Major League Baseball Organizations by Jozsa Frank P. Jr.;

Author:Jozsa, Frank P., Jr.; [Jozsa, Frank P. Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

New York Mets

The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants abandoned the New York area for respectively Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, leaving the nation’s largest city without a NL franchise in 1958. One year later, attorney William Shea announced the formation of a third major baseball league and named it the Continental League (CL). After a contentious 1960, Shea and other CL officials made an agreement with the established major leagues.17

In exchange for abandoning the CL by Shea and his group, MLB created four new expansion franchises—two in each league. New York City received one of the NL teams with Joan Whitney Payson and her husband Charles Shipman Payson, being former minority owners of the New York Giants, as its principal owners along with George Herbert Walker Jr.—uncle of former President George H. W. Bush—who served as vice president and treasurer until 1977. Previous Giants director M. Donald Grant, the only member of the board to oppose the Giants’ move, became chairman of the franchise’s new board of directors.

The New York team required a nickname. Among those suggested, the finalists were “Bees,” “Skyscrapers,” and “Jets” as well as the eventual runner-up, “Skyliners.” Although the Paysons preferred “Meadowlarks,” the ownership group ultimately selected “Mets” because it was closely related to the club’s existing corporate name, New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, Inc.; harkened back to “Metropolitans,” a historically significant name used by an earlier New York baseball team in the American Association (AA) from 1883 to 1887; and because its brevity naturally fit in newspaper headlines. Thus “Mets” were received with broad approval among fans and the media.

Team Performances

A member of the NL for seven years and specifically the league’s ED from 1969 to 2015, the Mets played 8,608 games and had victories in approximately 48 percent of them. During the period they won six division titles, five pennants, and two World Series in eight playoffs. Among NL teams as of 2015, the fifty-four-year-old club ranked eighth in winning division titles, tied for eighth with the Braves in number of pennants, and tied for sixth with four others in World Series. Within the league’s ED, the Mets had fewer total championships than the Braves and Phillies but not the Marlins and Nationals (Table A7).

In comparison to twenty-nine MLB clubs as of their 2015 season, the Mets tied for ninetieth in winning division titles, tied for thirteenth in pennants, and tied for twelfth in World Series titles. According to these results, the Mets’ performances have been average based on the abilities and talents of their managers and players, competition from rivals, and the franchise owners’ decisions about such things as the team’s payroll and improving its roster by signing free agents and veterans.

Besides winning World Series in 1969 and 1986, the Mets had successful back-to-back seasons in 1999‒2000. During these years, the club’s top players included such pitchers as Tom Seaver, David Cone, and Dwight Gooden, and sluggers’ Edgardo Alfonzo, Keith Hernandez, Robin Ventura, Carlos Beltran, and Curtis Granderson. Alternatively the team

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