1962 was the Year of Bad Beginnings for the Mets and Astros : A Worse Fate Beset Houston’s Colt 45s--Hardly Anybody Remembers Them

HOUSTON —  History remembers its misfits selectively.

Take American presidents, for example. Who ever heard of Zachary Taylor? Millard Fillmore? Franklin Pierce? Or is it Franklin Fillmore and Millard Pierce?

At best, their mediocrity merits them footnotes in most history books. Their problem is they didn’t mess up on a grand scale, such as Herbert Hoover with his Depression or Richard Nixon with his tapes.

It’s no different in baseball. In 1962, the National League expanded by two teams, both of ‘em pretty bad, but only one of them truly Amazin’.

Everybody remembers the Mets, who became what writer Shirley Povich called a symbol of superior futility.

But try recalling the identity of those other guys. Don’t bother scanning the standings in the paper, either--the team isn’t there anymore, at least not under the same name.

A good place to start looking for clues is in the closet of Joe Amalfitano, the Dodger third-base coach. There’s a Western suit hanging in there--blue gabardine, complete with navy-blue Stetson hat, blue cowboy boots, orange ties, and wide belt with a big buckle that carried the insignia of a gun.

Amalfitano hasn’t worn the suit in years, except as a joke once on Halloween, when he put it on slipped out the back door and came around front, where his late father answered the doorbell and encountered an Italian cowboy holding a shot glass and saying in feigned broken English: “Trick-a or Treat-a.”

But there was a time when Amalfitano wore that suit wherever he went, along with a couple of dozen other young men whose appearance was sure to provoke curiosity in airport terminals and hotel lobbies.

“People would say, ‘Is there a rodeo in town?’ ” said Bob Aspromonte, who still owns his suit, too. “Most of the time, the way we played, they were hoping it was a rodeo.”

No rodeo. Just the Houston Colt 45s, namesakes of the pistol that supposedly won the West, a team that brought big-league baseball to Texas before becoming the Astros three years later.

The Colts lost 96 games in their first season. They finished 36 1/2 games out of first place. But they also finished ahead of two other teams--the Cubs and, of course, the Mets, who lost an all-time record 120 games.

The Colts were just good enough to be all but forgotten. Their first home, Colt Stadium, doesn’t even exist anymore, its presence acknowledged only by a plaque in the parking lot of the Astrodome, the likes of which no one had ever seen before.

Mickey Mantle, the Yankee Hall of Famer who hit a home run in the first game ever played there, an exhibition against the home team, took one look at the dome and said: “It reminds me of what I imagine my first ride would be like in a flying saucer.”

The Astrodome dwarfed the imagination. In time, it also helped to obliterate the memory of the Colts, except among those players whose lot it was to wind up in the employ of Judge Roy Hofheinz, a former Houston mayor, father of its Astrodome and one-time owner of the baseball team--and, incidentally, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey circus.

“We were just a lot of players thrown together that other teams didn’t want,” said Amalfitano, whom the Colts selected as a “premium” player and paid $125,000 to the Giants for the rights to draft the second baseman.

In all, 43 players wore the Colt uniform that first season. Harry Craft was the manager, Paul Richards the general manager. And Hofheinz was the man who insisted his players wear their suits. He’s also the man who had the team train in Apache Junction, Ariz., where they stayed in a place called Superstition Hotel, in the shadow of Superstition Mountain.

“I really thought it was the end of the world,” said Aspromonte, who had been drafted away from the Dodgers by the Colts.

“I had left beautiful Vero Beach for Apache Junction. The only time I knew there was civilization was when I hit the main road to go to Phoenix.”

What Apache Junction lacked in modern amenities, it more than made up for in reptiles.

“Apache Junction wasn’t much more than eight city blocks, a ballpark and a hotel,” Amalfitano said. “Guys like (Dick) Turk Farrell used to walk across the desert from the hotel to the ballpark, and you knew they were coming because they had guns and they’d be shooting rattlesnakes.

“The closer the gunfire, the closer you knew they were to the clubhouse. They used to come in with their conquests and hang them up on a mesh fence.”

Not all the snakes wound up on the fence. “I remember one time they cut a hole in the pocket of a guy’s street slacks, stuck a dead snake in there with its head coming out of the pocket,” Amalfitano said. “The guy took one look and went out of there running.”

Conditions at Colt Stadium weren’t much better. The heat was unbearable--nearly 100 fans passed out at a Sunday doubleheader against the Dodgers, which led to the Colts becoming the first team to play Sunday night games.

And then there were the mosquitoes.

“We lost weight because of the mosquitoes,” Aspromonte said. “They sucked that much blood out of us.”

The Mets might have had Marvelous Marv Throneberry, whose ineptitude earned him a spot in beer commercials, but the Colts could counter with Farrell, a 20-game loser in 1962 but a certified character.

“A lovable kind of guy, he’d be laughing all the time,” Aspromonte said. “A big barrel-bellied guy who did a lot of fun things. Once, he bought some baby alligators and put them in the whirlpool, while somebody was in there.”

Farrell, who later worked for a large oil-servicing company in Houston, died in an automobile accident in England in 1977.

Of all the original Colts, Aspromonte may have been the most successful player. He was Houston’s starting third baseman for seven seasons and lasted 13 seasons in the big leagues, finishing with the Mets, of all teams, in 1971.

Aspromonte, who was signed by Al Campanis as a 17-year-old high school graduate, always figured he’d become a Dodger. He even served in the same Army unit with Peter O’Malley before O’Malley succeeded his father as team president.

“We were squad leaders, side by side,” Aspromonte said.

But at the time, Aspromonte was a shortstop, and the Dodgers had Maury Wills. So he came to the Colts along with another former Dodger, first baseman Norm Larker, who batted .323 two seasons before.

Larker was nearing the end of his career, Aspromonte was just starting his. But they had something else in common besides being ex-Dodgers: They were both hot-heads.

Aspromonte used to break helmets.

“Harry Craft was like a father to me,” Aspromonte said. “But I kept breaking helmets, and he kept fining me. He never could keep the money, though. He’d give me back the $100 and I’d promise never to do it again. Then I’d break another one.

“He was a nice man who worked with me, and helped to calm me down.”

Larker left the helmets alone. He’d take out his frustrations on the huge fans the Colts used to cool their dugout.

“We’d pray that Larker would get a hit so he wouldn’t shatter the fans,” Amalfitano said.

“They’d charge him for the fans, but he’d take the broken ones home and repair them.”

Larker also became frustrated at the length of the infield grass at Colt Stadium, which turned his hard-hit ground balls into routine outs.

“Ol’ Dumbo was going crazy,” said Aspromonte, employing the nickname that referred to Larker’s ears, not his IQ. “The ball just wouldn’t go through that tall grass.

“He cursed the whole place out. He said, ‘If you don’t cut the grass, I’ll cut it for you.’ ”

And sure enough, Aspromonte said, Larker brought out a mower.

Larker, who now works for a freight moving firm in Long Beach, said he left the lawn work to the groundskeepers.

“The grass was so darn thick you couldn’t drive a nail through,” Larker said. “I told ‘em I was going to mow it, because it was like dog hair. But I never did.”

The Opening Day lineup for the Houston Colt 45s, April 10, 1962:

Bob Aspromonte, 3b

Al Spangler, cf

Roman Mejias, rf

Norm Larker, 1b

Jim Pendleton, lf

Hal Smith, c

Joe Amalfitano, 2b

Don Buddin, ss

Bobby Shantz, p

The Colts won their first three games, all from the Cubs. Aspromonte had their first hit, a leadoff single to left. Mejias hit their first home run. Amalfitano made the first error.

“I remember, after we won three straight from the Cubs, Al Spangler saying, ‘Listen, boys, let’s not win the pennant our first year. The ballpark’s too small, and our World Series checks won’t be big enough,’ ” Amalfitano said.

Not to worry. The Colts were 7-8 in April, 5-24 in July. They lost 17 of 18 to the Phillies.

Aspromonte, now a beer distributor in Houston, would have won pennants had he stayed in Los Angeles. But the Colts gave him a chance to play.

“We didn’t win anything but we worked hard and played hard and had a lot of fun doing it,” he said.

Though he played just one year in Houston, Larker’s rooting for the Astros in the National League playoffs.

“I want Houston to win it and I think they will,” he said. “I think they’re a little better hitting ballclub than the Mets, and they’ve always had the pitching.”

Amalfitano was one of two original Colts who later became managers. The other was Bob Lillis. Don McMahon, the Dodger “eye in the sky,” was in the Colt bullpen. One former Colt and later an Angel, George Brunet, is still pitching in Mexico, at age 50.

“We were all guys wanting a chance to play,” Amalfitano said. “We had some pitching and we could field. We won some games--and we didn’t finish last.”

If they had, they might have been remembered today. But for better or worse, they brought the big leagues to Houston . . . and for that, they deserve a tip of the Stetson.

ASTROS YEAR-BY-YEAR

Year W L Pct. Pos. GB 1962 64 96 .400 8 36 1/2 1963 66 96 .407 9 33 1964 66 96 .407 9 27 1965 65 97 .401 9 32 1966 72 90 .444 8 23 1967 69 93 .426 9 32 1/2 1968 72 90 .444 10 25 1969* 81 81 .500 5 12 1970 79 83 .488 4 23 1971 79 83 .488 4 11 1972 84 69 .549 2 10 1/2 1973 82 80 .506 4 17 1974 81 81 .500 4 21 1975 64 97 .398 6 43 1/2 1976 80 82 .494 3 22 1977 81 81 .500 3 17 1978 74 88 .457 5 21 1979 89 73 .549 2 1 1/2 1980 93 70 .571 1 +1 1981** 28 29 .491 3 8 33 20 .623 1 +1 1/2 1982 77 85 .475 5 12 1983 85 77 .525 3 6 1984 80 82 .494 2 12 1985 83 79 .512 3 12 1986 96 66 .593 1 10

*Start of divisional play. **1981 totals reflect first and second half standings.