1969 New York Mets season

The 1969 New York Mets season was the team's eighth as a Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise and culminated when they won the World Series over the Baltimore Orioles. They played their home games at Shea Stadium. The team is often referred to as the "Amazin' Mets" (a nickname coined by Casey Stengel, who managed the team from their inaugural season to 1965) or the "Miracle Mets".

The 1969 season was the first season of divisional play in Major League Baseball. The Mets were assigned to the newly created National League East division. In their seven previous seasons, the Mets had never finished higher than ninth place in the ten-team National League and had never had a winning season. They lost at least one hundred games in five of the seasons. However, they overcame mid-season difficulties while the division leaders for much of the season, the Chicago Cubs, suffered a late-season collapse. The Mets finished 100–62, eight games ahead of the Cubs. They went on to defeat the National League West champion Atlanta Braves three games to none in the inaugural National League Championship Series, and defeat the American League champion Orioles in five games. First baseman Donn Clendenon was named the World Series' most valuable player on the strength of his .357 batting average, three home runs, and four runs batted in.

On Saturday, August 22, 2009, many of the surviving members of the 1969 championship team reunited at the New York Mets' present park, Citi Field.

Offseason

* October 16, 1968: Sold Don Bosch to the Montreal Expos

Trades

Spring training

The Mets held spring training at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida, for the 8th season.

Regular season

The Mets had never finished higher than ninth place in a ten-team league in their first seven seasons. As an expansion team, they went 40–120 in 1962, the most losses by an MLB team in one season in the 20th century, and the 1962 Mets' .250 winning percentage was higher than only the .248 posted by the 1935 Boston Braves.

The Mets never had been over .500 after the ninth game of any season. Seven years after their disastrous inaugural season, "The Amazin' Mets" (as nicknamed by previous manager Casey Stengel) won the World Series, the first expansion team to do so.

1969 was the first year of divisional baseball, precipitated by the expansion of each league from 10 to 12 teams. The Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots joined the American League. The San Diego Padres and Montreal Expos joined the National League. Before 1969, the first place team in each league advanced directly to the World Series. Under the new structure, each league was divided into East and West divisions, each comprising six teams, with the divisional winners facing off in a best-of-five playoff for the right to represent their league in the World Series. The Mets were slotted into the National League Eastern Division, along with the Chicago Cubs, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, expansion Montreal Expos, and the St. Louis Cardinals, who had been World Champions in 1964 and 1967 and losers of the 1968 World Series. For the first time since joining the National League in 1962, the Mets could finish no lower than 6th. The New York Times journalist, Joseph Durso, predicted the Mets would finish 4th in the East, ahead of the Pirates and the Expos.

On Tuesday April 8, with 44,541 fans in attendance at Shea Stadium, the Mets and the Expos played the first international baseball game in major league baseball history. The Mets had lost seven straight opening day games since joining the national league in 1962. That dubious record reached eight when the Expos prevailed in an 11-10 slugfest, despite the Mets scoring four runs with two down in the bottom of the ninth, highlighted by a pinch hit three-run homer by Duffy Dyer. Apparently, this was axiomatic Mets baseball, as one columnist described the Mets as "masters of the lingering death."

The Mets took the next two games from the Expos, but then lost six of the following 7 games, bringing their record to 3–7. After a 9–14 start, the Mets won 9 of their next 13 games, including consecutive shutouts in late April against the Cubs and Expos. When Tom Seaver shutout the Atlanta Braves 5–0 on May 21, the Mets were 18-18, their best start in franchise history. But the Mets lost their next five games, starting with a 15-3 drubbing from the Atlanta Braves, followed by a 3-game sweep by the Astros, who outscored the Mets 18–4, and finishing with a loss at Shea Stadium to the lowly Padres. At the end of play on May 27, the Mets' record stood at 18–23. Then, in late May, the Mets reeled off a club-record 11 straight wins, which included three walk-off wins and dominant pitching, as the Mets pitching staff yielded a stingy 2-runs per game. Starting with their 42nd game, the Mets went 82–39 (a .678 winning percentage), including an astonishing 38–11 in their last 49 games.

Despite that performance, the Mets suffered two mid-season three-game series sweeps at the hands of the Houston Astros, who manhandled the Mets all season, taking 10 of the 12 games the teams played.
They were also no-hit by Bob Moose of the Pittsburgh Pirates on September 20, only five days after becoming the first major league team to strike out 19 times in a nine-inning game, a game they won, 4–3, on a pair of two-run home runs by Ron Swoboda, against the Cardinals' Steve Carlton.

Trailing the Chicago Cubs for much of the season, the Mets found themselves in third place, 10 games back, on August 14 but they won 14 of their last 17 games during August, and 24 of their 32 games during September and October, to surge past the Cubs, finishing 100–62, eight games ahead of the Cubs. That 18 game differential is one of the largest turnarounds in MLB history.

Season standings

National League East

Record vs. opponents

Schedule and results

Regular season

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