THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (10 page)

Jerry Merz, a friend of Seaver’s who studied
physical education, recommended that Seaver lift weights to
increase his strength. Garrett lifted weights for football and
Seaver asked him to help start a regimen, which he did. Seaver’s
stocky body responded to weight training, with immediate good
results on the field. He would take his weight training routine
with him into professional baseball, influencing a change in the
perception of weights in the 1970s. Over time, all baseball players
would bulk up on weights, and eventually this led to the rampant
use of steroids.

Seaver’s casual, open relationship with
Garrett was an eye-opener for him. Despite idolizing Henry Aaron
from a young age, he had met few blacks. He had adopted the country
club racism accepted by whites of that era, probably without fully
realizing it. Charles “Tree” Young was a black track, basketball
and football star at Edison High School in Fresno a few years after
Seaver came out of Fresno High. He became an All-American tight end
on the 1972 USC football team generally considered the greatest in
history; later a star with the 1981 World Champion San Francisco
49ers before entering the Christian ministry.

“I most certainly knew all about Tom
Seaver,” Young said. “He was from Fresno, had starred at USC, and
made good with the New York Mets. But the Fresno of the 1960s was a
place where you needed to know your place.”

Young lived in the “black section” of
Fresno. It was not a segregated society, certainly not like the
South. Edison High was integrated and Young a popular
student-athlete.

“If you are good in athletics, you can go
places and do things unavailable to others,” Young said. “When I
arrived at USC, my first question was,
Where’s the blacks?
I
quickly discerned that there was double meaning in the term
Southern
California. But through sports, black brethren and
white brethren became one. It took some doing, and on our football
it did not happen overnight.”

Young was a member of the 1970 USC football
team that traveled to Birmingham and, behind running back Sam “Bam”
Cunningham defeated Alabama, thus effectuating great racial change
in the South. The Trojan team he played on, ironically, was
racially divided as a result of the playing of black quarterback
Jimmy Jones over white hotshot Mike Rae.

Young, a strong Christian, helped organize
fellowship meetings in order to bring the team together, against
some resistance. After a “revival” meeting in 1971, the 2-4 Trojans
traveled to South Bend and beat 6-0 Notre Dame. That team never
lost again, going on to an unbeaten National Championship the next
year.

The nature of USC - its conservatism and
traditions – has been credited by those who were there at the time
with allowing such a thing to freely occur. By contrast, social
angst and war protests dominated life at rival campuses
Cal-Berkeley and Stanford. According to John McKay, the supposedly
“enlightened” Stanford student body directed “the most vile, foul
racial epithets I ever heard” at his team, one in which McKay had
“provided more and greater opportunities for black athletes than
any in the nation,” when they made their way onto the Stanford
Stadium field.

A few years prior to that, Tom Seaver
brought a certain amount of white conservatism with him. After all,
his father ran a large company and he had never been exposed to
radical politics. But USC was a place where ideas could flow more
easily than at a segregated Southern campus, yet be tempered by the
kind respect for tradition that seemed to have been lost at
Berkeley. The Cal campus was allowing itself to become the
de
facto
staging grounds of American Communism in the 1960s.

In the hierarchy of Trojan sports, Mike
Garrett towered above a junior college baseball transfer like
Seaver. But as teammates they gravitated to each other, finding
their similarities more compelling than their differences. Garrett
was considered undersized, and Seaver – at least until his recent
growth spurt – had always identified himself as “the runt of our
crowd,” as Dick Selma put it. He felt only admiration for Mike, who
forged success for himself without the kinds of physical gifts of a
later Trojan superstar, O.J. Simpson.

In 1965, Seaver worked hard to make it onto
USC’s starting rotation. Oddly, it was a down year for the Trojans,
who finished 9-11, in fourth place behind conference co-champions
Stanford and California, and one game back of cross-town rival
UCLA. But Seaver was excellent, winning 10 games against only two
defeats with a 2.47 earned run average, establishing himself as the
undisputed staff ace. He was named to the all-conference team along
with Garrett and Justin Dedeaux. A major boost in his confidence
came in an alumni game when Seaver got Dodgers first baseman Ron
Fairly, a former Trojan, to pop up on a slider. As Fairly ran past
Seaver on the mound he said, “Pretty good pitch, kid.” Seaver had
retired a big league hitter, and allowed himself to dream big
league dreams (three years later in the Major Leagues, Fairly
connected on a Seaver slider for a home run).

In June 1965, the very first Major League
draft was held. Rick Monday, an All-American outfielder for
National Champion Arizona State, was the number one pick. Because
he had not gone into the Marines his first year after high school,
the sophomore Seaver’s college class was in its third year, making
him eligible for the draft. Already, the strategy behind obtaining
maximum signing bonuses meant that college juniors would get more,
since they had the bargaining leverage of returning for their
senior year. A graduated senior had to take whatever was offered
him or go home, his eligibility gone.

His favorite team, the Los Angeles Dodgers,
drafted Seaver. He and his USC pals regularly went to nearby Dodger
Stadium on his uncle’s tickets to watch the great Sandy Koufax
pitch. Scout Tom Lasorda came around to negotiate. If Seaver had
lacked any confidence before, making All-American at the National
Baseball Congress, retiring Fairly, and compiling a 10-2 mark for
Troy took care of that. Lasorda offered $2,000. Seaver came back
with $50,000, arguing that Selma had received $20,000 from the Mets
out of junior college and he was a seasoned Trojan star. Lasorda
came up to $3,000, but that was that. The tantalizing possibility
of Tom Seaver forging a career on the great Dodgers teams of the
1970s would be only that, tantalizing.

“Good luck in your dental career,” Lasorda
told him.

It was a real-world business lesson Seaver
was not going to learn in any economics class. It also meant a
return to Fairbanks in the summer of 1965. This time Seaver did not
arrive in Alaska as an unknown, dressing in a shack and introducing
himself to his catcher on the mound. There was sense of hierarchy
on the Goldpanners, and the ace pitcher at the University of
Southern California was tops on that hierarchy. It was as talented
a team as any in the country, the “all-star” concept of picking the
best collegians from around the nation making the Goldpanners
better than most college teams and probably better than a lot of
minor league clubs.

The “pitching staff was so deep and talented
– Andy Messersmith, Al Schmelz, Danny Frisella and I were the
starters . . .” recalled Seaver. As can happen when a young athlete
achieves success, a sense of overconfidence – some call it
“senioritis” – can effect his performance and often requires some
“negative feedback” in order to right the tilting ship. The
Goldpanners again made it to the NBC in Wichita, but the plethora
of talented pitchers, all vying for mound time to gain experience,
strengthen their college resumes, and of course get visibility for
the scouts, meant that Seaver’s toughest competition came on his
own team. In Wichita, “I had a chance to win only one game before
we reached the semi-finals” against the Wichita Dreamliners.

A big crowd and lots of scouts came out for
a ballyhooed match-up between the hotshot Trojan hurler and a
semi-pro outfit consisting of four recent big league performers;
Bobby Boyd, Jim Pendleton, Charlie Neal and Rod Kanehl. Neal and
Kanehl had played for the New York Mets. Neal led off the game with
a triple, Boyd added three hits, and Kanehl stole home as the
Dreamliners defeated Seaver, 6-3. Seaver probably could have
pitched around some of the ex-big leaguers but challenged them
instead, paying the price. He hated walking hitters even if it
meant giving them a pitch they could hit. After getting knocked
from the mound, Boyd approached him.

“Kid, you got a great future ahead of you,”
he told him. “You’re going to be a big league pitcher.”

Seaver felt the veteran was mocking him.
That night, Tom and some teammates went out for beers. Kanehl
joined them, repeating what Boyd had said. Fairly had expressed
admiration for his ability, too.

Maybe they’re right
.

Schmelz and Frisella both signed with the
Mets instead of returning to school. Seaver came back to Southern
Cal and immediately noticed a bevy of scouts at the “fall ball”
games. He attended a number of Dodger games that September,
focusing on Koufax as he pitched his team to the World
Championship. The consensus among the scouts was that Seaver was
one of the top young prospects in amateur baseball, and that the
Dodgers had blown it by not signing him in the summer.

While Seaver’s baseball future was
developing, so too was his personal future. In 1964 he sat in a
class at Fresno City College a few seats away from a pretty blond
named Nancy Lynn McIntyre. His smooth repartee and way with the
girls deserted him, and he never said “two words to her the entire
semester.”

At the end of the spring semester before
heading north to Alaska, Seaver and some pals blew off steam
drinking beers and playing softball when he spotted her.
Impulsively he ran towards her and, in what had to be one of the
most awkward “first dates” in history, was unable to stop himself,
ran into her, knocking her flat. He then picked her up and asked if
she wanted to go to a softball game.

“No,” she replied.

Seaver then, for all practical purposes,
kidnapped her. She endured the softball game and agreed to a second
“date” if it would be less violent. Over the next year and a half,
the relationship faced challenges with Nancy in Fresno, Tom in
Alaska for two summers and in Los Angeles going to school. She
occasionally came to visit. He saw her on vacations back to Fresno.
Their casual agreement was that they would see other people. In Los
Angeles, Tom knew that a pretty girl like Nancy would have no
trouble finding a guy. He had always been popular with girls. Dick
Selma expressed amazement at how, despite being a JV pitcher, he
dated all the best-looking girls in high school.

Now he was a “big man on campus,” best
friends of the Heisman Trophy winner, star of the baseball team,
rumored to be a bonus baby when the draft came around. Girls at USC
were plentiful and he dated his share of them. Perhaps his Marine
experience, or the up-and-down nature of baseball, had matured him
beyond his years, but for whatever reason he did not want to “play
the field” anymore. He and Nancy agreed to be exclusive, and after
some initial difficulties both realized that they wanted marriage,
a family and stability.

“Nancy and I,” he wrote in
The Perfect
Game
, “seemed . . . to realize at the same time that life
wasn’t about all parties, that we could be serious about ourselves
and about other things without being pretentious or somber.” They
both wanted to “live in a real world.”

They decided to marry, and more importantly,
never to hurt each other; easier said than done. Tom’s prospects
were certainly excellent. If baseball did not pan out, he would
have a USC degree, followed by dental school and a nice practice
back in Fresno. The only friendly glitch in the relationship was
the fact that Nancy’s father argued the merits of Notre Dame
football while Tom supported his Trojans. The Tom-Nancy partnership
would prove to be a remarkable love story.

In January, 1966 a winter draft was held.
Because of what eventually happened to Tom Seaver, the rules of the
winter draft were later changed, but despite being in school he was
selected number one by the Milwaukee Braves, who were that year in
the process of moving to Atlanta. Braves’ scout Johnny Moore, who
had seen ‘em all in Fresno, arrived at the Seaver household in a
Cadillac. When he left Tom was $51,500 richer. He was a hot young
prospect ticketed for the big leagues, where his teammate would be
the great Henry Aaron!

No sooner did he sign with the Braves than
he discovered the contract was invalid. USC had played a few early
season games. A player could only sign prior to the playing of
games on the spring schedule, and the Trojans always got off to an
early start. Seaver would have to wait until the June draft, but he
was not disappointed. He would pitch for Southern Cal. Then the
NCAA declared he was ineligible since he had signed a pro contract.
He was like Ko-Ko in
The Mikado
, caught in the middle of a
“pretty state of things,” wrote his biographer, John Devaney.

Finally, the commissioner’s office got
involved. It was decided that a “lottery” would be held. Any team
willing to match the Braves’ offer could enter it. Three teams –
Philadelphia, Cleveland and the New York Mets – did just that. The
Dodgers wanted in, too, but general manager Buzzie Bavasi was so
consumed in contract talks with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, both
holdouts that spring, that he forgot to get the team’s name in. For
the second time, the Dodgers passed up a chance to get Tom
Seaver.

The Mets were selected and Seaver reported
to Homestead, Florida, where their minor leaguers were well
underway for Spring Training. The experience was extraordinary for
him. Four years earlier, he had been less than a “suspect”; a
warehouse “sweat box” lifter and a lowly Marine recruit with drill
instructors screaming in his face. Year by year things had gotten
better for him: junior college ace, proving himself with the Alaska
Goldpanners, “big man on campus” at USC; now a bonus baby; and a
few months later, married to the beautiful Nancy Lynn McIntrye.