Background
This was the first year of the two-division format in Major League Baseball, after 99 consecutive years of straight non-divisional play.
This was the year of the "Miracle" Mets. The team had finished only one game better than last the year before, had never finished better than ninth in their seven-year history, were generally picked for third or fourth in the new six-team National League East Division, and were a 100-to-1 longshot to win the World Series. In third place and 8 1⁄2 games behind the division-leading Cubs on August 2, the Mets rallied to win the East Division title by eight games, winning exactly 100 games.
The Braves, led by Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda and Phil Niekro, won a tough five-team race in the West Division, and were favored over the Mets as the playoff began, even though the Mets had a better record than the Braves. In what was expected to be a pitching-rich series, the teams combined for 42 runs, batted .292, hit eleven home runs, and posted a combined 5.94 ERA in the three games. Hank Aaron hit three home runs for the Braves, while Tommy Agee and Ken Boswell hit two each for the Mets.
The Mets would also go on to beat the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series, four games to one.
It was the first of four NL pennants for the Mets. The first two came in the NLCS series that did not feature either the Philadelphia Phillies or the Pittsburgh Pirates (the other being 1973, the only one in the 1970s that didn't feature either team.) The Braves would not reach the NLCS again until 1982.
Read more about this topic: 1969 National League Championship Series
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)