Former New York Mets pitcher Jay Hook at his Michigan farm. Hook, a member of the Mets’ infamous 1962 squad, grew up in Grayslake.
Courtesy of Jay Hook
As the White Sox appear destined to shatter the 1962 New York Mets’ modern-day record for losses in a baseball season, a suburban native who pitched for that infamous Mets squad has empathy — and encouragement — for the South Siders.
“As I said many, many times, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody,” said Jay Hook, who grew up in Grayslake before going on to an eight-year Major League Baseball career. “I’m surprised I’m still talking about the ‘62 season.”
Hook was a standout pitcher at Grayslake High School. His dad, Cecil Hook, ran a pharmacy in town and was an avid White Sox fan.
One of his boyhood memories is of going to Comiskey Park on Babe Ruth Day in 1947, when the Bambino autographed a baseball for him and his cousin. As an MLB pitcher, Hook yielded eight home runs to Henry Aaron, helping Aaron break Ruth’s home run record.
New York Mets pitcher Jay Hook in February 1962.
Associated Press file photo
After high school, Hook played college ball at Northwestern University and entered the major leagues with Cincinnati, before being taken by the Mets in the 1962 expansion draft.
The Mets filled a void in the Big Apple created when the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants moved to the West Coast. Although fans took them to their hearts, the inaugural Mets set a record for futility with a record of 40 wins and 120 losses.
One of the team’s starting pitchers, Hook won only eight games against 19 losses.
Today, Hook lives on a farm in Northern Michigan, near Traverse City, where “we don’t get much press up here about baseball.”
Mets pitcher and Grayslake native Jay Hook in action at New York’s Polo Grounds on June 2, 1962.
AP
Even so, this isn’t the first time he’s been asked to weigh in on a team threatening to surpass the ‘62 Mets’ ignominious record. The 2003 Detroit Tigers came close, but fell one loss short with 119. One reason they were able to avoid 120? A series sweep against the White Sox that July.
At the time, Hook told the Detroit Free Press, “It doesn’t matter to me, personally, because it’s been kind of fun being a part of the 1962 history.”
That same year, he wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, in which he said, “(We) lost games every way there was to lose them.”
“Yet one of the great things about baseball is that there is always a new game tomorrow — at least until the season ends,” he added.
Despite the team’s dismal showing, the Mets were embraced by New Yorkers happy to have a National League team back in town after the Giants and Dodgers moved west.
“(We) drew almost as many fans as the Yankees, and the Yankees were winning the pennant,” Hook said. “Even though it was a terrible situation, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”
The love even extended to his hometown of Grayslake. A group of civic organizations held a “Jay Hook Day” in 1963, with a parade, a golf outing and a banquet that was supposed to feature Mets manager Casey Stengel.
“Casey was going to be the emcee of the (banquet) that evening. But then he got called away, and he had to go back to Chicago and so (Mets teammate) Jimmy Piersall did the emceeing. And he was terrific.”
As for this year’s White Sox, Hook puts the doomed season into perspective and offers words of encouragement.
“Every one of those players was a winner at one point in their life, because they wouldn’t be there, they wouldn’t have gotten scouted, they wouldn’t have gotten hired, if they weren’t a pretty good player at some level of baseball,” he said.
He also notes that members of the 1962 Mets team eventually found success on and off the field. Richie Ashburn had a long career as an announcer with the Philadelphia Phillies. Pitcher Sherman “Roadblock” Jones went on to become a police officer and state senator. Roger Craig became a successful manager, leading the San Francisco Giants to a World Series in 1989.
That infamously dismal season didn’t define Hook, either. He became a professor at his alma mater, Northwestern, heading up programs in the business and engineering schools. He also had a successful marketing career. Today, he serves on hospital committees.
And a father of four and grandfather to 13, he is preparing his farm for the upcoming wedding of one of his grandsons.