Miracle Year 1969 ─ Amazing Mets and Super Jets

Sports fans in New York will always remember the incredible events of 1969. It was the year that two of the city’s underdog teams would rise above all expectations to be crowned world champions.

On January 12, 1969, the underdog New York Jets faced the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Up to this point, no former AFL team had ever won a Super Bowl. Leading the Colts were future Hall of Fame coach Don Shula and quarterback Johnny Unitas (also a future Hall of Famer).The team looked unbeatable finishing the season with a 13–1 record.

But then, in historic fashion, Broadway Joe” Namath, the quarterback of the Jets, made an incredible guarantee” that the Jets would be victorious. And behind Namath’s strong arm they were, as he led his team to a 16–7 victory.

For a city that had not housed a championship team since the Dodgers in ’65, one championship was more than enough. But who would have expected that just seven months later, another New York team would rise to stardom?

The New York Mets completed their first season in 1962 and would go down in history with the worst record ever recorded at 40–120 (a record still unbroken). They averaged over 100 losses in their first seven seasons and were seemingly permanent cellar dwellers of the National League. That was until the ’69 season, when the Metsled by Tom Seaver (a future Hall of Famer) and Jerry Koosmanwould complete an improbable run by not only leading their team to a winning record (which they’d never done before), but by defeating the Baltimore Orioles 4 games to 1 for their first World Series championship.

Miracle Year 1969 tells the story of how two teams defied almost insurmountable odds to win it all for a city that has always loved champions, underdogs, and its heroes.

Bill Gutman is a sportswriter and author. His books include Tales from the 1969–1970 New York Knicks,What if the Babe Had Kept His Red Sox? and Jeremy Lin.