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In time for Father's Day, order autographed copies of Matt's new books here. |
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July 24, 2010 It says here that 1974 is the next season in Mets history to chronicle. It's the last Mets season I missed as a fan. “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks I did not miss. Unfortunately. That bit of gloppy sentimentality playing on my blue Toot A Loop radio in the ’74 darkness in my third grade room made me think about mortality and whether one could turn off a song like that in the hereafter. Musical choices available in the next life had to be better than the bubble gum music that my Toot A Loop could get with its AM-only setting. Thankfully, baseball would find me in 1975 and my Toot A Loop would be swinging off my bike handle with Bob Murphy describing the cloud situation in Queens as I pedaled. But that would come later. This was 1974…like a West Coast trip that would not end. 1974: What Didn’t Happen Throughout 1974 the people waited for the Mets to flip the switch, to become what they’d been in 1973: A team that could fritter away almost five months of the season, play a month of great baseball, wind up with a division title, and just miss a world championship. The 1974 Mets mimicked the ’73 team’s tepid pace for most of the summer. Everybody was hurt. Tug McGraw was terrible. Yogi Berra looked overmatched. The Mets stood 8˝ games out in mid August and in fifth place, actually higher in the standings than they’d been a year earlier in a tightly-bunched division. After a 3-7 roadtrip pushed the Mets 11 back during the final week of August, they got hot. The Mets won 10 out of 11, with Benny Ayala becoming the first Met to homer in his first major league at bat. Suddenly the Mets were in fourth place, nine games out, with 24 games left. As we’ve all subsequently seen, such deficits can be overcome by a determined ballclub. That was not this group. Still 11 games out on September 11, 1974, the Mets took on the hard-charging Cardinals at Shea Stadium in the opener of a two-game set. Both teams scratched out a run in the first, but the Mets took a 3-1 lead on a Cleon Jones two-run home run off Bob Forsch in the fifth. Jerry Koosman, one of the few Mets enjoying a winning season, seemed for all the world to have the win locked down, but with two outs in the ninth, Ken Reitz drilled a two-run home run. Four hours later… …they were still playing. And with no end in sight. Claude Osteen, who’d entered in the 14th for St. Louis, pitched more innings than Koosman—and Kooz had gone nine. Recent Cardinals callup, 20-year-old Keith Hernandez, pinch hit and nearly won the game, only to be robbed by outfielder Dave Schneck. The Mets used a collection of “please homer off me and we can all go home” relievers—Harry Parker, Bob Miller, Bob Apodaca, Jerry Cram, and Hank Webb. Only Apodaca ever added much to the Mets equation after that long night. Cram, who had thrown only six major league innings over the last five years, tossed eight shutout innings. With two outs in the bottom of the 24th, Schneck, making his club record 11th at bat of the game, doubled off Sonny Seibert. Pinch hitter Jim Gosger, a ’69 Mets scrub now back in circulation, was walked intentionally. Ron Hodges worked out a walk and with Cram’s spot up, Rusty Staub stepped out of the on deck circle. After 24 innings and six and a half hours you have Rusty unused on your bench? You could question Yogi, but he’d been ejected over an hour earlier. Rusty grounded back to the mound. So in came Hank Webb, batting third after curiously double-switching out Cleon, the one guy who got a big hit all night for the Mets. Making his first appearance of the year, Webb got his first major league decision when his pickoff throw went down the line and Bake McBride scored all the way from first base. Brock Pemberton, batting for Webb, singled to keep the Mets alive in the home 25th, but John Milner fanned to end the game seven hours and four minutes after it began. The longest major league game played to conclusion broke the previous marathons of 23 innings in 1964 at Shea and 24 innings at the Astrodome. All three were Mets losses with every ball and strike called by unlucky Ed Sudol. (Let it be noted that in 1920 a game went 26 innings before being called by darkness. The pitchers—let’s get their names out of respect—Leon Cadore of the Brooklyn Robins and Joe Oeschger of the Boston Braves, each went the distance in a 1-1 tie. Ed Sudol was not present.) If the Mets weren’t kaput before their 25-inning game, they were soon thereafter. Jon Matlack, who had seven shutouts in ’74, didn’t have shutout stuff the next night in a 12-5 loss. The Mets stumbled onto a plane to Chicago for a Friday the 13th afternoon doubleheader! Tom Seaver threw a shutout in the first game, but the second game went—you guessed it—extra innings. They lost. (The Mets were 4-16 in extra time in ’74.) When they beat the Bucs two of three in late September at Three Rivers, the Mets had already been eliminated. Pittsburgh took three straight the next weekend at Shea, but the Mets did the job of a good spoiler. In front of a packed Fan Appreciation Day crowd, Bob Apodaca’s lone career complete game beat Ken Brett, 7-2, avoiding the sweep and putting the Cards and Pirates in a flat-footed tie with three games left. Pittsburgh traveled to last-place Chicago while the Cards headed across the frosty border to face third-place Montreal. After St. Louis won Monday night—the season ending during the week that year—les Expos snuffed the Cardinals in a 93-minute duel played on a 40-degree evening at Jarry Park. Ex-Met Mike Jorgenson’s eighth-inning homer off Bob Gibson snapped a 2-2 tie and future Met Dale Murray set the Cardinals down to end the race. The 88-win Bucs swept the Cubs to claim the NL East by 1˝ games. (The sure-to-be-frigid and definitely meaningless Jarry Park finale was cancelled.) With barely 5,000 on hand to see the Mets and Phillies play out the string, one of the major developments of 1975 occurred at Shea in the otherwise meaningless penultimate game of 1974: Tom Seaver was back. Or, should I say, his back was back. After enduring back and butt pain all year, Seaver had shut himself down, but M. Donald Grant actually did something for the common good and recommended a doctor who had Tom feeling well enough to give it one last go. The first two Phillies got hits off him and major league home run leader Mike Schmidt laid down a bunt (!). It worked for the Phillies because future Mets hot dog Willie Montanez then drove in both Dave Cash and Larry Bowa. Seaver allowed only one hit and two walks the rest of the game while fanning 14 to push him over the 200-strikeout mark for a record-tying seventh time, a milestone worthy of the next year’s yearbook cover, a year Tom would dominate and collect his third Cy Young. But back in 1974, the Mets never got those first-inning runs back and Seaver lost his last start to Jim Lonborg, 2-1. Seaver’s worst season (11-11, 3.20 ERA, first time not named an All-Star) was past. Terrificness and 1975 awaited…plus one new set of eyes watching everything Tom did. |
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July 13, 2010 GS BS Black Armband Edition My mom told me to always be respectful when someone passes. Even your enemies. Condolences go to Yankees fans. First for Bob Sheppard, who brought public address announcers out of their little room and gave the profession grace, class, distinctness, and perfection. I remember when I went to my first Giants game in 1978, I wasn’t awed by Giants Stadium, or being at an event in New Jersey, or seeing Astroturf for the first time. My first thought on the first play was, “Wow. They’ve got the Yankees announcer telling you what happened.” I didn’t really like the Giants, but I was glad to be able to appreciate Bob Sheppard away from all that Yankiness. It was never about “me”—hear that John Sterling?—it was about getting it right. And would you expect George Steinbrenner to pass on without upstaging an employee or the All-Star Game? Much will be made of his legacy, his money, and everything else, and people will dwell on the world championships and not so much on his two suspensions, his bullying, and what he did to Billy Martin. He was like one of your parents’ friends that you never liked, who was a blowhard, always made you feel second rate, and you wished would be the first to leave a cocktail party. But the party wasn’t as interesting after he left. George was the same age as my mom, who didn’t care for baseball and really didn’t care for King George’s bombast. She’s been gone awhile and when George gets to heaven—can you imagine Steinbrenner standing still for being anywhere else?—is he ever going to get an earful. To the most memorable stadium voice and the most outsized personality in any owner’s box, Godspeed. |
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July 12, 2010 Special Random All-Star Edition! A few first-half observations. In my 13th game of the year, I was lucky enough to be in the same stadium as Greg Prince for his 13th straight win. (He’s taking his show to Two Boots Tavern at the lower dining concourse at Grand Central on Monday, July 12, where Greg and Jon Springer welcome incomparable Mets chroniclers Marty Noble and Howard Megdal.) I don’t know where Greg or his iron butterfly were sitting on Sunday, but when Ike Davis hit a ball completely out of my viewing area and into the only shadow in the sweltering Citi, I knew he hadn’t been suddenly called away by pestilence or famine. Alex Cora and Josh Thole getting two-out RBI hits? Perfect Parnell and K-Rod? All nice touches, as was the Jason Bay bobblehead and his sitting out the festivities. I didn’t know you did birthday parties, Greg? It was my son’s seventh birthday. Because I wasn’t one of the first 25 people to get on the online list quickly enough, we didn’t get his name on the big board. (Go to scoreboard messages and sign up way earlier than you think necessary.) Here you go anyway, pal: HAPPY SEVENTH BIRTHDAY, TYLER!
And let me add, he endured the sweltering
sun with little complaining despite a slight earache, a birthday party
hangover—oh, the popcorn and slushies at
Despicable Me
Ironically, I got on the big board and Ty didn’t. I was in the background for the kid hitting wiffle pitches in the fifth inning, positioning myself for Ty’s turn at bat, which immediately followed (untelevised). <><><><> While walking out to the center field kids area, which I will say they have set up much better this year so you can watch the game on the big screen while standing at almost all the free amusements out there, we saw people deserving Atta Boys and a catcall.
<><><><> And lastly, I have an overdue book review of sorts. The 2010 Mets Media Guide. I know this year they told season ticket holders to access an electronic version. Saving paper is noble, but a media guide is one of the few things left that is actually easier to use hands on than on your laptop. Too bad they decided to go green on this item (instead of say, recycling beer cups or making sure the Citi recycle bins are emptied so they don’t all overfill by the fourth inning). In all my years of cramming through Mets media guides like it’s the night before an exam, this year’s version is the best I’ve seen. I know, many will say, “Big deal. That’s their job.” But a good job is a good job. (Never mind the hours, working every night and weekend, and having to deal with MLB.) People are missing a good product here and it is worth buying if you can find it. Without sounding like I’m brown-nosing the Mets front office, producing a book like this is not an easy task. I was on the MLB and NFL media guide mailing lists at Total Sports and still have several boxes of old media guides in the attic. (What, I should recycle those?) I’ve seen plenty of mailed-in efforts by teams going back to when Milwaukee was an AL team. The Mets send me a guide due to the Maple Street Press Annual , but this is the first time I’ve felt the need to write about the product. Cool things in 2010 Mets guide I haven’t seen in the past:
I had occasion to spend time going through recent Yankees and Red Sox media guides—the Yankees version was, I hate to say, surprisingly good—but this is one endeavor where the Mets outdo both those other organizations. At a staggering 538 pages, it’s also 90 pages larger than the Evil Empire’s book. To show I haven’t been taken over by the Moonies… Who made Ollie Perez one of the guide's 10 cover boys—what, you couldn’t get a photo of Mr. Clubhouse Alex Cora folding up towels? And I also could have lived without a repeat of the same photo of Jeff, Fred, and Saul. Actually the same pic appeared three times because it ran as the lead-in to the Office of the Chairman section, then ran again on the next page, and then thumbnail shots were cut from this same photo on the third page to use with their bios. I trust these three gents are in the office enough where someone could have gotten another photo of them. <><><><> All in all fellas, and I’m talking to everyone in the Mets employ, I expected nothing in 2010 and for half a year I’ve been captivated. Keep up the good work. I’ll be watching. And not just when Greg Prince is in the house. |
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July 10, 2010 There was a slight delay in my decision when to write the next piece in this ongoing annual oral history. I had to wait to write about the 1973 Mets until my handlers told me it was all right. I put together a lengthy TV special on how I came about making my decision, complete with Jim Gray tossing softballs instead of coming right out and asking when I will write it. Now did you watch the Our World clip after the Rose-Harrelson fight? Good for you. That was stuff worth being informed about: the war in the Middle East, the resulting gas crisis, Paper Moon, The Way We Were—well, maybe not the hair on Babs—but I remember all those things from 1973, when I was eight. I don't recall the New York Mets’ run to the pennant at all. If you’ve watched more than a dozen Mets games in your life, you’ve probably heard about them rallying from last place in August, beating the Reds, and giving the A’s enough of a scare that the first break in that dynasty began the moment the World Series was over with the resignation of winning manager Dick Williams. Though Charlie Finley probably was more the cause of that than Don Hahn. But how the Mets got to that point is the real story, the real drama. A plot worthy of an hour of ESPN. Five days in September 1973.
September 17, 1973 NL East Standings At End of Play 1. Pirates 75-72 -- 2. Expos 75-74 -1 3. Cardinals 74-76 -2˝ 4. Mets 73-77 -3˝ 5. Cubs 70-78 -5 ˝ 6. Phillies 65-84 -11 Pirates 10, Mets 3 This was the kind of wacky scheduling they had back in the day. A five-game series, all at night, starting on a Monday: two games in Pittsburgh followed by three at Shea. Like a home-and-home series in hockey. Not much to see in the opener. Tom Seaver was on his way to the Cy Young, but the first-place Buccos battered him and were even more unkind to September callup Craig Swan. Willie Stargell was a single short of the cycle on a rainy night in Pittsburgh. You could have been watching the Jets open the season with Howard Cosell calling a 23-7 drubbing in Green Bay. Or maybe just go to bed early. You’d need your rest.
September 18, 1973 NL East Standings At End of Play 1. Pirates 75-73 -- 2. Expos 75-75 -1 3. Cardinals 75-76 -1˝ 4. Mets 74-77 -2˝ 5. Cubs 71-79 -5 (We’re going to drop the Phillies here, because they were done. Feels good to say that.) Mets 6, Pirates 5 The Pirates knocked out Jon Matlack in the fourth and were in control until the ninth, when a parade of banjo-hitting Mets pretty much saved New York's season. With a dozen games left on the schedule, falling 4˝ back is pretty much a death sentence (unless you’re the Mets and that’s the size of your lead, but I parenthetically digress). With the score 4-1, Bud Harrelson made the first out of the ninth at Three Rivers against lefty Ramon Hernandez. Jim Beauchamp batted for Ed Kranepool when, son of a Beauchamp, Jim got the second-to-last—and most important—hit of his otherwise unremarkable career. Wayne Garrett then doubled to bring the tying run to the plate in Felix Millan. Felix the Cat roped a ball in the gap and raced to third, representing the tying run. Rusty Staub walked and Duffy Dyer came out to bat for Tug McGraw, but when palmballing Dave Giusti was called in, rookie Ron Hodges was sent up instead. Now Ronnie Hodges hadn’t done much then and wouldn’t do much over a dozen seasons as a Met, but this was his week. Signed just a year before out of Appalachian State, Hodges tied the game with a base hit. Job well done, Ted Martinez came in to run for the Virginia gentleman. Cleon Jones walked. Don Hahn, whose claim to fame to this point was breaking George Theodore’s hip in a heinous collision at Shea, came up with the bases loaded. Wouldn’t you know it, Hahn became the seventh straight Met to reach base with a single to center. Two runs scored. Mets 6, Bucs 4. But, oh, it wasn’t over yet. The Beauchamp and Hodges moves, the pinch runner…worked like charms. But with the season on the line, Yogi Berra called in a pitcher to save it who’d never pitched before in the majors: Bob Apodaca. Loved Dac in the mid-1970s and as Bobby Valentine’s right-hand man before he was hatcheted by Steve Phillips. On this night, the love didn’t come easily. He walked the first two batters he ever faced and was replaced by Buzz Capra. The 1970s were all about cool nicknames like Buzz. He’d take a haymaker from Pedro Borbon in the Harrelson fight and give back a little medicine as well. Anyway, Buzzer had a job to do in Pittsburgh and so did Dave Cash, who sacrificed the tying runs into scoring position. Now for pretty much the first five months of the season, when the Mets were earning every bit of their last-place standing, this would be where Al Oliver bounced a single to tie the game and the Mets went on to lose in extras. This was September. The Mets were no longer last. And the Pirates had diddled around too long without putting this division away while setting the anyone-can-do-it pace that resulted in the lowest winning percentage ever for a pennant winner at .509. But Oliver’s bouncer was fielded by Beauchamp, now playing first, who recorded the last defensive play of his career. Now a 6-5 game, Willie Stargell was walked intentionally, putting the winning run on base. You had to concur with Yogi on that one. Even after Richie Zisk followed with a walk to fill the bases. Because Manny Sanguillen then hit a fly ball to left. Cleon Jones snagged it. The season was saved.
September 19, 1973 NL East Standings At End of Play 1. Pirates 75-74 -- 2. Expos 75-76 -1 3. Mets 75-77 -1˝ Cardinals 75-77 -1˝ 5. Cubs 72-79 -4 Mets 7, Pirates 3 The difference between the floundering Mets of summer and the flourishing Mets of fall was that the team was healthy. Harrelson, Cleon, Rusty, Matlack...they were all feeling fine and making life miserable for the Pirates. Which was only fair since Ramon Hernandez had drilled more his share of Mets and sent Grote to the DL. This was payback. And as the series shifted to Shea, the Mets started George Stone, who was enjoying a “maaarvelous season,” as Bob Murphy would say. The Bucs scored off him in the first and then tied it in the third before Felix Millan singled home Stone for a 3-2 lead. Stonie never gave it back and even knocked in a big run in the bottom of the fifth. The run was big because in the top of the sixth, Wilver Stargell, showing why it had been a really good idea to walk him with the game on the line the previous night, ripped one of his 29,240 career home runs against the Mets. No wait, that was the attendance at Shea—more than the two nights’ take in Pittsburgh. Stargell did homer 60 times against the Mets in his career, a Ruthian number and more than he hit against anybody else. And if you saw Stargell torment the Mets either as a sleek outfielder or as a centennial-hat-wearing, co-MVP-glomming, star-doling first baseman known as Pops, 60 homers still sounds too low. But on this night the Mets did the tormenting. Dave Giusti’s palmball picked a bad week to go south. Cleon Jones slammed a three-run homer off him in the eighth that let Tug McGraw get a routine 1-2-3 save. Though for Tug that meant three innings, not three outs. Let starting pitchers finish games, leave the pitch count in Little League where it belongs, and you’ll have relievers rested enough to throw three shutout innings at a clip. But back in ’73 there was no pitch count. There was just the pennant count. And Pittsburgh was getting worried.
September 20, 1973 NL East Standings At End of Play 1. Pirates 75-75 -- 2. Mets 76-77 -˝ 3. Expos 75-77 -1 4. Cardinals 75-78 -1˝ 5. Cubs 73-79 -3 Mets 6, Pirates 5 If you’ve read all the way to this point, this is why we’re here. Some 24,855 were there. And the action started even before the game. Willie Mays announced his retirement that afternoon. At age 42, after 22 years in the major leagues, and nursing three cracked ribs from clanging into a railing at Jarry Park, Mays made official what everybody else thought should happen. He admitted that in San Francisco he probably would have retired already, but in New York, “They’ll let you hit .211.” This was not his famous teary-eyed speech at Shea—that would come the following week—but he gave out a good line, for old time’s sake. “Maybe I’ll cry tomorrow.” That’s what the Pirates would be doing. It’s hard today to imagine the pathetic Pirates as any type of a threat. But in 1973 they were the Pittsburgh Lumber Company, the class of the National League East, winners of the title in 1970, 1971, and 1972, and world champions in ’71. They’d been odds on favorite to take the division again in ’73, even after the tragic death of Roberto Clemente. Now the Bucs clung to a half-game lead over the Mets with three more teams breathing down their necks. A pair of crafty lefties, Jerry Koosman and Jim Rooker went at it at Shea. The game was back and forth all night. The Bucs going ahead 1-0 in the fourth, the Mets tying it in the sixth, the Pirates going ahead 2-1 in the seventh, the Mets tying it in the eighth, only to have Pittsburgh take the lead in the ninth. Big Bob Robertson worked a walk from Harry Parker, Dave Augustine pinch ran, was bunted to second, and Dave Cash’s double cracked the tie with two outs. Bob Johnson, a Mets farmhand forked over to Kansas City in the outrageously bad Otis-for-Foy deal, entered for the Pirates. Ken Boswell singled to start the home ninth and Don Hahn bunted him over. Ed Kranepool was announced as the pinch hitter for the pitcher, but when Ramon Hernandez came in, Steady Eddie sat down in favor of the Stork. George Theodore, he of the Hahn takedown, batted for the first time since the July 7 collision. He went down looking. Now Duffy Dyer, batting under .200, and a month between hits, batted for Parker. Danny Murtaugh, probably feeling burned by Giusti, stayed with the left-hander. And what do you know? Dyer doubled to left and the game was tied once more. Mets lefty Ray Sadecki threw 3 2/3 wonderful innings of relief, but his last pitch was not good. Dave Augustine, in the game after running for Robertson, was a September callup with one hit in his three times up in the majors. But he slammed a pitch high and deep to left. It was trouble the moment it left the bat, over Cleon Jones’s head, and for all the world headed for the visiting bullpen. But all the king’s horses and all king’s couldn’t make that ball go over that wall. The ball came down on the top of the fence. Not the side, not the edge, but the top. The almost indiscernible point on the fence. Instead of bouncing into the bullpen for a home run, it came back to Cleon. Richie Zisk, the man on first, was coming around third, and Cleon’s threw to Wayne Garrett, who moved to shortstop in extra innings. Garrett unleashed a perfect throw of his own to Ron Hodges, the rookie, who'd entered the game in extra innings, and he slapped the tag on Zisk. Almost four decades later, it’s still hard to believe the carom—“The Ball on the Wall,” if you will, then the throw, the relay, and boom! BOOM! The second boom was Hodges singling in the winning run in the bottom of the inning. Off Dave Giusti. There are great weeks and then there are nightmare weeks.
September 21, 1973 NL East Standings At End of Play 1. Mets 77-77 -- 2. Pirates 75-76 -˝ 3. Cardinals 76-78 -1 4. Expos 75-78 -1 ˝ 5. Cubs 74-79 -3 Mets 10, Pirates 2 Wasn’t this where we came in? Tom Seaver pitching and the home team scores 10 in a rout? Only this time Seaver was in charge and the Pirates got drubbed. Two-run doubles by both Cleon Jones and Jerry Grote in the first inning knocked out wobbly Steve Blass. After the Pirates cut the lead in half in the second, John Milner homered and Bud Harrelson knocked in another run in the third before a Friday night full house. The team that was in last place on August 30 stood in first place just over three weeks later. Well, Tug kept saying “Ya Gotta Believe.” Now you see why. |
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June 24, 2010 Joan Payson and Casey Stengel were the Ma and Pa who started the New York Mets as an enterprise. Gil Hodges was the son entrusted to run the business and make it a national success. He did that and more, but the family dynamic died with him on April 2, 1972. It’s still the most shocking death involving the Mets. With a starting rotation of Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and magnificent rookie Jon Matlack—plus bullpen stopper Tug McGraw—the Mets had the pitching to take them anywhere. They just needed a bat to anchor the lineup. Gil Hodges pushed for trading three young prospects to Montreal for one of the premier hitters in the game: Rusty Staub. The Mets sent the Expos Ken Singleton, Mike Jorgensen, and—after Hodges insisted that they shouldn’t let one prospect hold up the deal—Tim Foli. Staub turned 28 the day the Mets culminated the deal for him in 1972, a year the Mets had one of the greatest starts in club history, when Yogi Berra finally returned to managing, and Willie Mays returned to New York. The Mets wound up a distant third in 1972, but it was a melancholy season before it even began. Baseball lost its first major league games to a strike and the Mets lost their leader to a heart attack. I was fortunate to speak to Rusty Staub about this pivotal juncture and season in Mets history. Walking into the offices at Citi Field, I stumbled upon Rusty Staub and Tom Seaver sitting at a desk looking at me. I could understand an opponent feeling intimidated walking into Shea, circa 1972. (Though they were very nice to me.) Thanks to Le Grand Orange and to Lorraine Hamilton at the Mets for setting up this meeting just as the 2010 Mets took on the Detroit Tigers, a team Rusty never should have been traded to…but that’s a story for another year. 1972: Easter Sunday by Rusty Staub as told to Matthew Silverman It was during the strike. It was the only time I was caught unawares at any time in baseball. I knew I was going to be leaving Houston [in 1969]. I didn’t exactly know where I was going to go, but it happened. When they had the [1972] strike…this is an unbelievable story, to be truthful. I didn’t know I was being talked about. In retrospect, the family, especially Gil’s wife, Joan Hodges, told me how much he wanted me on his ballclub and fought to get me. It’s probably the most disappointing thing in my career that I didn’t get a chance to play for him. On Holy Saturday [April 1, 1972], we were on strike. It just had started and they said, “Everybody stay where you are, do what you’re going to do, it’s either going to be very short or very long.” It turned out to be very long. Look, they made the trade for me on Holy Saturday. I don’t know that. Nobody knows it but them, they don’t know what to do. It’s a strike. You don’t announce anything during a strike. So, the next day I’m at St. Anne’s Church in downtown West Palm Beach. Here comes Gil Hodges, his coaching staff, and the trainer Tom McKenna. They all come to Mass. I’m on the other side of church and when Mass is over I go over to chat with them. And I remember driving off saying, “Wow! Easter Sunday brings out the best in everybody.” They just talked with me and were so nice. They knew I was a Met. I didn’t! And the shame of it was later that night, on my way back from having dinner with friends, I learned that Gil had had had a heart attack and died. I pulled off on the side of the road so I could hear what they were talking about. He passed away. I still didn’t know I was traded until they had the funeral and unfortunately, Mr. [M. Donald] Grant decided that he was going to announce the day of the funeral the trade and the fact that Yogi was going to manage. It took a little of the emphasis off of Gil, which I always thought wasn’t the best thing they could have done. But it happened. I had nothing to do with it. As I said, that’s the only time they ever caught me where I didn’t know something was going to happen. I came here and I told everybody, “Look I had a great relationship with the people of Montreal and Canada. It’s not that I don’t realize how fortunate I am to be on this ballclub with such great pitching, but don’t let my lack of enthusiasm right now deceive you into thinking that I’m not happy to be here. Just give me a little time and I’ll make this adjustment to New York and hopefully be the player that Gil Hodges and everybody wanted me to be to come here.” I’ll just let the record speak for itself. The Mets began the year 8-2. Their 23-7 start remains the best 30-game record in team history. After 40 games they stood at 29-11—a start matched only by the 1986 and 1988 Mets—and they owned the biggest lead in baseball. Rusty Staub already had 14 multi-hit games for his new club. Rusty had played every game and was hitting .313 with seven homers, 27 RBIs, 22 walks, and just 10 strikeouts in 189 plate appearances on June 3 against Atlanta when he was hit on the hand by future Mets teammate George Stone. Staub missed 90 games from that point on and the Mets finished 13 ˝ games behind the Pirates. I had the greatest start of my career in ’72 and I wound up with a broken hook of the hamate [a fracture in his right hand], which had to be operated on. Nowadays with the types of surgery they have, you can be back in two to three weeks. Back then I was out two to three months and I still wasn’t right to start the next season. It’s the same injury that Roger Maris had that they misdiagnosed—as they did mine, too. They said I had tendinitis...and I had a broken hand. One of Rusty’s favorite moments that year came on May 14, Mother’s Day, when Willie Mays became a Met 15 years after he’d left New York as a Giant. Everyone remembers Mays’s home run in the fifth inning against the Giants that wound up deciding the game, but few recall what happened after Willie walked in his first at bat. The first game he played, I was kind of thrilled because he faced his old team, the San Francisco Giants. Sudden Sam McDowell was the starting pitcher. The first three guys get on and I was the cleanup hitter. I hit a grand slam home run off the scoreboard against Sudden Sam McDowell. I have the photograph crossing home plate with Willie Mays....What a wonderful memory. In the first game, the first at bat Willie had [as a Met], I drove him in with that wonderful hit. Nobody in the history of baseball was a better overall player than Willie Mays. There are a lot of people on a par, maybe, in their own era, but Willie Mays was as good as there was. And few Mets can match Le Grand Orange. |
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June 16, 2010 The 1971 Mets were just another team. No longer the abysmal failure of the 1960s and no longer the champion of Miracles, they were just a third-place club in the 83-win range. But nobody knows what’s going to happen until it happens. You can’t look at the Mets from a fall of 1971 perspective and say they are preparing to make the biggest blunder in club history by trading Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi. You also couldn’t have known that the September 30 season finale against the Cardinals, Tom Seaver’s 20th win, would be the last game ever managed by Gil Hodges (339-309 record for the Mets, 660-753 overall). But the 42,344 at Shea can say they were there for history, even if they didn’t recognize it when they were watching it. History sometimes comes at you funny. The end came for many in 1971. Rolls Royce went bankrupt, The Ed Sullivan Show went off the air after 1,068 Sunday night installments over 23 years, the Fillmore East closed, Jim Morrison of the Doors was found dead in a bathtub in Paris, Duane Allman fatally hit a truck with his motorcycle, Louis Armstrong and Walt Disney died more conventionally, and a casino in Montreux, Switzerland met its Waterloo during a Frank Zappa concert when “some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground.” The Swiss casino would earn enduring fame in Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” and be rebuilt, while Rolls Royce would be nationalized in England. Everyone else wasn’t so lucky. 1971: A Change of Fortune Tom Seaver might well have been at his absolute peak in 1971. His 1.76 ERA was a career best as were his 289 strikeouts. Both figures also led the league. If they’d been keeping track of numbers like Wins Above Replacement (9.2), WHIP (.946), adjusted ERA (143), adjusted pitching runs (54), and a few other nontraditional numbers, Seaver would have been the clear-cut 1971 Cy Young winner. But most voters back then had one deciding criteria: wins. Fergie Jenkins had 24 for the Cubs and Seaver had 20 for the Mets. The vote wasn’t even close. Houston’s Don Wilson, who was up there with Seaver in many known and unknown categories, didn’t even get a Cy Young vote due to his paltry 16 wins. To be fair to Fergie, he did tie Tom Terrific in pitcher WAR and made four more starts. So whereas the Mets tried to protect Seaver and pitched him on three days’ rest only twice, Leo Durocher did it 21 times with Jenkins—yet that probably got Fergie his lone Cy Young. But both the Mets and Cubs never had a shot at anything more than individual awards. Roberto Clemente owned 1971. He hit an opposite-field home run in that year’s All-Star Game at Tiger Stadium…with his back foot in the air. He hit .341…and that was his lowest average in three seasons. He also led the way in overdue changes in the staid game—it was no coincidence that the first “all-black” lineup in history on September 1, 1971, was in Pittsburgh, or that Clemente was batting third. The harmony on that club carried over into October, when the Pirates beat the Giants in the NLCS with Clemente hitting .333. It culminated in his epic World Series against favored Baltimore, batting .414 and making a perfect spin and throw from right field that is one of The Great One’s best-remembered plays. Watching the maestro’s performance from New York was aggravating, however. The Mets, who had been 16 games over .500 and within spitting distance of the Bucs, lost 11 of 12 heading into the All-Star break and were never again within 10 games of the Pirates. Gil Hodges was back smoking. Nolan Ryan, after a great start, was moping and wild, setting what still stands as the club record with 116 walks. Now two seasons removed from their remarkable run, the clock was ticking on the Mets. Loudly. Art Shamsky was traded when the season ended. Donn Clendenon had nothing left. Neither did Ron Taylor. Al Weis had been cut in July. The heroes were being consigned to the past. It was inevitable but it still felt too soon…though a historian can tell you in hindsight that none of these players were productive post-Mets. And while you didn’t need to be clairvoyant to see things were changing at Shea, you did need a crystal ball to see the what the changed landscape looked like through the smoke on the water. |
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June 14, 2010 A Case for the Crabs Nice to see that Dillweed Millwood showed his true form. Battered by the Mets Sunday, he's 0-8 now...yet his name came up as a potential future Met (ugh!). And while I could get on Yankees fans for their attitude about not enjoying sweeping the Orioles, now that it's over I've got say I actually feel badly for that Baltimore crew. Not the team. Peter Angelos can take a flying leap, but he won't take one out of town because he makes money off both the Nationals and O's thanks to his 2005 arrangement to let Washington re-enter the majors. I feel bad for the Baltimoreans, always proud of their team back when I went to school with many of them back in the 1980s. And they were right proud of their ballpark when I made annual treks to Camden Yards to visit friends and eat the best crabs in the world in the 1990s. I don't think there's a better ballpark built in the last century than Camden--Jason Fry will back me up on that--yet the place is now completely dead unless a team that "travels well" is in town and fills it with fans rooting against the home club. If the Orioles are actually thinking of hiring Bobby Valentine, ask a Mets fan--or a Chiba Lotte Marines fan--how quickly he can turn a team around. Regardless of who owns the team. |
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June 9, 2010 Let the Big Dog Eat Sometimes you have to step away from the long view and see what's right here in front of us. The lead-in hype surrounding the Stephen Strasburg Show was unlike anything I'd seen for a major league debut. I recall watching Strawberry's debut on TV at a keg party in high school, covering my eyes and ears for Hideki Irabu's first game in the U.S., and making sure my six-year-old son sat next to me in the Shea basement seats to watch Ike Davis's first AB just a few weeks ago ("Can I go watch cartoons now?"). Because of the boy's Coach Pitch game, I only saw Strasburg pitch three of his seven debut innings. I think one batter put a ball in play and there were a few foul balls. It reminded me of a TV glimpse at another rookie a dozen years ago. Kerry Wood pitching his fifth major league game as I watched at the bar/restaurant at the Rose Bowl Golf Course. (It's near my sister's former home in Glendale--as in Casey Stengel's latter years hometown--and the muni course is used for parking for the "Granddaddy of Them All.") So I'm eating lunch by myself and the Cubs game's on WGN and Wood's pitching, well, like Strasburg in his debut. Insert the Astros for the Pirates or some uninteresting NL Central club, change night to day, and leave the rookie in for another two innings and 14 strikeouts might become 20. Or at least Tom Seaver's 10 straight strikeout record from 1970 is in real danger. Jim Riggleman managed the phenom in both 1998 and 2010. Wood had a one-hitter, no walks, one HBP, and the NL-record 20 Ks, but it wasn't his debut. So maybe Riggleman's latest gets the overall edge when it comes to out-of-market games knocking my socks off. I think the Nationals are going to be more careful with this guy than the Cubs were with Wood, who has only once surpassed his '98 Rookie of the Year total of 14 wins or 233 strikeouts. Better Riggleman at the helm than Joe Girardi. The Yankees skipper would probably have removed the kid after five innings and 50-something pitches to personally rub baby oil on his arm, denying the kid a win, denying the fans at Nats Stadium the thrill of Strasburg's debut the same week they found out Washington had a major league baseball club, denying super-psyched Bob Costas the chance to finally go deep in a big game after so many years between real announcing gigs, and it would have denied us sitting at home clicking back and forth between D.C. and Flushing. Because that's what great pitching can do. It takes control of the game...and the clicker. Glad to see it back after so many years of hibernation/steroid nation. If Strasburg is the puppy with the perfect AKC pedigree, Mike Pelfrey is the full-grown dog that's suddenly become the best pet you ever remember having. No more licking everything or wetting in odd spots. Just a good dog at your elbow, eyes smiling at you when you say something witty in an otherwise empty room. And that tail wagging when the tike Ike Davis goes yard to win a game. Not quite the pedigree of Strasburg or this Mike Stanton--the wunderkind Marlins outfielder, not the reliever who was oh, so super as a Yankee and oh, so sucky as a Met--but I like Ike, even if his hype doesn't require round-the-clock coverage. I'm glad the Mets brought him home. No house breaking needed. Now give that dog a bone. Kevin Millwood Meet Bart Simpson In other news…The Orioles fired Dave Trembley recently after a 15-39 start. It was the least they could do after Mike Francessa and other sensitive Yankees fans complained how sweeping the O’s wasn’t even fun any more. (And they wonder why they’re hated from Chesapeake Bay to Prudhoe Bay and all points in between where souls are still intact.) But O’s starter Kevin Milwood, a hater of New York and New Yorkers before Braves teammate John Rocker made it a crime, had a line straight out of The Simpsons season three. Bart Simpson, after seeing Miss Krabappel crying after she’s been stood up on her dream date with a nonexistent guy he created out of spite from a picture of young Gordie Howe, said lamentably: “I can’t help but feel partially responsible.” Kevin Millwood, after his 0-6 (now 0-7) record--not to mention $10 million salary--helped pitch Monsieur Trembley over the side in B’mur: “In some ways, we have to feel somewhat responsible.” Way to take a stand, Dillweed. And I hope someone reminds the Ike Mets that new O's manager Juan Samuel still owes the blue and orange after costing the Mets Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell in 1989. Relevance after 21 years? A trade that bad never fades. |
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Back With More Stuff Thanks to the Mets and Josh Williams at Triumph Books the phone is ringing. Here’s a trio of tri-state events coming right up:
And for those of you who might have missed it, we have downloads of my appearance with John Vorperian on Beyond the Game, my talk with noted author and commentator Curt Smith on Perspectives on NPR in Rochester, and an interview on “The Happy Recap.” It took a while getting it all collected, but if the Mets can’t guarantee instant gratification, then neither can I. |
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June 2, 2010 We’d all like to go out on top. But that requires quitting—or dying—right at that moment when we have reached the pinnacle. The band The Band tried to quit in 1976 at their peak. After The Last Waltz, Robbie Robertson never went back to The Band. The others couldn’t resist. There’s too much left on the table to stay silent the rest of your life when everything you’ve done up to that point is please people and make money doing it. And there’s too much heart left in Levon Helm to stay quiet forever. So what does this have to do with the Mets, you ask? Well in my little year-by-year recap of the Mets experience, 1970 was an encore that couldn’t possibly match the show that preceded it. A baseball team has no choice but to return to the stage. Even if you’re a perennial doormat, you’ve got to come out the next spring and try to make it to the top. Well, the ’69 Mets did just that. The ’70 Mets had to try to follow up their own act with a better one. 1970: Foyled The 1970 Mets were the most prolific offensive team in Mets history to that point. The Mets compiled their highest average ever (.249!), while recording the most runs (695), hits (1,358), doubles (211), triples (42), RBIs (640), walks (684), and stolen bases (118). You know one area where they didn’t set a record? Luck. You might say they’d already used up a few years’ supply the previous fall. Personnel-wise, the 1970 Mets were the same at almost every key spot as in 1969. The exception: Joe Foy. The Mets acquired Foy for Amos Otis plus pitcher Bob Johnson, later peddled to Pittsburgh for Fred Patek. One of the few mistakes of 1969 was trying to shoehorn Otis into third base because there was a need at that position. Otis, for his part, didn’t like third base and made a half-hearted attempt to improve at the position because he knew his future was as a center fielder. The Mets sent him to the minors in June 1969, noting his attitude. Come December the Mets had just won the World Series with outfielders Ron Swoboda and Tommie Agee making three of the most memorable catches in World Series history, and they had come through in crucial at bats in both the regular season and postseason. Neither man was likely to be displaced by Otis in 1970. But third baseman Ed Charles had been released shortly after the World Series triumph and the Mets didn’t think much of returning third baseman Wayne Garrett, who had excelled at key moments as a rookie in ’69, despite his numbers: .218/.290/.268. So with no chance of making Otis a third baseman, the Mets traded him in for one. The Mets got Foy, the third baseman on the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox pennant winners in 1967. He hadn’t gotten along with Boston manager Dick Williams and thus was made available for the expansion draft of 1969. He had a great year for the first-year Royals: .262/.354/.370, plus 37 steals—almost half the total of the ’69 Mets. Foy returned to his native Bronx after the trade and the habits that had annoyed Williams in Boston grew worse. More than once he showed up for games at Shea seemingly under the influence of drugs, which doesn’t win a lot of friends in any dugout—especially a tight-knit group under Gil Hodges’s tight reign. Foy was left unprotected in the offseason and picked up by the Senators, where his erratic play cheesed off another manager named Williams—Ted. Foy’s career was done by ’71. Otis, meanwhile became one of the most underrated stars of the 1970s—think Edgardo Alfonzo with speed to burn—and A.O. helped the Royals win five division titles over an eight-year span. That’s as many division titles as the Mets have won in franchise history. You can blame the trade on 1969 Mets GM Johnny Murphy, but he died a month after making the deal. Taking over his job was Bob Scheffing instead of future Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog. But Whitey, the Mets head of personnel at the time, had a problem with M. Donald Grant. He wanted him the Mets board chairman to shut his mouth about baseball matters because he didn’t know diddley (though we did give Grant his share of the credit for bringing in Gil Hodges after the 1967 season). Grant’s response to Herzog was to punish us all by not hiring the right man for the job and pushing Scheffing to take the job when all he wanted to do was stay in his Arizona home and golf every day. Was bypassing Herzog a worse decision than trading Otis for Foy? Sitting her in hindsight central, I’m going to take Otis over the man who managed the Royals to three of those aforementioned division titles. Herzog did, however, caution the Mets against making the Otis trade in December 1969, so it is possible the Mets could have had both. What wasn’t possible was borrowing on the luck of 1969. The 1970 Mets had several great performances: the normally fragile Bud Harrelson tied a franchise record by playing 157 games, Donn Clendenon set the team RBI mark with 97, and leadoff man Tommie Agee established club records with 107 runs and 182 hits while swatting 24 homers, batting .286, and becoming the first 30-steal Met. At a time when offense was slowly rising overall, the Mets led the league with a 3.45 ERA and Tom Seaver topped the charts in ERA (2.82) and strikeouts (283). So what was the deal with the 1970 Mets? Well, they say you can’t win them all…and those Mets didn’t. The Pythagorean theory for baseball teams, which measures how many wins a team should have based on runs scored and allowed, has the 1970 Mets with 88 wins, the same number of wins under the formula as the division-winning Pirates. Yet the reality of the situation was the Mets actually won just 83 games while the Bucs had 89 victories. The previous year the Mets were eight games better than their Pythagorean projection. It was a bit of a culture shock for Mets fans, this having a good team but not a championship club. It had never happened before to the Mets. As Monty Burns so accurately told a feted and flabbergasted Homer Simpson: “It’s not all hams and plaques.” Ah, yes Smithers. It’s not all Miracles, either. |
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May 21, 2010 Why 1969? This is probably the trickiest of these yearly essays for me. There’s so much to say and, to be honest, I’ve said it all already and not long ago. The Miracle Has Landed, which I edited with Ken Samelson on a volunteer basis for the Society of American Baseball Research, was something I spent months working on, editing dozens of other fine writers’ work, writing several essays myself, contacting numerous people about images, and creating reams of sidebar items. If I started writing now about what happened with that team, I literally could go on all day. If you’re really interested in learning or reliving what happened in 1969, I suggest you get the book. A great Father’s Day gift, in case I’m too subtle. While doing a little promotion for the book, it was Amazin’—no, different word—inconceivable how many times I was asked, “Why should people today care about the 1969 Mets?” So rather than go over iconic moments, like the Imperfect Game, The Black Cat, Pitchers Drive in the Only Runs in a Doubleheader Sweep, Swoboda’s Two Homers in Carlton’s 19-K Game, Agee’s Catches, Swoboda’s Dive, J.C. Martin’s Wrist, The Shoe Polish Incident, Al Weis’s Home Run, and Cleon Genuflecting…I’m going to address the class on this basic principle. And if the whole class can’t give me a sentence on the details of each of the above pieces of Mets history, the whole class is staying inside for recess. The Mets Aren’t The Mets Without 1969 If the Mets don’t turn it all around in 1969 after seven dreadful seasons, the Mets are the expansion Washington Senators—the team they stole Gil Hodges from, and who were so blah that they moved to Texas barely a decade after they were formed. Without ’69, the Mets are the Astros, a perfectly decent franchise, but even at their best they are just sort of there. It took the herculean exploits of a cheating Rocket to get them to a World Series…and then they got swept by a team that hadn’t won a title since World War I. The Tampa Bay Rays? OK, they’ve got some excellent players, but a team that’s less popular than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Come on. Same with the Padres and Chargers. And many others. New York loves its baseball. Always has. The Mets fell into that tradition and that love without having to earn it like other franchises. The worst team of the 20th century created more fans in 1962 than if they just lost your usual expansion 100. But if there’s no Miracle of ’69, no brass ring to hold and show off, what exactly is there to sustain even New Yorkers through the leanest of lean times from 1977 to 1983? There has to be something to believe to have a “Ya Gotta Believe.” The ’69 Mets were a confluence of superb scouting, skilled drafting, shrewd trading, and lots of luck. Many of the ’69 Mets—many of whom were so young then that they are still just in their mid-60s four decades after the fact—don’t like the “Miracle” tag because they felt theirs was a truly skilled ballclub. And it was. Their pitching was absolutely superb, even at a time when pitching was far more dominant than today a 2.99 ERA, 51 complete games, and 100 wins gets the job done. Their hitting, even in that era, was anemic: a .242 team average with a host of players who never had a decent offensive year in their careers. But when a hit was needed during their staggering 41 one-run wins, someone would get that doinker, that shot up the middle, that surprise dinger just clearing the wall, that high fly Cub Don Young lost in the sun at Shea in July. If Casey Stengel hadn’t appropriated the term Amazin’ during the team’s earliest failures, it would have had to be concocted for the club’s greatest successes. And those came in ’69. One more thing before I dismiss the class for the day. I didn’t see a single moment of it happen. I was four years old. I recall the moon landing that summer and some antics with my siblings and dog, but nothing Mets related. And the family was actually into the Mets that year, later passing down gently used items like wool Mets uniforms, which I quickly tore through, and The Miracle Mets record, which I still have. That LP had all the 1969 radio calls (both live and recreated). I came across that in my brothers’ not-good-enough-to-bring-to-college record stack with the likes of Sweet, Brewer & Shipley, and the single-free albums of some better-known bands. I put Miracle Mets on the high-fi for the first time when I was 12 or 13 and just sat staring at the wall trying to take it all in. I got up, flipped it over on the turntable, and listened to the second side. Getting on board with the Mets in 1975, long after my siblings had found other avenues for their devotion, the 1969 season was the primer history you learned from Profs Lindsey, Bob, and Ralph. But 1973 was a close second. That was a year I also missed out on, but WOR cranked that ’73 World Series highlight film on TV the second the tarp hit the field on a rain delay. There are many younger Mets fans for whom ’86 is just something they’ve heard about. You pretty much have to be 30 or older to have really experienced that team. And what a team that was. But it wasn’t ’69. The 1986 Mets were the opposites: an arrogant bunch that pounded every team into submission with their bats—or fists—and won their championship because of last at bat rallies in two sixth games. (You think they beat Mike Scott in a Game 7 if they don’t come back in the ninth in Game 6 and hold on for dear life in the 16th?) I love the ’86 team. They are the only championship I saw with my own eyes. But 1969 is what made the Mets different, unique. The Mets were the first expansion team to win anything. It was seven years after the Amazin’ Mets until another expansion team got into the postseason (the Royals), and 16 years before an expansion team won a World Series (the Royals again!). The ’69 Mets are the patron saint of expansion teams. The fact that they existed got people like me through the Mets dark ages, throwing pretend pitches left-handed and jumping up and down in celebration of a world championship I could only imagine. I always knew it would be a left-hander who’d get that final out. Oh, yes, I love Jesse Orosco, but I love Jerry Koosman, who got that first championship, even more. Tug McGraw, too. They are the ones that relayed the signs to my heart that there was hope. That we are giving so much time to this blue and orange mess for a reason. That it will not be in vain. That there is a Miracle out there for us all. That you don’t find a pearl in the first oyster you open. Class dismissed. No homework. |
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May 14, 2010 When people think of 1968, it often feels like a downer. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed. Riots touched off in cities across the country. The Tet Offensive stunned American forces throughout Vietnam, an Eddie Adams photograph of the assassination of a Viet Cong officer shocked those watching at home, and the My Lai massacre, which came to the fore a year after it happened, made people further question why we were in Southeast Asia at all. Armies from four Warsaw Pact nations hammered communism home in Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Prague Spring liberal reforms. Richard Nixon was elected President of the United States over Hubert Humphrey after Lyndon Johnson had famously refused to run. It all sounds too weighty now to consider that anything of a lighthearted nature happened then. But if we just looked at the list of heavy headlines, nothing fun would ever happen. Imagine if you just concentrated on the weighty issues of the first five months of this year, it would seem like we never were able to smile at anything. “Tune in, turn on, drop out”…that was also ’68—it was ’67 actually, but if you’re using a phrase from Timothy Leary (not the Mets pitcher by the same name with the fragile elbow), who wants to quibble about a few months, man. Think about Hot Wheels cars, a treasure for kids for four decades, being introduced in 1968. So was 60 Minutes. The Big Mac clogged its first artery that year. Planet of the Apes and The Odd Couple—two films that later launched obsessions for me—were released that year. There were more launches than just films that year: Apollo 7 and 8 took American astronauts into space for the first time and gave mankind its first view of the earth from afar while also glimpsing the dark side of the moon. “There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark.” That line beamed down five years after 1968, but there was plenty to see and feel and experience the year Mr. Rogers joined the neighborhood. Can you say 1968 was fun, Mets fan? Hmmm? I knew that you could. 1968: Here’s Gil Don’t mean to be dramatic because I’m just stating a fact: There is no more important person in the history of Mets management than Gil Hodges. That includes managers, team presidents, VPs, GMs, player development heads, PR flunkies, trainers, interns, anybody. Before Gil Hodges arrived in New York as manager around Thanksgiving 1967, the Mets were an utter laughingstock with little promise of change. M. Donald Grant was a mean-spirited old man who liked to sing all the verses of “Jimmy Crack Corn” for amusement at parties. He liked calling ballplayers “his boys,” which only increased the “plantation” feel that many Mets—especially African Americans—felt exuded from the chairman of the board. But it was Grant who made getting Gil Hodges a priority, who dispatched assistant GM Johnny Murphy to pow wow with his old Yankees roomie George Selkirk for as long as it took to hammer out an agreement. The Senators didn’t want Hodges to leave. He was doing a great job and Washington, a 1961 AL expansion team, had improved far more than the Mets, who had just lost 100 games for the fifth time in six years. According to Mets beat reporter Jack Lang, Grant was also under the deluded impression that since the Mets had traded Hodges to Washington at the end of his playing career in 1963 to become manager, that he was essentially “on loan” and should be returned to New York when the Mets desired. However it happened, Grant decided that it was Hodges or bust. The Mets sent the Senators a warm body (Bill Denehy) and a pile or cold cash ($100,000). Then Grant renegotiated Hodges’s contract. (You might want to make a mental note because this will be the only context in which I will ever credit M. Donald Grant with doing the right thing.) Already adored in New York for his leading role as first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s, Hodges was a guiding hand for the whole organization. Think of Buck Showalter in Arizona when that team came along 30 years later, only without a color palate to determine the exact shade of Diamondbacks purple. When Mets GM Bing Devine abruptly left to return to his hometown—and world champion—Cardinals that winter, Murphy, having bagged Grant’s man in Washington, was appointed general manager. Hodges was quiet, but the ex-Marine sergeant, who’d earned a battle star in the Pacific, was forceful. He pushed to trade veterans Tommy Davis and Jack Fisher—plus two minor leaguers—to bring in Tommie Agee and Al Weis, both of whom had poor season in 1967 but who both live on in Mets lore for their 1969 exploits. Hodges took rookie Jerry Koosman, put him in the rotation, and never took him out. Why should he have? Koosman won 19 games for a team that won exactly 40 times all year when Gil was a ’62 Met. One thing Gil could not do was pick up a bat. Lord knows he must have wanted to since the ’68 Mets were the worst hitting team in the “Year of the Pitcher.” The Mets were shut out 22 times that year. Lucky for the Hodges he had a staff of Seaver, Koosman, Cardwell, Ryan, and little old favorite Al Jackson thrown in. They shut out opponents 25 times and limited opponents to a league-low .230 average. Hodges had a solid command structure as well. He’d brought his Washington coaching staff with him (though Yogi Berra, already with the Mets—and passed up as manager—remained as first base coach). Joe Pignatano worked with the relievers in the pen and Eddie Yost expertly manned the third base coaches box, but the most important D.C. import was Rube Walker. He came up with the five-man rotation to protect the young Mets arms, bringing innovation and expertise to a staff that a couple of years earlier had been among the worst in baseball. Now let’s get this straight—it wasn’t all Gil and Rube. If they don’t have a stable of young talent coming up from the minor leagues, well, I don’t know what kind of tale we’d be telling about this or any other Mets team. But what I do know is that the change in success, attitude, and luck began in 1968. And then the manager almost died before the season was over. The final week of the ’68 season, those following the Mets were preoccupied with whether the Mets would avoid 90 losses and last place. (They did both.) Then during a game in Atlanta, Hodges told Walker that he wasn’t feeling well and was going to lie down. Walker, who’d played with Hodges in Brooklyn and served as his right-hand man in two different stops, immediately knew something was wrong. Gil Hodges did not nap during games, no matter how he was feeling. The Mets clubhouse was quickly on high alert and Hodges was in the hospital. He’d suffered a heart attack. Hodges stayed in that same Atlanta hospital for several weeks and it wasn’t known for some time whether he would even be able to manage in 1969. Obviously, he did. Thank God, he did. Hodges exuded respect from his men—not everyone appreciated his methods—but fortunately the best players the Mets had then—Seaver, Koosman, Ryan, McGraw, and Harrelson—were all in the military, often having to leave the team during the season to fufill obligations in training or maneuvers. They got Gil’s message and imparted it on the field. They thrived on his hard-work-will-pay-off attitude. When a strike briefly halted the early part of 1969 spring training, “Camp Seaver” sprung up in St. Petersburg and the 24-year-old ace took charge of getting the team in shape. Not every team did that. How does Gil Hodges have any relevance for Mets fans of today? Every fan who signed on for a life of servitude as a follower of the Mets from 1970 forward was handed one or two chits, depending on age. Those championship chits from ’69 and ’86 come for just being in the right line. (Like a complimentary Sports Illustrated football wall clock and fleece blanket with your favorite team’s logo stitched on the side…yours just for ordering!) That first chit was on Gil Hodges’s watch. Ask fans of Gil’s old club, Washington, now Texas, how many chits they got for signing on to back that franchise. Or Houston, San Diego, Montreal/Washington, Milwaukee, Seattle, Colorado, or Tampa Bay. They don’t know chit from shineola. You’ve got two chits. Hold them tight. It’s a long line. Mets Police has an interview with me for the paperback version of 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die. Good fun being in the tank with Shannon Shark. He sued the Marlins and they had to change the name of the stadium for the 128th time: from Landshark to SunLife. Apparently, he has a brother named Land. If you believe that, The Apple has more on this breaking story. |
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May 13, 2010 This, That, and the Other Thing I’ve had some stuff sitting on my plate for a while. Here’s to dusting it off.
The photo you see is a shrine I came across at Half Moon Books on North Front Street in Kingston, New York’s first state capital (until the British took a torch to the city). This shop window is a beacon in sea of Mets ambivalence near my residence. Among their great collection of vintage reading material, my books are sold there at a discounted rate. And Carl at the desk can go toe to toe with anyone in terms of Mets knowledge. Saux Sightings Some of you may be aware that the third installment of By the Numbers came out this year for the Red Sox. In my car radio flipping the other day I heard Michael Kay-hole insist that all New York sports fans—including Mets enthusiasts—hated all things Boston, including Mets-Red Sox. Sorry, Monsieur Yankee. As you may have read here previously, save for a two-week long war in 1986, I’ve never had a problem with the Sox. I even lived in Massachusetts in the period not long after the ’86 Series and had few problems. Sure, the Bay State is not generally fond of New Yorkers—thinking us all spies of Steinbrenner—but a Mets license plate holder tells the Mass.es that you’re clean of heart. As the saying goes, some of my best friends are Sox fans and I would probably be in their number if I’d first stumbled on baseball in the fall 1975 instead of spring of that same year. And Mets-Red Sox is one of the few interleague matchups that is actually intriguing. So why are those two not playing this year? Bill Nowlin and I have gotten several kind mentions for Red Sox by the Numbers. Thanks to ESPN Boston, Fenway West, Sox vs. Stripes, Boston Red Thoughts, The Mighty Quinn Media Machine, and Boston Irish, among others. And if you know a Sox fan—and who doesn’t?—let them know about the book. I don’t want to tell anyone what to do—as if!—but even Homer Simpson had a change of heart about withholding southpaw recommendations for The Leftorium. Hi diddley ho Soxerinos. Mmmmmmmmm…TV Since network television has cancelled all my favorite shows through the years, I’ve found other outlets for my substantial idiot box time. Sweeps months has already been a gold mine. If you’ve missed The Pacific on HBO, scout out your library, Netflix, or Leftorium’s dinosaur cousin—ye olde video shoppe—and bring that home as soon as it becomes available. Homicide veteran John Seda is remarkable as American hero John Basilone. No matter how many veterans are left on this earth or how long ago these deeds occurred, we can never appreciate enough what men of that ilk did so we can sit in front of computers in cardigans and whine away about our niche concerns. And PBS has made me proud I have a moldy totebag from them…somewhere underneath several similar bags bearing the logos of Mets sponsors. Besides doing the dirty work of educating my kids in 25-minute segments (I’m forever indebted to Martha Speaks and Word Girl for broadening vocabulary and Cyberchase for sparking interest in math), WNET has been picking up the big hits the Mets have been lacking. In one week WNET broadcast a Willem Dafoe narrated special on the history of whaling, which actually had me longing for three hours of English seminar class; The Doors documentary, narrated by Johnny Depp (where exactly was the Singer Bowl in Flushing?); and the return of Foyle’s War, my favorite British import since Benny Hill and The Who. |
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Three Dates, Three States Because my kids are starting baseball/softball and there’s a lot of practices and games to shuttle younguns to, I’m doing few spring appearances. With that said I have a handful of things going on in the next little bit if you happen to be in these areas: Thursday, May 13, at 7:20 a.m.—WDRC 102.9 FM, “Brad Davis Show” (Hartford, CT). Friday, May 14, at 9:30 a.m.—WLNA 1420 AM, “Good Morning Hudson Valley” (Peekskill, NY). In Person: (This is where you “oooh” and “aaah.”) My annual humanitarian mission to South Jersey for those unfortunate Mets fans living within spitting distance of Lower Obnoxious, PA, aka Philadelphia: Tuesday, June 1 @ 7 p.m., Ocean County Library, Manchester Branch (21 Colonial Dr, Manchester, NJ 08759). Mets play at 10 p.m. in San Diego that night so it will only interfere with Beer Money reruns. |
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May 7, 2010 Music to My Ears When I think of 1967, the first thing I remember from that time is…nothing. I was two years old. I’ll bet I was watching Underdog reruns on our black-and-white set, eating paint chips perhaps, but, I’m afraid, nothing much baseball related. But whatever was going on, the tunes were fab. Wa-doom! Sgt. Pepper from The Beatles, and debut LPs from Jimi Hendrix, Traffic, Pink Floyd, The Doors… Me? I was listening to Petula Clark’s “Downtown” or The Association’s bouncy “Windy” on my sister’s transistor radio and doing what it is kids do when they are the drunk with the lampshade on. No matter what they do, they’ll have no memory of it later. Hey man, it was the ’60s. As time goes on, one looks back and realizes that that “Summer of Love,” as many called it, I’m told, was quite a time to be around, even if you don’t recall it. If you were a Red Sox fan, it was sort of like their version of the Mets’ 1973, where you won on the last day to get in the postseason and had everything except a Game 7 win to make it perfect. The ’67 Mets endured what would be their last 100-loss season for 26 years. You see, they had this kid named Seaver. Last week I waxed poetic on Tom Seaver’s 1966 selection from a hat after the Braves botched his signing. This time I’m looking at his rookie season. I’m even going to cheat. In an encore performance, here’s the chapter on Tom’s first Terrific year from Mets Essential. I cut out the first part that reiterates what I wrote last time about 1966. I did, however, leave in some of the filler bits at the end. Why back to back pieces on Seaver in my weekly recaps of every year in Mets history? Why the hell not? Even when I was two, Seaver could always “Light My Fire.” 1967: Stumbling on the Franchise From Mets Essential (2007, Triumph Books) In his third career start, Tom Seaver took a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth at Wrigley Field. An error by Bud Harrelson tied the score, but Seaver got out of the inning, led off the 10th with a single, and came around to score on a hit by Al Luplow. He retired the Cubs in order in the 10th, throwing just 111 pitches for the first of his 231 career complete games (171 as a Met). The team was still bad, but the confident 22-year-old didn’t want to hear any laugh-out-loud tales about finding new ways to lose. To Seaver, there was nothing funny about it. “There was an aura of defeatism and I refused to accept it,” Seaver later said. “Maybe some of the others started to feel how I felt because I noticed that the team started to play better behind me than it did for any other pitcher.” Seaver’s 16 wins and 2.76 ERA as a 22-year-old rookie was by far the best season of anyone to that point in franchise history. Best of all, Seaver was durable. In the days when managers often confused pitch count with pitch out and completing games was a matter of course, Seaver didn’t exit a game without a good reason. He started 34 times as a rookie and completed 18, logging 251 innings. It was the first of 10 straight years as a Met he threw 200 or more innings. His 170 strikeouts as a rookie marked the only year in that period in which he didn’t fan at least 200 batters. He also pitched the final inning of the longest All-Star Game in history, tossing a scoreless 15th in a 1-0 National League victory in Anaheim. He struck out Ken Berry to end the game. The other players in the NL clubhouse were impressed with this rookie, who was the first Mets pitcher to be invited to the All-Star Game and probably the first hurler the club ever had who earned more respect than sympathy. Seaver easily claimed National League Rookie of the Year despite playing on the team with the worst record in baseball. Seaver worked beautifully with catcher Jerry Grote. The Mets had picked up the reticent backstop from the Astros in 1966 for Tom Parsons, who’d gone 1-10 in his lone full season in New York and never pitched for Houston. Grote batted just .195 in 1967, but for the first time in a pitcher-friendly decade the Mets pulled their ERA under 4.00. So they let Grote catch 120 games, even with his paltry hitting. His batting would improve and, more importantly, the pitching staff started to blossom. Almost everyone seemed to pitch well to Grote. It may have been his soft hands and drill sergeant demeanor behind the plate, and it may have been that they were good pitchers working in a tough park to hit in. All they had to do was ask Grote about that last point. To the shock of the National League, facing the Mets was starting to become a chore, although opponents still usually left with a victory. Don Cardwell, a 31-year-old veteran with a high ERA, came to the Mets in 1967 and lowered his ERA to 3.57; his ERA would go down each of the next two years. Relief specialist Ron Taylor, a veteran of the 1964 world champion Cardinals, came to the Mets in ’67 and produced the lowest ERA of his career at 2.34. Bullpen mate Cal Koonce, after middling results as a Cub, was purchased from Chicago in August and his improvement was immediate. The significance of both Taylor and Koonce would grow over the coming seasons. Jerry Koosman, who debuted in 1967, would better Seaver’s first-year numbers in 1968, but he’d lose the NL Rookie of the Year trophy by one vote to a revolutionary catcher from Cincinnati named Johnny Bench. Yet for all this, Mets baseball in the 1967 “Summer of Love” was about falling for Tom Seaver. Bing Devine and the Mets had gambled on the rookie and they’d hit the lottery, literally. He even outlasted his manager. Wes Westrum resigned in September and let Salty Parker absorb the team’s 100th defeat, a 3-0 loss by Seaver against Claude Osteen and the Dodgers. It might have seemed like yet another brutal season in the standings for the sad-sack Mets, but this time there was actually something there: The Franchise. Seaver would dominate the club’s record book as well as National League opponents over the next decade. He won the Cy Young Award in 1969, 1973, and 1975, the first right-hander to win three Cy Youngs in either league. Seaver somehow finished second to Ferguson Jenkins in 1971 despite winning 20 games and leading the NL with 289 strikeouts; his 1.76 ERA was a full run lower than the Cubs hurler, who allowed the most hits and home runs but the baseball writers salivated over Fergie’s 24 wins. (Seaver the Red would likewise be robbed of the Cy Young in 1981 because of voters’ infatuation with Fernando Valenzuela.) Seaver finished second in NL MVP voting in 1969, and he remains the only Met to earn Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year. Seaver would dominate every significant pitching category in club history, become the only Mets player to have his number retired, and pontificate on all matters Mets for seven seasons as a broadcaster for the club. He generated the highest percentage vote in Hall of Fame history (98.84) when he was elected in 1992, becoming the only man wearing a Mets cap on his Cooperstown plaque. Seaver received the most votes of five Mets in the Major League Baseball’s “Hometown Heroes” promotion in 2006. Like there was ever any doubt. Yet if not for a bit of luck and a relocating club’s tardiness in handling his contract, Seaver might have done many of these feats as a Brave. Seaver did get to pitch the first ever National League Championship Series game before 50,000 in Atlanta in 1969. Of course, he did it wearing “New York” on his chest, and of course he beat them. Trivia: Who did the Mets take with the second overall pick in the first amateur draft in 1965? Did You Know: That in 1975, the year he won his third Cy Young Award, Tom Seaver became the first pitcher in baseball history to fan 200 batters for eight straight years. He extended his record to nine the next season, but the streak ended the year he was traded to Cincinnati in 1977. Trivia Answer: Did you peek at the answer? Well, Les Rohr never peaked. The Mets drafted Rohr, who’d win two games in the major leagues, as the second overall pick in the first amateur draft in 1965. The Kansas City A’s took Rick Monday with the first ever selection. Tom Seaver was taken by the Dodgers in the 10th round. Fortunately, he went to college instead. |
