The Story of the New York Mets Logo

On November 16, 1961 cartoonist Ray Gotto (1916-2003) unveiled the circular New York Mets logo, a symbol which has virtually gone unchanged since its birth 55 years ago.

Gatto was the illustrator of the "Ozark Ike" & "Cotton Woods" comic strips as well as having drawn many classic sports cartoons for the Sporting News.

He won a contest that the club sponsored in order to start up a fan base beating out over 500 other entries for his design. The prize was not only to have his logo used but also $1000. 

Artist Ray Gotto

The original New York Mets team colors are blue and orange, the colors represent the two former National League teams who left New York for the West Coast.

The orange represents the former New York Giants & the blue represents the Brooklyn Dodgers. Blue & orange are also the official colors of New York State.

The logo design is a round baseball with orange stitching and the Mets orange script lettering outlined in white across the middle.
The blue skyline in the background also has special meanings to the city of New York. At the far left is a church spire, symbolic of Brooklyn, which is known as the borough of churches.

The second building from the left is the Williamsburg Savings Bank, the tallest building in Brooklyn at the time of the logo design. Next to that is Manhattan's famous Woolworth Building and a then a general skyline view of midtown Manhattan, featuring the Empire State Building at the center. At the far right the United Nations Building is represented.
The white bridge is not supposed to be one specific bridge, but rather a representation of all bridges in the area. This is also to symbolize all boroughs of the city.

Trivia: An interesting note is that the Throgs Neck Bridge opened up for travel the same year, 1961. The Whitestone Bridge opened up in 1939. Both Bridges opened in coincidence with those years upcoming World’s Fair's in Queens.

In 1966 the Mets used that logo on their left uniform sleeve for the first time. It was used in that spot for three seasons but replaced in 1969 with MLB logo.
It has come & gone in that spot  on the players sleeve many times over the years.

In 1998 the Mets dropped the small orange NY on the left side of the logo, located just above the curl of the letter M. That season they also started using the black colors, an alternate logo featured the skyline in black, with the Mets in blue lettering with an orange shade. The bridge remained white & the stitching remained orange.

Trivia: In 2012 the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building slightly changed its shape, appearing a bit wider & it's dome flatter. Many agree this is due to the latest digital printing age. Also that year which was the teams 50th Anniversary, the black logo & uniforms were done away with.