"Buried deep in the epic futility, Casey Stengel's riotous one-liners and the feel-good rebirth of National League baseball in New York in 1962, there are lessons for today's Mets, or at least for Met fans. As the club and its faithful brace for rebuilding, it's worth remembering that no matter how bad it gets this year, the 2012 Mets are unlikely to equal what happened on the field 50 years ago, when their first team was their worst team.

"The great thing about baseball is that it's a new game every day, which is a lot different than a lot of things in life," says Jay Hook, the pitcher who got the first win in Met history. "I never thought we were as bad as we turned out to be. I thought every time we went out, we had a shot at winning."

That philosophy, perhaps, is what this year's Mets should embrace, along with trying to duplicate some of the fun the '62 Mets - and their fans - had. The '62 Mets were an awful, but cuddly, club that charmed a city in a long-ago time when sports fans didn't hold their favorite teams to the win-now-or-you-stink standard they do today."