#42 New York Mets Team Card, the Miracle wasn't on the radar yet.

Team cards were a thing in the past by the late 1980's so I loved seeing them in this set. They were foreign to me and that made them more fun to look at.

The '67 Topps team cards, feature the team embedded in a sea of color. Most of the cards were yellow but later cards feature red backgrounds or no background at all.  The team name colors remained uniform with the single player cards from the team. The Mets with it's striking purple look well in the yellow.

The idea that the Mets would be the team to beat in the Majors only two years later (three years after the photo taken, had to be laughable back then.  The '66 stats on the back say t all. They had alot of young pitchers coming up but Ron Hunt led the team in hits with only 138. The ERA leader was Ribant with a pedestrian 3.21. Ken Boyer had only 61 RBI and Kranepool had only 16 home runs, but they were both good enough to lead the team in '66.

The '66 Mets were still in the hands of their second manager, Wes Westrum. They appointed Casey Stengel by this time up and out of uniform.  'Basement Bertha', Joan Payson was still not rewarded for her and her husband's efforts to bring National League baseball back to New York. Her time would come though in '69. Much of the lineup was different by then but the young pitchers, McGraw, Seaver, Koosman were coming along. Nolan Ryan would find himself fully with the Angels in the 70's.

Just a note on the Mets uniform. I don't know how well they were received at the time but talk about a mashup job. Take Dodger blue, mix it with Giant orange and throw in Yankee pinstripes. Then put them in the rat infested Polo Grounds until their Flushing, Queens stadium was done and ready to go. They had devoted fans though and they still do. I never was a Met 'fan' but I admire their devotion. And that goes double for the fans from day one and stood by them during the years when Ed Kranepool and Ron Swoboda was seen as their Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris