Does it ever bother anyone else...

[Moose Milligan]

...that we were the team that the Mets beat in 1969?

It bugs the hell out of me. I have no idea why, seeing as I wasn't born for another 12 years. But I remember being a kid and learning about the Mets, how bad they were and then one year they went from worst to first and they beat...MY ORIOLES? What the crap was that? And we were apparently, like, WAY favored to win that series!

It was a devastating blow. I felt embarrassed to be an Orioles fan (little did I know a whole freakin decades worth of embarrassments were soon to follow), that it was such a black mark on the face of the team that I loved so much at such a young age.

And it still bugs the crap out of me. I'm watching Ken Burns' Baseball on the MLBN and they just covered the '69 Series...and I'm still totally annoyed by it.

IT DIDN'T EVEN GO 7 GAMES.

Ugh.

Am I the only one here?

[SteveA]

...that we were the team that the Mets beat in 1969?

It bugs the hell out of me. I have no idea why, seeing as I wasn't born for another 12 years. But I remember being a kid and learning about the Mets, how bad they were and then one year they went from worst to first and they beat...MY ORIOLES? What the crap was that? And we were apparently, like, WAY favored to win that series!

It was a devastating blow. I felt embarrassed to be an Orioles fan (little did I know a whole freakin decades worth of embarrassments were soon to follow), that it was such a black mark on the face of the team that I loved so much at such a young age.

And it still bugs the crap out of me. I'm watching Ken Burns' Baseball on the MLBN and they just covered the '69 Series...and I'm still totally annoyed by it.

IT DIDN'T EVEN GO 7 GAMES.

Ugh.

Am I the only one here?

I can't remember it either. But it is amazing what a bunch of nobodys the Mets had at position players. Has beens and never weres. Guys whose only claim to fame was that they did big things in that series, made big catches or got big hits.

Yes, they had some pitching, but that Oriole team was SO superior. Better offensively, better pitching, and better (best in history?) defensively.

Of course, two of the three winningest teams since division play started (1969 O's and that early 2000s Mariner team) did not win the World Series.

[SrMeowMeow]

I have one huge baseball history book back home that I loved, and I swear to god, every other story was some overachieving team knocking off the superpower Orioles. It really upset me.

[glorydays]

...that we were the team that the Mets beat in 1969?

It bugs the hell out of me. I have no idea why, seeing as I wasn't born for another 12 years. But I remember being a kid and learning about the Mets, how bad they were and then one year they went from worst to first and they beat...MY ORIOLES? What the crap was that? And we were apparently, like, WAY favored to win that series!

It was a devastating blow. I felt embarrassed to be an Orioles fan (little did I know a whole freakin decades worth of embarrassments were soon to follow), that it was such a black mark on the face of the team that I loved so much at such a young age.

And it still bugs the crap out of me. I'm watching Ken Burns' Baseball on the MLBN and they just covered the '69 Series...and I'm still totally annoyed by it.

IT DIDN'T EVEN GO 7 GAMES.

Ugh.

Am I the only one here?

Ha... I was thinking the same thing - how heart run over by a train it must have felt for the city of Baltimore (I wasn't born yet too) to have lost both that World Series and Super Bowl III - two of the biggest upsets in modern sports and both the NYC teams in the same darn year!

[Frobby]

Moose, that wasn't even the half of it. IT HAPPENED IN THE SAME YEAR THAT THE JETS BEAT THE COLTS!

And that 1969 team wasn't just any Orioles pennant-winning team. It was a team that went 109-53, and swept the playoffs 3 games to 0. It took 29 years before another team won 109 games in the regular season. And it sure wasn't a fluke, since they came back and won 108 the very next year. (The Mets, on the other hand, won 83 games the next year.)

I was 12 years old the year of the Jets/Mets debacle. Right at that age where you're old enough to have followed a team for several years, and not too old to cry when they lose a Series they should have won. One of the most painful experiences of my entire life.

[Boy Howdy]

I was born in '70, but pretty much any serious Orioles fan I know that was alive at the time still carries a serious grudge over the '69 WS. It certainly didn't help that Joe Namath led another NY team to a huge Super Bowl upset of the Baltimore Colts earlier that year. (The NY Knicks also beat the Baltimore Bulllets in the next NBA playoffs after the '69 WS)

Even Orioles players from that team still seem wounded by the experience. Beating the Reds in '70 was great, but the emptiness never went away.

[RShack]

Well, maybe you missed it, but I remember it. It wasn't that the O's sucked, it was the Mets making all kinds of crazy-good plays.
Even Baltimore's own Ron Swoboda, who was so deft with the glove that they called him "Clank", made a great play in RF.

Plus, it wasn't just that. It was the whole damn year, from beginning to end.
The Jets and Colts.
The Knicks and Bullets.
The Beatles.
Nixon.

I'm starting to have flashbacks.
Can we please talk about something else?
(Just not the friggin' Pirates.)

[Boy Howdy]

There are people in my family who think something's wrong with me for living in New York 40 years later.

I told them I always missed the toilet at Shea on purpose, but they just won't cut me any slack.

[Frobby]

I have to mention one other indignity. On June 27, 1967, Frank Robinson was well on his way to duplicating his Triple Crown feat, when he collided with a little known SS named Al Weis while breaking up a DP, and got a serious concussion that caused him to miss a month of play and then return with blurry vision that persisted for 18 months.

So now the 1969 Series rolls around and Weis is now on the Mets. And Weis, a .219/.278/.275 career hitter who had hit .215/.259/.291 that particular season, proceeds to hit .455/.563/.727 in the World Series.

I hate Al Weis. Hate him, hate him, hate him.

[BaltimoreTerp]

Well, maybe you missed it, but I remember it. It wasn't that the O's sucked, it was the Mets making all kinds of crazy-good plays.
Even Baltimore's own Ron Swoboda, who was so deft with the glove that they called him "Clank", made a great play in RF.

Plus, it wasn't just that. It was the whole damn year, from beginning to end.
The Jets and Colts.
The Knicks and Bullets.
The Beatles.
Nixon.

I'm starting to have flashbacks.
Can we please talk about something else?

Don't forget Woodstock...in upstate NEW YORK!

(Seems appropriate for the flashbacks...)

[carolinaoriole]

I was 10 years old I remember crying my heart out.
I hate the mets and the jets and little yankee fans named Jeffrey!!!

[RShack]

Don't forget Woodstock...in upstate NEW YORK!

(Seems appropriate for the flashbacks...)

I wasn't there. A friend's older brother lived nearby, and I was gonna go, but I didn't. (Who knew?)
But my bride was there... 3 weeks shy of giving birth to daughter Erin.
Once the road got blocked for miles (an impromptu parking lot), she figured she better leave, just in case Erin decided to be early, so she walked out.
Erin tells her friends she was at Woodstock, but that she doesn't remember much about it ;-)

[BaltimoreTerp]

I wasn't there. A friend's older brother lived nearby, and I was gonna go, but I didn't. (Who knew?)
But my bride was there... 3 weeks shy of giving birth to daughter Erin.
Once the road got blocked for miles (an impromptu parking lot), she figured she better leave, just in case Erin decided to be early, so she walked out.
Erin tells her friends she was at Woodstock, but that she doesn't remember much about it ;-)

You let your eight-months pregnant wife go to WOODSTOCK!?!

I guess it really was a "Who knew?" situation

[wildcard]

Moose, that wasn't even the half of it. IT HAPPENED IN THE SAME YEAR THAT THE JETS BEAT THE COLTS!

And that 1969 team wasn't just any Orioles pennant-winning team. It was a team that went 109-53, and swept the playoffs 3 games to 0. It took 29 years before another team won 109 games in the regular season. And it sure wasn't a fluke, since they came back and won 108 the very next year. (The Mets, on the other hand, won 83 games the next year.)

I was 12 years old the year of the Jets/Mets debacle. Right at that age where you're old enough to have followed a team for several years, and not too old to cry when they lose a Series they should have won. One of the most painful experiences of my entire life.

I don't know how I lived through that year. It was crunching.

The Colts defense led the NFL in fewest points allowed (144, tying the then all-time league record), The Colts offense ranked second in the NFL in points scored (402). After winning the 1968 NFL title, the Colts were touted by the sports media as "the greatest team in Pro Football history."

"The Guarantee"
Despite the Jets' accomplishments, AFL teams were generally not regarded as having the same caliber of talent as NFL teams. However, three days before the game, Namath appeared at the Miami Touchdown Club and boldly predicted to the audience, "We're [Jets] gonna win the game. I guarantee it."

And after that we had to live with the cockness Namath and is Nylon stocking. Uuuggghh.

[BaltimoreFan]

It bugs me that Pittsburgh beat the O's twice in the World Series, and have a five to three advantage on us whereas it easily could have been reversed.