Having debuted in 1962, the New York Mets never had to weather baseball’s integration storm. It was well-established by their first season, so it wasn’t really up for debate.
And as any Mets fan knows, finding and holding onto franchise players has been hard. Even in sharing the sport’s largest media market with the crosstown rival New York Yankees, the Mets aren’t known for taking care of homegrown talent.
As a result, only a handful of African American players to don the orange and blue stayed long in Queens.
It’s still Black History Month and we gave the Yankees the same honor.