Artist Tom Sarrantonio was an avid Mets fan as a teen in the late 1960s. He went off to school and lost the bug somewhat, but he does still play softball on Sundays in the Hudson Valley (sometimes with me!). His once beloved Mets books, bought and devoured in 1969 and 1970, remained for years in his beautiful artist’s studio. So he did what others have done when it is time to get rid of stuff like this: “Let’s get Matt to take them.” I gladly accepted the donation of a dozen Mets books from that era. I’ve written a few books on the team I grew up with—coming of Mets age after the glow of ’69 had dulled to something like a communicable disease in the late 1970s. One caveat: Tom expects book reports! This was one area I excelled in at school. So now I pull these books off the pile in my office in the order I originally placed them on the shelf. Keep in mind there are 100+ other unread books piled in my office. This could take some time.
The Year the Mets Lost Last Place by Paul D. Zimmerman and Dick Schaap
(New York: World Publishing, 1969: $5.95)
Back in 1976 The Year the Mets Lost Last Place was the first book on the Mets I recall getting my hands on. My mother probably found the book somewhere. Mom was always trying to get me to read—she succeeded. I have an eerie ability to recall not only what happened in Mets games many years ago but also what I was doing at the time. I have tried to use this power for good and not for evil. Hence all the Mets books under my name.
The Mets were playing the Cubs on a Friday afternoon in the summer of ’76. I was reading this book as I listened to the Mets blow out the Cubs behind Mike Phillips—my original Favorite NonPlaying Met—hitting for the cycle. (I am still furious that this game wasn’t on WOR-TV, as most Mets games from Wrigley were at the time.) The Cubs were bad, the Mets were a decent third-place team a mile behind the Phillies, and the Metties pounded the Cubs the last six times they played at Wrigley that year. That ’76 game was a good introduction to this book, which focuses on a much better Cubs team that spent much of ’69 dominating the National League East in the first year of divisional play.
The Mets, the unquestioned laughingstock of baseball from the franchise’s inception into the National League in 1962, suddenly found competency in 1969. It didn’t hurt that manager Gil Hodges had taken the Mets in hand, or that the team’s pitching staff comprised Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, a very raw Nolan Ryan, a wise-cracking Tug McGraw, and a host of lesser-known but strong arms. Jerry Grote was a rock behind the plate, the infield was adept if not overpowering, and the outfield was excellent: Cleon Jones was in the midst of a career year, Tommie Agee was never better, and right fielder and future writing partner Art Shamsky hit .300 in the cleanup spot against righties (autumn hero Ron Swoboda played right field against southpaws in the Hodges platoon system).
The Year the Mets Lost Last Place was written in the summer of ’69. The publisher felt confident that with the expansion Expos in the division the Mets wouldn’t hit bottom with a bad second half and make a liar out of World Publishing Co. Like the NL West expansion Padres, the Expos finished last and lost 110 games in ’69. Meanwhile, the Mets won 100, the first NLCS, and the World Series. A fall ’69 book release was prescient indeed.
Re-reading this book 56 years after it came out, I got the same giddy feeling I had in the summer of ’76. This tale of the heroes of ’69 was all new information to an 11-year-old kid. The book takes place over the course of “nine crucial days.” It begins with the Mets playing the Cubs on July 8, 1969—the first series of significance in team history. The Mets rallied in the ninth to win the series opener at Shea, Seaver’s Imperfect Game the next night was like a current of electricity, and Chicago took the ho-hum third game. In the next series the Mets stumbled in the opener against Montreal but scored late twice on Sunday to sweep a doubleheader at Shea from Canada’s fledgling club. The Mets traveled to Wrigley and took that series. Nine crucial days, six big wins, and a very readable book was good for basting a boy in Mets lore.
The book goes minute by minute, covering everything from the players at home, to fans, to random people, and includes drawn scorecards of each game, which in 1976 was a skill I was starting to master. Sometimes I wonder how the writers knew what occurred in the Koosman home at exactly 11:20 a.m., but poetic license is the backbone of literature. And you go with it, just like hitting to right on a hit-and-run.
It was great to recall the afternoon I curled up with a good book—my first descent into Mets lit beyond the scorecard and yearbooks I devoured along with regular helpings of the Daily News (also the first time I ever picked up a newspaper with purpose beyond cleaning dog poop). I was still reading and smiling from the Mets win and the ’76 cycle at Wrigley when my Dad came home from work that night. Since the Mets had already played that day at light-free Wrigley, I had the night free to watch whatever I wanted on TV. Yet I’m pretty sure I just kept reading The Year the Mets Lost Last Place. It certainly was worth savoring. The Mets would again find the bottom of the standings soon enough.