Tuesday, September 15, 2009

1969 Miracle Mets: The conspiracy theory view

According to "Mythbusters" on the Discovery Channel, 20% of Americans today believe that the moon landing was faked. When I heard that, I thought of the second-biggest thing to happen in the summer of 1969 - the Miracle Mets.

This season, when you think things can't get any worse, something else always seems to happen. What if the moon landing was faked - and so was the 1969 Mets World Championship?

So I explored this nightmare scenario for The Faster Times:
Was the Miracle Mets 1969 World Series a Hoax?

7 comments:

Uncle Mike said...

No, Jon, the Mets' 1969 World Series victory was not a hoax.

It was a fraud. Come on, look at the film: Agee was out.

Had that call been correctly made, the Cubs would have stayed on top of the National League East, and it would have been either the Braves in the NLCS or the Orioles in the World Series to whom they choked.

The Mets' 1973 Pennant was also a fraud. Seriously, an 82-79 team winning the Pennant? Ya gotta believe something ain't right there.

The Mets' 1986 World Championship? Oh please. The entire rest of the division takes a massive dive, then the Astros can't defend their dome field, and then the Red Sox put together the biggest single-game choke job in the history of North American sports. Somewhere, there is either a cancelled check, or a bag containing the residue of massive amounts of cash, because that could not possibly have been on the up-and-up.

The Mets' 2000 Pennant? Now, that was real. Of course, it had to be, so that the Yankees -- or, at least, those of us who grew up as Yankee Fans in the 1980s when Met fans were a bunch of insufferable (fill in your expletive of choice)s, could have the greatest victory of our lives, in the 2000 World Series.

Anonymous said...

Uncle Mike (aka MINJ), the only fraud in this town (besides you) is your Yankers. Wanna talk about conspiracies? How about the massive amounts of cash that have changed hands so they can buy 26 trophies? That's right, every one of them was bought and paid for. You losers don't know how to WIN so you spend and buy your trophies.

Jeffrey Maier? Umps were paid to make the bad call. And I won't even discuss how many times teams were paid to take a dive so that the Yankers could get to the postseason, not in the name of fair and balanced competition, but in the name of MONEY. It's all about the money with you losers, and you will stop at nothing to extort the game of baseball so that you can make money.

"...the Red Sox put together the biggest single-game choke job in the history of North American sports..." Oh no, you idiot, that dubious distinction to your Yankers, who not only choked once but four consecutive games. The 2004 Yankers will ALWAYS AND FOREVER be known throughout history as the greatest CHOKERS OF ALL TIME!! And don't you forget it.

I see you were up late last night obsessing over the Mets. Go to bed old man, and don't forget to take your meds, you freakin' idiot.

Anonymous said...

Jon, are you really a Mets fan or just a Yanker fan in disguise? How could you even think that the '69 Miracle Mets was a hoax? Have you never heard of teams of destiny? Scrappers? The will to win?

Sometimes I wonder about you.....

Anonymous said...

Do you think Lisa would ever write an article suggesting that any of the Yankers chumpionships were hoaxes? She would be instantly excommunicated from Yankerland, and be made to give back her press pass and secret decoder ring! The propaganda meisters at "just say no to YES" would make sure of that.

Jon Lewin said...

Anonymous, the 1969 Mets are the reason I remain a diehard Met fan to this day. The piece was meant to poke fun at a year when everything went wrong in unbelievable ways, and I was trying to figure out what was the worst thing that could happen next. And for me, that would be questioning the 1969 Mets.

Uncle Mike, as long as you are listing frauds, you should include the 1996 Yankees, whose championship run began with the Jeffrey Maier interference.

Then there's the PED era - Clemens, Pettitte, almost half the 2000 team - the Yankees are not alone here, but they are certainly a big part of it.

At least the Yankees spent their "massive amounts of cash" publicly when they bought this season's title.

Anonymous said...

Amen Jon. The 1986 Mets are the reason I am a fan. Even though the Yankers spent their "massive amount of cash" (somewhere near half a billion $$) publicly, it still doesn't make it right. Where is the competitive balance? Why is Bud not doing any about this? Cuz it's all about the MONEY!! And you know he's getting some, so he's not in any hurry to change anything. Same goes for the players union.

Uncle Mike said...

Jon, Lisa already gave a better response to you than I could, but I'd like to add one thing: The Mets were not exactly on food stamps in 1986, nor were they in the Piazza era, nor have they been under the Minaya regime. If "buying a championship" is easy, why haven't they?

Now, I come to Ed Drossman. It is you, Ed, isn't it? Say whatever you want, however asinine, but have the courage -- and the decency -- to put your name on it, or at least some form of your name. Without it, you are not Anonymous, you are Cowardice.

Ed (or whoever you actually are), show me a team that didn't spend money to win a championship. Even a high school team has to buy equipment. Your team has tried to buy a championship many, many times. It's worked twice in nearly half a century. That's a figured topped in that time only by the Yankees, Dodgers, Orioles, Cardinals and A's, but it's still Number 2 in New York.

But you top yourself when you cite the 2004 Playoffs. In case you haven't noticed, we now have proof that the Red Sox cheated. Papi and Manny. At least those two. The Yankees didn't choke, they got robbed. Just like you got robbed of your common sense.

The Mets are fortunate in one respect: I can't think of a single major loss of theirs where the umpiring can be legitimately blamed. Someday, I'm going to have to look at the tape of Game 6's 10th inning, just to be sure the Red Sox didn't actually earn a called third strike that the plate ump didn't give, thus robbing them. Because that was the biggest (read the words carefully, Ed) single-game choke in baseball history, and according to Dan Shaughnessy's book "The Curse of the Bambino," some wiseguy mathematician figured out that the odds of the Mets coming back to win that game were 320-1. Come to think of it, aren't the Gottis from Queens...

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