which has happened against NC State, Furman, Oakland, North Carolina and Howard — he has shot a solid 15 of 36 from 3 and KU has an efficiency of 123.3 in those games. That’d be the sixth-best offense in college hoops.
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13. UConn
Turns out the Huskies weren’t cooked. They now have three consecutive wins over top-40 KenPom teams (Baylor, Texas and Gonzaga), and that alone is Top 25 worthy. UConn is one of seven teams with at least three top 40 wins, joining Auburn (five wins), Marquette (four), Alabama (three), Kansas (three), Texas A&M (three) and Purdue (three).
Since the day after the Maui Invitational, UConn is the fifth-best team in college basketball, according to barttorvik.com. The schedule could also allow for the Huskies to keep climbing in the rankings over the next month-plus. They will likely be favored in their next 10 games. Credit to Dan Hurley and his players for turning things around so quickly. That Hurley swagger appears to be back.
14. Texas A&M
No one in college basketball is better during the one or two seconds that a shot is in the air than Texas A&M. The Aggies, who are the best offensive rebounding team in the country, should be the betting favorite to remain in that spot all season. Watch their effort when the shot is in the air:
Solomon Washington went about 40 feet to chase that board down, and even though the Aggies didn’t end up scoring, they took 45 seconds off that clock in that one possession, essentially icing the game. No matter where that ball bounced, the Aggies had someone in position to grab it. Whether it’s high-pointing a ball in the air or chasing down a long rebound, Buzz Williams has guys with the athleticism and desire to go get it.
Anthony Grant has had some great offensive teams at Dayton, but usually it’s the shooting that is the separator. This group is good in that category — ranking 24th in effective field goal percentage — but these Flyers take care of the basketball better than any of his previous teams. They are turning it over on only 13.1 percent of their possessions, and their aversion to turnovers helped them knock off Marquette on Saturday. Only three teams have had a turnover rate under 20 percent against the Golden Eagles this season. Dayton had the lowest (11.3), and Marquette is now 1-2 in those games.
Dropped out: Clemson, Wisconsin, Penn State.
Keeping an eye on: Memphis, Utah State, Drake, San Diego State, St. John’s, West Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati.
(Photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
Sports
Falcons snap 4-game losing streak in much-needed win over Raiders
The Atlanta Falcons’ losing streak has finally come to an end, as Kirk Cousins & Co. picked up a much-needed win over the Las Vegas Raiders, 15-9, on Monday night.
Atlanta moves to 7-7 on the year, which is massive considering the tight NFC South race at the moment. Meanwhile, the Raiders continue to fall at 2-12.
It wasn’t the prettiest of wins, but at this point in the season, with three games remaining after this one, a victory is a victory.
The Falcons’ offense didn’t see the breakout performance it might have wanted, but at least Cousins threw his first touchdown for the first time in five games.
It was Drake London hauling in a 30-yard pass to get Atlanta on the board first, snapping a streak where Cousins had eight interceptions to zero touchdowns thrown.
But it was the only time the Falcons were able to find the end zone, as many drives stalled in Raiders territory leading to field goal attempts from Younghoe Koo.
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Koo was 2-of-3 on his attempts, but that would only make 13 points on offense.
On defense, the Falcons were having their way with Raiders quarterback Desmond Ridder, who was making the start against his former team in place of the injured Aidan O’Connell.
As the Falcons stopped the run game – they allowed 65 total yards all game with Sincere McCormick ruled out with an injury early on – Ridders was forced to throw and he tossed an interception while being sacked three times.
Atlanta was also able to make Alexander Mattison fumble, as they continued to make plays to flip the field.
But this game, though a slog, ultimately came down to the final play off Ridder’s hands as Las Vegas had the ball down six needing a touchdown and extra point to win it.
Ridder threw two Hail Mary’s to the end zone, but the first one went incomplete and Falcons star safety Jessie Bates III was the recipient of the final one to secure the victory.
So, on the stat sheet, Cousins was only 11-for-17 with 112 yards. He also threw another interception to go along with his touchdown.
For the Falcons, the ground game was superior, with Bijan Robinson carrying it 22 times for 125 yards and Tyler Allgeier adding 43 yards on 12 carries.
As for the Raiders, Jakobi Meyers was the leader in receiving yards with 59 to account for a big chunk of Ridder’s 208 yards on 23-of-38 passing. Ameer Abdullah, the lone touchdown scorer for the Raiders, also had seven catches for 58 yards.
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Sports
No. 1 UCLA overcomes absence of Lauren Betts in dominating win over Cal Poly
The UCLA women’s basketball team was in complete control with a 26-point lead against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo when the third quarter ended, but that didn’t stop Londynn Jones from showcasing her scoring skills.
On the first possession of the fourth quarter, Jones slashed her way to the hoop to score on a layup, then drained a fastbreak three-pointer on the Bruins’ next possession to give UCLA a 31-point lead. By then, any hope of a Mustangs comeback was wiped out.
The top-ranked Bruins wrapped up their home non-conference schedule in familiar fashion Monday, dominating in a 69-37 victory.
UCLA (11-0) was without its best player — junior center Lauren Betts was held out because of a minor lower body injury — and her absence was felt early. The Bruins shot an abysmal 12.5% from the field in the second quarter as Cal Poly (4-6) cut the Bruins’ lead to nine points.
But the Bruins’ depth helped them overcome the absence of Betts, who is averaging a double-double and is the Big Ten’s third-leading scorer. Janiah Barker finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds, Timea Gardiner had 11 points and six rebounds and Jones and Angela Dugalić each finished with 12 points.
The road will get tougher for the Bruins. They face Creighton at Chase Center in San Francisco on Friday before returning to Pauley Pavilion to play Nebraska on Dec. 29.
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