This Day in History: The Mets lost their first of 120 games in 1962

As a Braves fan, I like to take any chance I get to poke fun at the other teams in the NL East. The easiest team pick on happens to be the New York Mets, for a multitude of reasons. 

Whether it's Jacob DeGrom being the best pitcher in the league but consistently losing games due to a lack of run support, or their 2007 collapse, the Mets just make it too easy to laugh at them. 

Recently while I was doing some research to see what events happened this day in baseball history, I came across another interesting Mets tidbit. 

The Mets began play in 1962 as an expansion team, the first new team in New York since the Giants and Dodgers both left town in 1958. I'm not sure what the expectations were for that year's team, but they surely under-delivered. The Mets finished 40-120, reaching the most losses in a season since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders lost 134 games. No team has matched that number since, although a few have come close. 

As if the way the season ended isn't bad enough, hear how it started. 

On April 10, the day that was scheduled to be the first game for the Mets franchise, 17 players got stuck in their hotel elevator. Five-foot-eight catcher Hobie Landrith was reportedly stuck with his nose pressed into six-foot-four pitcher Roger Craig's chest for the whole time the players were stuck, which was anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours. 

The players eventually were freed from the elevator only to find out that their Opening Day game against St. Louis had been rained out. They would go on to lose 11-4 to the Cardinals the next day, April 11. 

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