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Baseball is known as "America's Pastime." It also happens to be our family's favorite sport. We are setting out a series of caches, each one named after one of the thirty currently active Major League Baseball Teams. Each of the caches is hidden near a ball field somewhere in the Santa Clarita Valley. Stop and enjoy a game if you get the chance. Happy Caching!!
The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. The Mets are a member of the East Division of Major League Baseball's National League.
The Mets were founded as an expansion franchise in 1960 and began play in 1962. The club came into existence as a replacement for New York's two previous National League teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, who relocated to California following the 1957 season. As an interesting historical note, there was an earlier baseball club called the New York Metropolitans which played in the short-lived American Association during the 1880s. While the defunct 19th century team is not related to the current incarnation of the Mets, its moniker did serve as the inspiration for the modern day National League franchise.
For the first two years of its existence, the team played its home games at the historic Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, which it shared with the New York Jets. In 1964, both teams moved into newly constructed Shea Stadium, where the Mets stayed through the 2008 season. In 2009, the club moved into Citi Field, located adjacent to the former site of Shea Stadium.
During their history, the Mets have won two World Series titles (1969 and 1986), four National League pennants (1969, 1973, 1986, 2000), and five National League East titles (1969, 1973, 1986, 1988, 2006). The Mets also qualified for the postseason as the National League Wild Card team in 1999 and 2000. The Mets have appeared in more World Series - four - than any other expansion team in Major League Baseball history. Their two championships equal the tally of the Toronto Blue Jays and Florida Marlins for the most titles among expansion teams.
The Mets held the New York baseball attendance record for 29 years. They broke the Yankees' 1948 record by drawing nearly 2.7 million in 1970. The Mets broke their own record five times before the Yankees took it back in 1999.
No Met pitcher has ever thrown a no-hitter, and the franchise's hurlers have gone more than 7,500 games without pitching one - longer than any other Major League franchise. On several occasions, potential no-hitters by Met pitchers have been broken up in the late innings. Tom Seaver twice pitched 8 1/3 innings without allowing a hit for the Mets - in one of those games, against Chicago in 1969, Seaver only needed two more outs for a perfect game before Jimmy Qualls singled - while in recent years Tom Glavine, Pedro Martínez, Mike Pelfrey, and John Maine all lost their no-hit bids in the 7th or 8th inning.
In 1998, the Independent Budget Office of the city of New York published a study on the economic impact of the city's two Major League Baseball teams. The study included an analysis of where fans of both the Mets and the Yankees resided. The study found that 39% of Mets fans lived in one of the five boroughs of New York, 49% in the tri-state area outside the city and 12% elsewhere. Mets fans were more likely to be found in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk, whereas Manhattan, the Bronx, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the counties of Westchester and Rockland, as well as the upper Hudson Valley and the upstate New York region, leaned more towards the Yankees - this despite Manhattan's one-time association with the Giants, one of the Mets' predecessors.
Facts courtesy of Wikipedia.
* * * * * Coordinates for Entrance Road up to the Cache are N34 23.960, W118 30.027 - This road is County maintained and used by the power companies for maintenance access (no gate). This road is legal to drive on without tresspassing. * * * * * *
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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