Sponsored by Shea Stadium Remembered
Months before their miraculous 1973 rally from the dead, Jon Matlack lay motionless on the mound at Shea after being drilled by a line drive off the bat of Atlanta’s Marty Perez. Matlack took the hard-luck, 10-6 loss. He was diagnosed with a fractured skull but missed only two starts! He talked about it a couple of years back for Swinging ’73:
“I’m trying to nail down this game,” Matlack recalls. “I overthrew the next pitch. It was a fastball, and I landed really hard when I threw it. I lost sight of the ball to the plate. I could see him swing and hear the bat crack, but I don’t pick up the baseball until it’s right on top of me. I barely got the fingers of my left hand in front of my face. It hit my fingers [on the mitt], hit my cap, and it hit me just over the left eye. They tell me—I don’t know because I couldn’t see it—but it went from my forehead into the dugout. It cost me two runs and ultimately cost me the ballgame.”
The sudden tie fell to secondary importance during this frightening moment at Shea Stadium. Right fielder Rusty Staub, shaking his head at the memory of it years later, summed up his teammates’ reaction: “We were just all thrilled that he wasn’t dead.” Dee Matlack wasn’t even sure of that as the trainer came out and pulled a tarp over her prone husband’s body as the rain fell.
“They’re messing with me, and it’s raining,” he thought as catcher Jerry Grote and his teammates gathered around him. “My wife thinks I’m dead because they cover me up with a tarp.”
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Check out my piece about the great Edgardo Alfonzo at Rising Apple. When they talk about Mets I’d like to see in the team’s Hall of Fame, Edgardo Alfonzo and Howard Johnson are two names that immediately come to mind. It has it been six years since the club last inducted anyone.