Mark Galley’s ’62 Mets Book: Amazin’!

The New York Mets are known for 2 things:

Their miraculous 1969 season, when an astonishing late-season surge culminated in a World Series championship, and …

The 7 seasons before it, when they never finished higher than 9th out of 10 teams — particularly their atrocious, miserable, sometimes comic, certainly memorable debut year of 1962.

More than 6 decades later, baseball fans still remember it.

Including Mark Galley. Even though he had not yet been born.

Galley’s sports pedigree is strong. His father Dick was a 3-sport athlete in Staples High School’s Class of 1959, setting several baseball records.

Mark was in Staples’ Class of 1983, but graduated from Loomis Chaffee. He was a Trinity College quarterback, and captained the ski team.

Galley began his professional TV and film production career in Los Angeles.Back in Westport, he was a DJ on 95.9 The Fox, then in the 1990s joined Modem Media — the world’s first interactive agency, headquartered on Saugatuck Avenue.

He led the creative department, building early websites and interctive experiences for brands like Heineken, Delta Airlines, Sony and John Hancock.

Mark Galley

After winning multiple awards, Galley started his own agency, Spitfire Interactive, on Main Street. He pioneered in-store and menu boards for Subway. Other clients included GE, NASCAR, Energizer and Kraft.

Ten years later he moved on to become chief marketing and creative officer at LifeCare. Most recently, with American Dream in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Galley promoted 450 brands, attractions and restaurants.

Meanwhile, all along — for more than 25 years — he worked on a Mets project.

The idea began when he read Jimmy Breslin’s book, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?”

A quick look at that initial year of “ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure,” it also captured the importance of the team to New York, 4 years after the Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers abandoned the city for the West Coast.

At the heart of the story — and the man who gave Breslin’s book its title — was manager Casey Stengel.

The only man in history to have played or coached all 4 New York teams — those 3, plus the Yankees — Stengel was a larger-than-life character.

Just as he’d done with players, fans, sportswriters and everyone else 60 years earlier, Stengel — who was fired by the Yanks in 1960, age 70, for being “too old,” and died 15 years later, at 85– captivated Galley.

Stengel was an important part of the screenplay that Galley began writing in the early 2000s. Another key piece was the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by baseball owners to keep only 1 team (the Yankees) in New York — and then, when that failed, to manipulate the expansion Mets’ draft so completely that their squad of castoffs, misfits and never-will-bes would be the laughingstock of baseball.

The rival owners succeeded. Throughout the entire season, the Mets nevers won on a Thursday. They had 2 pitchers with the same name (Bob Miller). Their mascot, “Mr. Met,” got beaned and beat up.

They were eliminated from playoff contention on August 7 — the earliest date in baseball history. Their season ended on a triple play.

New York welcomed the Mets in 1962. The city had no idea what lay ahead.

Surely, Galley thought, this is a tale worth telling.

For over 2 decades, he reearched and wrote. He envisioned a TV show — “Amazin'” — of 18 episodes, each 45 minutes long. His script ran 930 pages. He already has 140 songs picked out, for the series.

Five years ago, Galley got an agent. They shopped it around. Producers and directors liked it.

But, they all said: We need to see a book first.

So — like a baseball player who is told to learn a new position, or try a new stance — Galley went back to work.

He cut the screenplay by more than half, to “just” 400 pages. In April, “How the Worst was Won” was published.

It’s turned some heads. Colin Cosell — Howard’s grandson, and the Mets’ PA announcer at Citi Field (with Westporter Marysol Castro) — is a fan.

Galley was interviewed by Michael Carlon, for his “Uncorking a Story” podcast.

A few producers have come sniffing around.

A lot still has to happen for Mark Galley’s book to become a TV series.

Then again, a lot had to happen for the 1962 Mets to morph — a mere 7 years later — into world champions.

Amazin’!

(To order “How the Worst was Won,” click here. To learn more about the book, click here.)

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