What a year 1969 was!

Man on the moon and the Mets as World Champions.

Back then it was hard to say which was more of a miracle; for centuries man had gazed at the moon in wonder. And for seven years, the Mets were a baseball joke, never finishing higher than ninth place in the 10-team National League.

And then came Gil Hodges. He became manager and immediately began to change the expectations. His son, Gil Hodges Jr., spoke about it yesterday while being interviewed on a New York Met telecast.

He said that when his father came aboard as manager, the expectation was that the Mets would do everything wrong. Hodges simply decided that they would do things right.

This is something you can do with your team.

“We tend to live up to our expectations,” says Earl Nightengale, author of “The Strangest Secret.”

And what exactly is the strangest secret?

It is: “We become what we think about.”

So if your expectations are low, then your results will be, too. But if they’re high …

This is how man got to the moon. With the same attitude that Hodges had. President Kennedy set a goal — and created an expectation — that the United States would be the first country to put a man on the moon. That’s the way it turned out, and it remains that way today!

So watch your expectations. They will become your reality.