I am trying to have some fun with this baseball season by looking back on how and why I became such a diehard fan. I must admit, the recent fiddling and Francouering up of the game by the suits that run it has really annoyed me. Seven-inning doubleheaders and pretend runners on second base in extra innings are minor league rules brought to the major leagues to deal with issues that could be resolved simply by increasing rosters. The DH-noDH-DH rules used in the National League between 2020-22 mock fans and treat our traditions and preferences like a game of red light/green light. It has made me take to the web searching out old games.
If not for various book projects, I have rarely watched old games all the way through. I might sneak highlights or an inning here and there, but after taking 2020 off from the Mets due to legitimate questions of whether they should have played at all during the pandemic in the half-assed configuration they threw together, I needed something to bring me back this year. So during moments of procrastination, I am looking back—an inning at a time—at games gone by.
Tom Seaver’s Weclome Back to Shea: April 5, 1983
This is one of my all-time favorite games. Three friends and I skipped high school to go my first Opening Day game. In my first eight years of being a Mets fan, this was the first time I witnessed traffic at a standstill because of the Mets. It was the largest Opening Day crowd at Shea in 15 years.
Since I was at the game, I’d never seen TV coverage of this momentum-changing game. While the 1983 Mets finished last, like the Mets of that era seemed to do almost every year, you had a feeling this time would be the last—it being the Mets, though, you could never trust that for sure. Within a year Mex, Straw Doc, and Darling would be the faces of a Mets team suddenly in hot pursuit of first place. In April 1983, however, these were just names in the back of the yearbook—and in the case of Keith Hernandez, it was impossible to imagine a hitting and fielding star of this caliber in orange and blue racing stripes.
When the four of us walked into the bright April sun in the mezzanine on April 5, 1983, the crowd was in full roar as Tom Seaver made his way to the mound. Under my baseball-sleeve shirt my arm had goosebumps. I thought I might even cry. (I read a week later in Sports Illustrated that Seaver wasn’t far from these feelings, either.)
I choked back the emotion and sucked down one of the 48,000 beers sold that day. I counted myself lucky to be at this game—and to have found a parking space.
On WOR-TV the Mets announcers were on their A-game as well. Tom Seaver had been acquired from the Reds that winter for a batch of players even more nondescript than the ones the Mets had received from the Reds for Tom Terrific five and half years earlier. On Opening Day of ’83, Seaver faced a Philadelphia team that would go on to win the NL pennant that year. I am still not sure how. The Phillies lineup was filled with players who had been starting in the majors since I was in diapers: Pete Rose and Joe Morgan, Seaver’s teammates with the Reds, were the first two batters he faced in his Mets return. Tony Perez, who’d debuted before I was born, got the first hit off the new Seaver. Gary Matthews, a dangerous bat but relative baby on the Wheeze Kids at age 32, did not get the ball out of the infield against Seaver. Mike Schmidt, who’d won two of his three MVPs by 1983, hit a pair of harmless flyballs against him.
Seaver had some tricky moments, but he allowed only three hits and a walk. Thanks to a double play and Joe Morgan getting thrown out trying to stretch a single, Seaver only pitched to two batters over the minimum in six innings. Over the same span, Carlton had even fewer issues with a Mets lineup that was punchless, even with the defending NL home run (and whiff) leader in Dave Kingman and overpaid former MVP George Foster.
It was a day for pitchers, and you had to marvel at the efficiency of these two masters. The WOR broadcast revealed that the seven Cy Youngs between Lefty and The Franchise were the most ever (to that time) by aces facing each other. Carlton’s fourth Cy Young had come just the previous season.
Pete Rose, playing right field for the first time since 1971, struck out twice to the roars of the Mets faithful—quite a few of whom surely had to suck down beer to cover the tears forming in the creases of their eyes as well. Seaver was young again—maybe not Cy Young again—but just having him there was good enough. And then he was gone.
Wally Backman batted for Seaver in the bottom of the sixth. Seaver had a left thigh issue, and no one wanted to spoil this Sports Illustrated-cover worthy return with an injury or a loss if some Phillie invariably guessed right. (There was a reason the Reds had sent the 38-year-old Franchise back to New York for a song—a 5-13 mark with career-worst 5.50 ERA and 62 strikeouts as an ’82 Red.) What you could question was George Bambergere’s knowledge of his team.
Wally Backman? Batting righty? Against one of the great lefties of all time? The switch-hitting Backman, the pride of Aloha High in Oregon, had hit .190, .190, and .094 against lefties in his first three years in the majors. He would require the patronage of his 1983 minor league manager turned 1984 Mets manager, Davey Johnson, to get another shot in the big leagues. Suffice it to say, Backman looked bad striking out against Carlton as the perplexed crowd booed the move.
Bamberger had no shortage of faith in Doug Sisk, however. And pound for pound, it was one his most successful outings as a Met. It started with groans when he went 2-0 on his first batter. Sisk was making just his ninth career appearance and he indeed walked two, but he tossed three innings and even picked up the win when head-scratching Opening Day starters Mike Howard and Brian Giles knocked in runs in the seventh.
Unbeknownst to us all, Bamburger, who was acting as his own pitching coach, would quit that job and the manager’s spot as well in less than a couple of months. (Seaver would likewise have a short Mets reunion as an arcane free agent compensation draft in January 1984 saw the Mets expose, and the White Sox take, the aging Mets icon.) But for now, Seaver was done for the day and it was full steam ahead with Sisk.
Even with Mike Schmidt representing the go-ahead run in the ninth, Bambi stayed with the rookie and the Hall of Fame slugger stayed in the park. Sisk fanned the Cooperstown-bound Perez to end it. The game gave the Mets universe a taste of the good side of the team’s roller coaster relationship with the rookie reliever. This was as good as it got.