It’s been 50-plus years since the 1973 Mets pulled off one Amazin’ comeback in the closing weeks of the season. With 10 players still on the roster from the 1969 Miracle Mets world championship, that ’73 club had a lot of veterans who were still pretty young but had solid postseason experience. Wayne Garrett was only 25, Ken Boswell was 27, Tom Seaver, Tug McGraw, and Ed Kranepool had been in the majors for years and were still just 28. The Mets had a new bunch of young players: 1972 NL Rookie of the Year Jon Matlack and slugging first baseman John Milner were each in their second season; Don Hahn, 24, patrolled center field; catcher Ron Hodges was just a year removed from Appalachian State University; and George “The Stork” Theodore was their everyman turned everyday player due to injuries to Cleon Jones and their oldest player, the late great Willie Mays. The Mets had also added key players through trades that brought Felix Millan as double play partner for Bud Harrelson, lefty George Stone, and Rusty Staub, whose acquisition was the last move overseen by Gil Hodges.
Hodges died suddenly during spring training 1972. At just 48, the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman and Mets manager had overseen the transformation of the “Loveable Losers” to impossible dream champion in ’69. Gil’s replacement, Hall of Fame Yankee and longtime Mets coach Yogi Berra, wasn’t in the same ballpark as Gil when it came to managing, but few were. Yogi had mojo and luck seemed to follow him. He said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” about the ’73 Mets, and damned if it wasn’t true. The Mets benefited from some of the greatest breaks in baseball history to go from last to first between the end of August and the beginning of October 1973. The division was terrible, so the Mets could push their way past everyone to win the NL East and then beat the Big Red Machine to win the pennant with the worst record in history to that date (82-79); a ball destined for the bullpen bounced right into the glove of Cleon Jones and wound up in Ron Hodges’ mitt on a play at the plate known as “The Ball on the Wall”; Bud Harrelson lost the fight to Reds bully Pete Rose in the NLCS, but the Mets won the war; and injured Willie Mays retired to great fanfare but came back to play in the postseason and got game-breaking hits in both the playoffs and the World Series—though his stumbling around in center field in Oakland Coliseum remains a sorrowful image. The Mets’ luck ran out as the A’s won Games 6 and 7 at home, beating Tom Seaver and Jon Matlack. And which day the Mets should have started Seaver remains a hot topic a half century later.
I wrote about this year in my book, Swinging ’73, but of course you’ve all read that. So I know what I am talking about when I say what a thrill to help Jacob Karanrek with his new and improved version of one of my favorite Mets books—From First to Worst: The New York Mets, 1973-1977. I love this book because it goes into detail about what happened afterward as the Mets became what we sadly see so often today in the majors: an organization that just gave the frig up. To people like myself who grew up with that team, though, these guys were my heroes. Like it or not.
The first version of this book came out in 2008. Jacob has been a friend and supporter ever since then, allowing me to use pictures from his vast trove of 1970s Mets images and acting as a sounding board. He dug up even more outstanding photos for this version of the book. It’s surely not the happiest ending in Mets history, but it is a tale well told—again.
Without Gil Hodges the Mets proved to be hollow inside. Even though the team still had as good a pitching staff as just about any team in baseball, they were up and down after that remarkable pennant in 1973. And then it all went down.It did not have to happen, though. That is what makes Kanarek’s faithful reporting of the events from the sources of the day hit home. The Mets were completely unprepared for the free agency era or even the Yankees reclaiming their big kid on the block status after they moved out of Shea (their shared home in 1974-75) and into the refurbished Yankee Stadium.
The Mets had a severe letdown in 1974, but with another reliable starter, some better bullpen parts, and—for God’s sake—more hitting, the Mets could have contended to the final days of 1975. And being battle tested, they might have been able to snag another division title from the Pirates, who won every NL East crown that the Mets didn’t win from the start of divisional play in 1969 to 1975. The ’76 Mets were an entertaining team, though the Phillies ran away with the division. These bicentennial Mets were busy creating highlights that would have to carry over in the memories of Mets fans through the long hard slog that closed out the decade and did not abate until 1984 after a change in ownership and a painstakingly slow but complete rebuild.
As much as I hated growing up with these Mets in charge of making my adolescence and young adulthood good or bad, I loved these guys. They had nothing but they gave it their all. My favorite forgotten Mets come alive in Kanarek’s work: The Stork, Matlack, Mike Phillips, Dave Kingman, Joel Youngblood, Steve Henderson, and the poor, beleaguered Jerry Koosman. Kooz should have been given sainthood for going from 20-game winner to 20-game loser in one season despite losing very little effectiveness, but very many games. In his last two years as a Met Koosman went 11-35 with an ERA of 3.62 in 462 innings. Koosman even provides the foreword to From First to Worst.
Kanarek adds a lot of new material and many new and hard-to-find photos. He put a lot of work into this reboot—which I can’t say about Mets management in the late 1970s. I was thrilled to help as well, fact-checking and helping summarize sections. I loved it and Kanarek’s dedicated effort. To quote Billy Dee Williams in a 1970s epic TV movie tear-jerker known as Brian’s Song—“I’d like all of you to love him, too.” And if you’re too young to remember this movie or this Mets era that went from Miracle to Miserable, when, as Billy Dee again said, “you hit your knees tonight,” say a prayer that you could read about it in a few days instead of living it in a few lifetimes.
That was the bad time. Almost everything else I’ve lived through as a Mets fan has been tolerable by comparison. Read this book, know your Mets history, and recognize when your team actually wants to win. This book will show this world of difference.