[Merkle923]

Everybody knows the '62 Mets as the most infamous, if not literally, the worst team since the 1899 Spiders. But the '65 edition would've given them a run for their money.

If you look at their page at Baseball Reference, you'll notice the list and photos of the top 10 '65 Mets by WAR:

Johnny Lewis 2.5
Jack Fisher 2.2
Charley Smith 2.0
Ron Swoboda 1.6
Darrell Sutherland 1.2
Chris Cannizzaro 1.0
Frank Lary 0.9
Tug McGraw 0.8
Jim Hickman 0.7
Dennis Musgraves 0.6

Dennis...Musgraves? He was on the active Mets' roster for just 35 days, from July 6 to August 10, pitched 16 innings over five games, whiffed 11, had an 0.56 ERA, got one start - during which he blew out his elbow. The Mets had given him a $100,000 bonus after he starred at the University of Missouri. He pitched in their system through 1970, then with the Royals' farm at Omaha in '71 and he was done at 27.

And he was, by this measure, the tenth best player on the '65 Mets.

This begins a few more obscurities from that Brace collection I mentioned a few weeks ago. Musgraves is in the Fritsch One-Year Winners set, in a Topps pose shot in Spring Training 1966. In my various inspections of the old Topps Vault, Musgraves' file was missing, meaning Fritsch probably did not return it to Bill Haber at Topps (or Bill mis-filed it).

Regardless, there are only two color shots of him online: the OYW image, and from the TCMA '60s Sets (which were photos shot for Fleer as they tried to stock up in hopes of breaking the Topps monopoly in court). Here's Musgraves at Wrigley in '65 and unfortunately the owner decided to embellish the color on the "NY" on his hat, which offends purists like me but probably doesn't really subtract from the usefulness of the image.