Great job by the Hardball Times remembering this date!!!
A small excerpt from good reading
But on draft day Oct. 10, 1961, all that lay in the future. The Astros and Mets took a different approach to the early rounds, with the Astros focusing largely on position players and the Mets on pitchers. In their first six picks, the Mets took Roger Craig, Jay Hook, and Bob Miller, who combine to start 88 of the team’s 161 contests. Later in the draft, they tapped Al Jackson, who started 33 more.
Neat link.
You know, those bored beat writers probably could have tracked down some surviving members of that draft class to interview instead of running with non-news stories. 🙂
Interesting article…never thought of it before, but since the Mets tried quite a bit to bring a New York flavor to the team, they hired front office people (and players) who were past their prime…and that led to assembling one of the worst teams ever.
They did recover quickly though, then realized Gil was a better manager than he was as a Met player. Winning in 7 years really was amazing.