Following the Inept Mets of 1962 With a Newsletter Marc Gold with Met Maze, the homemade newsletter he published in 1962 and into 1963, and memorabilia at his office in Hempstead, N.Y. The 1962 Mets - a team filled with colorful characters, including Casey Stengel, Choo Choo Coleman and Marv Throneberry, that lost 120 games in its inaugural season - inspired entire books. Writers like Jimmy Breslin took joy in the Mets" misery, casting them as lovable losers. Marc Gold saw no such humor. Bitter about the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers after the 1957 season, Gold embraced the Mets from the moment the team was created. They were nothing like those great Dodgers teams, though, and Gold, then 14, agonized during the Mets" first season. "I wasn't a happy camper," said Gold, who now helps run his family's horseradish and mustard business on Long Island. If I was watching a game, you had to leave me alone. The Mets got me very angry. While others suffered in silence or en masse at the Polo Grounds, Gold channeled his passion and frustration into a newsletter called Met Maze. First published in May 1962, the bulletin was homemade in every way. Gold printed it on a mimeograph machine in his father's office in Brooklyn. The text included handwritten spelling and grammatical corrections. Gold wrote the banner across the top of the front page with a stencil. Even so, the seven issues of Met Maze are a vivid window into one fan's unbridled enthusiasm for the Mets and the almost instant angst that overcame him (and other fans, no doubt) as he hoped against hope for a winning team to make up for all the years without one. After 50 years of heartache sprinkled with bursts of joy, many Mets fans have become jaded or cynical. Gold displayed none of that. In his first issue, printed after the Mets had lost 16 of their first 19 games, Gold ran quotations in a section called "Met Remarks." The first was from George Weiss, the team president, who said the Mets were not as bad as their record. Stengel, the manager, was quoted saying the Mets "sure took a long nap." The third quotation, which Gold attributed to himself, said the Mets were going to win the pennant. By the next issue, printed in June, reality had started to sink in. Gold quoted Stengel saying that the Mets "may shock some people" on a trip that included games against the Dodgers, playing in Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Giants. The Mets ended up losing 9 of 12 games, prompting Gold to add, "P.S. They didn't shock L.A. or S.F." "I smartened up as I went from month to month," Gold said. Met Maze, with spelling and punctuation errors befitting the team's play, was filled with grand predictions from Gold and his readers. Tom Dillion from the Bronx said that infielder Felix Mantilla would hit 25 home runs; Mantilla finished with 11. In the September issue, Gold praised the infielders. "Remember that famous double-play combination of Tinkers to Evers to Chance," he wrote. Well the Mets have one of their own. Neal to Kanehl to Throneberry. Gold's newsletter, which cost 45 cents for a half-year's subscription, was distributed to about 100 people. He signed up his friends and relatives, and posted a notice in Sport magazine. Alan Blum included a note with his payment. It said, "Here's my 45 cents - now buy yourself a dictionary." More subscribed after Stan Fischler wrote about Met Maze for The New York Journal-American. Fischler understood what Gold was going through. He, too, had written a newsletter as a youngster (about hockey, not baseball), and he was also a rabid and bereft Dodgers fan. "Millions of hearts were broken when the Dodgers left, so I could relate to what kids like Marc were going through," Fischler said in a telephone interview. It doesn't take much enthusiasm to rekindle love of a baseball team. Fischler's article captured the spirit of a time when National League baseball fans in New York wanted to root for their own team again, for better or worse. "It takes a certain class, a certain intestinal fortitude to back the Mets," Gold told Fischler at the time. Any fair-weather fan can root for those, er, unmentionable Yanks. Gold sent copies of Met Maze to the team and received typed thank-yous from Tom Meany, then the Mets" publicist. Stengel, Meany wrote in one letter, "appreciates your support of the team and is hopeful we won't disappoint you." The Mets and the newsletter took their toll, however. Gold's studies suffered. His father, Morris, still supported his efforts, but Gold's mother, Norma, who hoped he would grow up to be a judge, thought otherwise. She shut down Met Maze in early 1963. "My parents were proud of me until they saw how it was affecting my grades," Gold said. I just didn't focus on school. All I thought of were the Elio Chacon errors and the Hobie Landrith passed balls. Gold said that English was his favorite subject and that he was an avid reader. He devoured collections of sports stories. His favorite book, though, was "A Night to Remember," about the sinking of the Titanic. "I was always reading about sports and disasters," Gold said. Maybe that's why I got interested in the Mets.