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money.
    â€œCasey is worried about his left-handed hitters deliberately trying to hit the left-field fence?” The P.R. man inquired in wonderment. Told that this was the case, he had an antidote. “My client is buying the same sign on the right-field fence,” he announced. This cost the client another chunk of dough. So the contest was still on.
    Over the year, Throneberry hit the sign in right field exactly four times. But twice his line drive landed inside the circle for five points, and on the last day of the home season at the Polo Grounds he found himself the proud owner of a $6000 luxury cabin cruiser.
    The clothing company awarded another boat on the same day. It went to the Met who was named the team’s most valuable player in a poll of sports writers. Richie Ashburn was the winner. Ashburn is from Nebraska.
    â€œWe’ll both sail our boats all over the bathtub,” Throneberry told the boat people. Marvelous Marv was in high humor.
    A day later, Judge Robert Cannon, who handles legal matters for the Major League Baseball Players Association, told Marvelous Marv something about the boat. Humor fled as the judge spoke.
    â€œJust don’t forget to declare the full value,” Cannon said.
    â€œDeclare it? Who to, the Coast Guard?” Throneberry asked.
    â€œTaxes,” Cannon said. “Ashburn’s boat was a gift. He was voted it. Yours came the hard way. You hit the sign. You earned it. The boat is earnings. You pay income tax on it.”
    Last winter, at a very late date in the tax year, Throneberry sat in his living room in Collierville and he still was not quite over his conversation with Cannon.
    â€œIn my whole life I never believed they’d be as rough a year as there was last season,” he said. “And here I am, I’m still not out of it. I got a boat in a warehouse someplace and the man tells me I got to pay taxes on it and all we got around here is, like I say, filled-up bathtubs and maybe a crick or two. I think maybe I’ll be able to sell it off someplace. I think you could say prospects is all right. But I still don’t know what to do about that tax thing.”
    The whole season went this way for the Mets. Take any day, any town, any inning. With the Mets nothing changed, only the pages on the calendar. It was all one wonderful mistake.
    There was the Fourth of July, which certainly has some significance, and the Mets were at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Jim Davenport, the Giants’ third baseman, swung at a pitch and lifted it high into the air. Rod Kanehl, the Met stationed at shortstop this time around, turned and raced into left field. Sunglasses flipping, glove up in the air, feet moving, Kanehl went for the ball.
    The Mets’ third baseman, Felix Mantilla, came in and made the catch right at the pitcher’s mound.
    There was even something about this team before it ever played a game. Go to the summer of 1961, before it was even formed, and you find that, at this time, the club hired the fabled Rogers Hornsby to prepare a scouting report on every player in the major leagues. The Mets of 1962 were to be formed with baseball players given to them by the other teams. As we are going to see, this little matter is, by itself, a saga of American charity rivaling that of United States Steel. Hornsby operated out of his home city of Chicago. He watched National League teams at Wrigley Field, which he did not like so much because only day games are played there and this interfered badly with his attendance at the horse races. He watched American League teams at Comiskey Park, which was a bit better because most of the games were played at night—although not so much, because he still had to look at baseball players.
    â€œThey say we’re going to get players out of a grab bag,” Hornsby said one afternoon at Wrigley Field. “From what I see, it’s going to be a garbage bag. Ain’t nobody got fat off