The only pitcher on the 1962 New York Mets with a winning record, MacKenzie passed away December 14 at the age of 89.
The Gore Bay, Ontario-born lefty also went 3-1 for the 1963 Mets. Rookie Grover Powell, at 1-1, was the only other hurler not to have a losing record that year.
MacKenzie made his debut in 1960 with the Milwaukee Braves. He also pitched for the Cardinals, Giants, and Astros before leaving the game at the age of 31. In retirement, he returned to Yale — his alma mater — to coach its baseball team. According to the AP obituary that ran in The New York Times, “He was among those who helped recruit the future Mets pitching star Ron Darling to Yale, although he stepped down as coach before Darling’s first college season, in 1979. He worked in Yale’s alumni office until retiring in 1984.”
Casey Stengel, manager of those expansion Mets, cracked that MacKenzie’s signing with the team made him the lowest-paid alumnus of the class of Yale ’56.
Here’s a piece from the Hartford Courant. It’s behind a paywall but maybe you can figure out a way around it.
P.S. The morbid part of me is working on an expanded piece about baseball obituaries which have appeared in the pages of The New York Times, the “paper of record.” I often wonder about what they choose to lead with when eulogizing celebrities of various degrees.
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