Fifty-one years ago today, July 20th, 1969, man first walked on the moon. Later that year, the Mets won the World Series.
There was so much going on in the world in the summer of 1969. There was civil unrest. The Vietnam war was raging. Woodstock took place in August of that year. Richard Nixon’s presidency was in its first year. But something was seemingly normal- the Mets appeared destined for another ho-hum season.
Former Mets manager Casey Stengel had such low expectations for the still-fledgling Mets that he once said man would walk on the moon before the Mets win a championship. As Steven Marcus of Newsday aptly points out, Stengel was correct, but by only three months.
July 20th was the last day before the 1969 All Star break. The Mets were a respectable 53-39, but the Cubs appeared to be a powerhouse. The young Mets were, in the minds of many, kidding themselves thinking that they were in the race. They had just split a doubleheader with the expansion Expos.
How about this for irony? As Marcus points out in the Newsday article referenced above, the Mets were able to watch Neil Armstrong’s history-making walk because their plane was grounded in Montreal due to mechanical issues.
When the lunar module touched down on the surface of the moon that Sunday afternoon, baseball stood still (as it should). Marcus describes the scene at Comiskey Park in Chicago, where the scoreboard fireworks went off to mark the occasion. The Yankees game against the Washington Senators paused for nearly five minutes as PA announcer Bob Sheppard informed the crowd that unprecedented event had taken place.
Think about how incredible the moon landing and walk were. Just sixty-six years prior to the event, the Wright brothers were able to get an aircraft off the ground for 12 seconds. Now, man was on the moon.
The Mets still had some work to do to make their former manager a prophet. It did not look like it was going to happen, at least in 1969. By August 13th, the Mets were 10 games behind the Cubs.
By August 27th, that deficit had shrunk to 2.5 games, and now things were stirring. The Mets slipped back to five games out on September 3rd. By September 10th, however, the Mets were in first place. On October 1st, the second-to-last day of the season, the Mets’ division lead had ballooned to nine games. They ended the season eight games ahead of the Cubs.
The rest of the story is well known. The Mets would go on to sweep the Braves in the NL Championship Series, and defeat the Orioles four games to one to win the World Series, putting a cap on a very transformative year in history.
Casey Stengel has often been dubbed “The Old Professor”. His prescience about space travel and corresponding baseball championships earned him his honorary PhD and tenure among the baseball community.
