The Mets proceeded with work to get the Polo Grounds ready for baseball and spent more than $300,000 on the project, a huge sum considering that they were planning on using the stadium only for a year. The refurbishing included painting of the fences and stands, replacement of lamps and reflectors in the lighting towers, installation of an electronic scoreboard that stretched across the clubhouse in center field, and construction of a private cocktail club and restaurant known as the Met Lounge. Advertising signs once again adorned the outfield fences.

The biggest project, though, dealt with the playing area itself. (Some of the events held in the Polo Grounds after the departure of the Giants were tough on the turf. One such event was midget auto racing, which was run on an asphalt track that had been constructed on the field.) The grounds crew plowed the entire field, brought in topsoil, and spent a month grading the area before installing more than 130,000 square feet of sod. The face-lift of the Polo Grounds was a massive effort but one that was well worth it. New Yorkers were excited about their new team, and, for their initial season, the Mets rang up the largest sales ever for season tickets at the Polo Grounds.

The Polo Grounds' previous tenant, the Giants, had been one of the most storied teams in baseball history. The Mets established their identity at the Polo Grounds in an entirely different way. In a rather perverse turn of events, though, the ineptness and futility of the Mets proved as big a hit with the fans as the legacy of greatness of the Giants. Banners and placards decorated the Polo Grounds during the Mets' tenure, paying homage to the players and their manager, Casey Stengel. Stengel had managed the Yankees from 1949 through 1960, leading the team to 10 pennants and 7 World Series titles in that 12-year span. Still, his earlier reputation for buffoonery and his strange linguistic style (a language known as "Stengelese") meshed nicely with the zaniness that was Mets baseball in the early 1960s.

The real darling of the Polo Grounds (albeit an often-booed darling) and the man who epitomized not just the losses, but the way the team lost, was first baseman Marv Throneberry. Stories abound about Throneberry's bungling at bat, in the field, and on the base paths, but the one that best sums up Throneberry, and the Mets, occurred at the Polo Grounds in the first game of a doubleheader against the Chicago Cubs on Sunday, June 17, 1962. The Mets had a runner on first base when Throneberry hit a deep fly to right field and ended up at third base with an apparent triple. However, he was called out on appeal for missing first base on his journey around the bases. Casey Stengel came out to argue -- to no avail, of course -- and was perturbed by the lack of support he got in the rhubarb from his first-base coach, Cookie Lavagetto. On his way back to the dugout, Stengel expressed his disapproval to Lavagetto, who revealed why he had been hesitant to join the argument: "Marv missed second base, too." (When the next batter, Charlie Neal, homered, Stengel came out of the dugout and pointed to each of the four "bases as Neal made his way around the diamond.)

These strange scenes occurred in the last of the first inning in the game against the Cubs. In the top of the inning, Chicago's Lou Brock had homered into the center-field bleachers. His drive, off the Mets' Al Jackson, hit the top of the fence to the right of the large batter's eye and bounced into the bleachers. The next day, Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves connected off Jay Hook for another blast into the center-field bleachers, this one a grand-slam home run to the left of the batter's eye on the left side of the alcove. Brock's and Aaron's homers were only the third and fourth to reach the bleachers since the 1922 renovation of the Polo Grounds, Joe Adcock of the Braves having performed the feat in 1953 and Luke Easter of the Homestead Grays in 1948.

It was normal that the moments of greatness at the Polo Grounds in 1962 were provided by the visiting teams. The Mets finished the season with 120 losses -- the most in the majors since 1899 -- out of 160 games, for a losing percentage of .750.

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