Meet the Mets … eventually

The long, winding road to becoming the 1969 Mirale Mets begins 66 years ago today when New York City Mayor Robert Wagner – the politician, not the actor – announces plans to form a third major league to compete with the National and American leagues.

The new league, the would-be Continental League, comes out of Wagner’s frustration over the National League’s shunning of his city after the 1957 season, when both the Dodgers and Giants leave Brooklyn and upper Manhattan for the riches they hope to find in California.

The Dodgers do, the Giants not as much, but that is another story for another time.

Branch Rickey

William Shea and Branch Rickey – the Continental League’s newly anointed chairman and president, respectively – vow in 1958 to stock the new league’s rosters with players they fleece from the National and American Leagues.

In addition to New York, the Continental League promises teams for Atlanta, Buffalo, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis and Toronto.

Major League Baseball quickly caves at the thought of a competing league and – in return for plans of the Continental League going away – promises expansion teams, starting in 1962 with the Mets in New York and another National League team in Houston.

Other expansions or relocations would follow with seven of the eight original Continental League franchises – sorry Buffalo – eventually receiving a major league team.

In homage to their dearly departed Dodgers and Giants, New York officials pick Dodger blue and Giant orange as the primary colors for the soon-to-be-fledging Mets.

Three-plus years after Wagner’s announcement 66 years ago today, the 1962 Mets play their first game in the Giants’ old home at the Polo Grounds.

Then, after seven seasons of mostly being bad at baseball, the Mets stun all of baseball by beating the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series.

The news is in all of the papers.