Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: ’62 Mets, ’24 White Sox square off, and it’s no contest; thoughts on Pete Rose’s passing and more

The 2024 White Sox wanted to avoid making baseball history in the worst way, but they failed.  On Sept. 27, they lost for the 121st time , an MLB record for futility.

What if the 1962 Mets , who finished 40-120-1, and ’24 White Sox (41-121) squared off in a three-game series? Someone would have to win, right? … Right?

Like the exasperated old Casey Stengel, manager of those fledgling Mets, once asked: “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

And two members of the Connecticut Strat-O-Matic Club raised their hands. The club’s captain, Brian Favereaux, 52, an IT specialist from Cromwell, and Luis Richards, 49, who works for a waste management company in Windsor and drove up from his home in Norwich, met at Tabletop Gaming Center , the group’s monthly meeting place in Newington on Friday to play “The Worst Series,” a deep dive of mathematics, percentages, probabilities and dice rolls in search of rock bottom.

The results are in. We have a loser.

Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: Dan Hurley out to three-peat the old fashioned way; UConn hockey vets push reset button and more

Strat-O-Matic, the granddaddy of fantasy sports games, was invented in 1961 by Hal Richman, a Bucknell math student. Simply put, it uses statistical research and game development methods to try to replicate players’ abilities as accurately as possible. The game has evolved, and there are more sophosticated online versions, but here the combatants played the old-school format, dropping dice through a tower, and matching the numbers with the tables on the player cards to produce results.

The cards for the completed seasons don’t come out until the following February, when avid players like Richards and Favereaux are wont to travel to the Glen Head, Long Island, headquarters to get them hot off the printers.

But in response to The Courant’s request, John Garcia of Avon, Strat-O-Matic’s chief content officer, produced a set of cards especially for this series, confident they could mimic the woeful White Sox, and they would mimic them all too well.

Kevin Kelsey, 65, a club member who has been playing Strat-O-Matic since 1981, couldn’t resist driving from East Granby to observe.

“With this particular game, it had all to do with luck,” Kelsey said, “because there was not a lot of offensive production on the game cards, so you really had to be lucky with your dice roll to get some of the runs across. It just makes an interesting game, backwards from what we usually play.”

Okay, you have the gist. Could these teams be as bad on paper as they were on the field? Let’s find out.

Game 1, Mets 7, White Sox 1: Richards, the ’62 Mets manager, won the toss and chose to have homefield advantage, with a nudge from me because I’d have liked to have covered a game at the Polo Grounds .

Wisely, he chose Richie Ashburn, the Mets’ lone All-Star in 1962, as his leadoff hitter. Ashburn had a .424 on-base percentage in that final season of his Hall of Fame career. With Favereaux starting a lefthander on the mound, Garrett Crochet, Richards went with a righty lineup, including Gil Hodges at first base.

“This is pretty cool, they had some decent hitters,” Richards said, arranging his cards.
In the bottom of the first, Ashburn and Elio Chacon walked, then Hodges and Felix Mantilla singled home runs to give the Mets the lead.

Jay Hook, who got the first win in Mets history, was 8-19 in 1962, allowing 31 homers, including a memorable 500-foot shot to Hank Aaron at the Polo Grounds. On this night, Hook allowed a solo shot to Andrew Vaughn, batting cleanup for the ’24 White Sox. But that was all. Hook went the distance, allowing eight hits, walking three, striking out nine.

Jim Hickman knocked in a run in the third. In the seventh, with Norwich’s Dominic Leone on the mound for the White Sox, Ashburn tripled, Chacon singled and Hodges hit a two-run homer into the short right field porch to cap a 7-1 victory.

Now the White Sox were facing elimination. (Wait, weren’t they eliminated by Memorial Day?)

Game 2, Mets 7, White Sox 4: The imaginary action moved to Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago . Favereaux used righthander Jonathan Cannon and Richards went to his lefty lineup – Stengel always liked to platoon, you know.

“Marvelous” Marv Throneberry was at first base, Gene Woodling in left field. The Mets opened the game with five straight hits, including RBI singles by Frank Thomas (not that one), Throneberry and Woodling to stake Al Jackson to a 4-0 lead. Ashburn singled, Chacon tripled and Throneberry added sac fly to make it 6-1. Ashburn, our Worst Series MVP, got his third hit to knock in run No. 7 in the ninth. He scored four times in the two games.

As Favereaux sifted through his cards for pinch hitters and relievers, he’d shake his head and lament, “These guys are so bad.” It was that kind of night for one of the Connecticut Strat-O-Matic club’s best and most practiced players. Strat-O-Matic can be addicting, and Favereaux has been playing since he was 12, but he is used to playing with the best teams and players.

“I play just about every night,” he said. “At first, when you said, ‘I want to see the Mets against the White Sox,’ I was like, ‘Ehh, all right, we’ll see.’ But as I was looking at it, the last few days, I said, ‘This could be fun,’ and I was more and more into it.”

Dom Amore: Pitcher Ken MacKenzie came out a winner with baseball’s most loveable losers, the 1962 New York Mets

Jackson was solid for seven innings, then Yale grad Ken MacKenzie, the only pitcher with a winning record on the ’62 Mets, relieved and struggled in the ninth, allowing three runs before 24-game loser Roger Craig came on to get the final out: Luis Robert Jr., representing the tying run, on a ground ball.

So the 1962 Mets may be lovable, legendary losers, but they are no longer the game’s losingest losers. That Ablatross hangs around the neck of a new team, and somewhere up there Casey Stengel can thank Luis Richards for getting him off history’s hook in Newington, Conn.
And a magical week for the Mets got better. .

More for your Sunday Read:

On Pete Rose, 1941-2024

The all-time hits leader died this week, and I’ll start with a baseball fact you may not know, or have forgotten. Joe Jackson, one of eight players banned from baseball for conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series, actually appeared on the early Hall of Fame ballots, getting two votes in 1936 and ‘ 46 .

Rose, banned from baseball for betting on his Reds team as its manager in 1989, three years after he retired with a record 4,256 hits , was never on a ballot because The Hall and MLB put new rules in place in 1991 to keep him from being considered by the writers. A banned player cannot be on the writers’ ballot.

That summer of ’91, Rose came to West Hartford for a softball game to play for Syd Conn’s Kings, raising money for Camp Courant. “You people [the writers] have done a great job all these years,” Rose told me that day. “The Hall of Fame is your baby.”

Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader, dies at 83

Of course, it wasn’t then, isn’t now anyone’s baby. The large body of senior baseball writers are one of several groups that can elect Hall of Famers. The BBWAA considers only recently retired players; any future consideration of Rose would be in the hands of one of the special committees.

I would have liked the opportunity, challenging a decision as it would have been, to consider Rose, but even if he were allowed to appear in 1991 he would have been gone from the ballot by the time I became a voter in 2007. I often wonder what would have happened if the gambling scandal erupted three or four years later than it did, when Rose would have already been in as a first-ballot lock.

Rose’s activities justified a lifetime ban from working in baseball, but isn’t the Hall of Fame a separate entity, as it was considered in Jackson’s time? Hasn’t baseball’s entry into the gaming business in recent years made the rules of Rose’s time obsolete? Should his various off-the-field transgressions keep him out of Cooperstown in any event? Complicated questions, all.

What we do know is, we have a Hall of Fame with a mission of telling the story of baseball, the all-time hits leader is not in it and now, if he ever gets in, he will not be around to see it. Whatever side you’re on regarding Pete Rose, one of the most popular players ever to play baseball, that’s a sad end to a sad saga.

Sunday short takes

*Dan Hurley went into the St. Benedict’s Hall of Fame, an honor from the Newark prep school he coached for nine years before conquering the college game. Tom Moore, who has been an assistant coach on four of the six UConn men’s championship teams, was i nducted into the Hall of Fame at Worcester State, where he was head coach from 1989-94, with a .563 winning percentage.

* Central Connecticut will get an opportunity to show off its men’s basketball team to a wider audience, opening the season at Providence Nov. 4 o FS1.

*Mark Vientos, one of Mets rising stars with 27 home runs, was born in Norwalk and the name of one of his Little League teams was the Mets . He played his high school ball in Florida when his family relocated.

* Adam Erne, well-traveled hockey winger who began playing in the youth leagues in North Branford, is in Rangers camp on a pro tryout contract.

*The Windsor High Athletic Hall of Fame Class of 2024 will be inducted Nov. 10 at La Notte in East Windsor, the reception at 6 p.m. with dinner and the ceremony to follow. Going in Jason DeLawrence (1994, football and basketball; Paula Timlin (1994, soccer, lacrosse, tennis, basketball); Russell Scott (1995, basketball) and Chris Baker (2005, basketball, football).

Also Jordan Wilson (2010, track); Aaron Berardino (2012, football, baseball), Sydnee Over (2013, track, cross country, basketball); Melissa Orzechowski (2013, swimming); Robert Quinn Fleeting (2013, football). The 2014 Class L football champs and Mike Spadafora, distinguished contributor, will also be honored. For tickets and information, visit windsorhighschoolathletichalloffame.org

‘Sudden juggernaut’ UConn football favored to win out by ESPN

Last word

If UConn were to win all the rest of its football games , as ESPN’s predictor has them favored to do , it would beg the question: Would Jim Mora be a better choice for the Giants or the Jets next season?