The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in Flushing, Queens, in New York City, New York.

The original Mets were the New York Metropolitans, an 1880s baseball club.

Beginning play in the historic Polo Grounds, the Mets shared the venue with the New York Jets for two years, until Shea was completed.

In 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants abandoned New York for California, leaving the largest city in the United States without a National League franchise.

He tried to get several existing clubs to move, including the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Cincinnati Reds, but no National League club was interested.

Charles Shipman Payson and his wife, Joan Whitney Payson, former minority owners of the Giants, were the principal owners, along with George Herbert Walker, Jr.

From the first, the Mets sought to appeal to the large contingent of former Giants and Dodgers fans, as well as those New Yorkers who disliked the New York Yankees.

With their television contract with the MSG Network expiring by the end of 2005, they announced plans to establish their own cable network to broadcast Mets games, rivaling the Yankee-owned YES Network.

Minaya, an ex-Mets assistant GM, achieved notable success in Montreal by making bold player moves on a limited budget.

Minaya began by hiring Yankee bench coach Willie Randolph as manager, then signed two of that year's most sought-after free agents --- Pedro Martínez and Carlos Beltrán --- to large multi-year deals.

The New York Mets achieved this success despite a slew of injuries which included losing Martínez for a month, and using fifteen different starting pitchers.

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