THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (11 page)

The guy who could not make the Fresno High
varsity until his senior year found himself trailed by curious
glances and murmurs at Homestead. “That’s the guy from USC.”
“That’s Seaver, they paid him over 50 grand.” Bud Harrelson, Jerry
Koosman and Nolan Ryan were all in camp, but Seaver was singled out
for the special treatment accorded to the most important prospects.
It was dizzying, but Seaver had “class” according to Harrelson, who
said that despite his place at the top of the totem pole, the bonus
baby did not put on airs or try to show anybody up.

Most players start out at class A ball and
have to fight for years to move up the ladder. The combination of
Seaver’s college record, bonus money and the team’s lack of success
meant that he started at triple-A Jacksonville, Florida. Manager
Solly Hemus, who had seen a few in his long baseball career,
declared him, “the best pitching prospect the Mets have ever
signed,” and then paid him the ultimate compliment: “Seaver has a
35-year-old head on top of a 21-year-old body. Usually, we get a
35-year-old arm attached to a 21-year-old head.”

Seaver was teammates with Dick Selma at
Jacksonville. Immediately he had success and was ticketed as a
“can’t miss” prospect who would be in the Major Leagues soon, maybe
even in September. He led the team in victories and strikeouts. He
was given the nickname “Super Rookie,” or “Supe” for short. His
future was secure when Hemus said he reminded him of
Bob
Gibson.
When most minor league pitching prospects get hit, they
are removed so as to protect their gentle psyches. Hemus realized
Seaver had the mental toughness of . . . a 35-year old. When his
rough patches came, as they always do, he kept him in to gain from
the experience.

The roughest patch came off the field, when
the “wizened” wives and girlfriends of the Jacksonville players set
the naïve California girl Nancy “straight” on the notorious sexual
habits of ballplayers. Tom assured her of his commitment to her,
but her mind was filled with dreadful thoughts.

After a heavy workload at Jacksonville, the
Mets decided not to call him up in September. Seaver and his new
bride returned to Los Angeles, where he was now just another
student at USC. Suddenly Seaver saw a new future in baseball, and
began to think about broadcasting on the side. He transferred his
major from pre-dentistry to public relations. Instead of living
near campus, notorious for being near a high crime zone and at that
time only a year removed from the nearby Watts riots, they lived in
upscale Manhattan Beach.

In 1967, Seaver entered Spring Training amid
speculation that he would be a starting pitcher. Had Seaver not
been with the lowly Mets, he probably would not have made it to
“The Show,” as the Majors are referred to, as quickly. He would
have started out at singe-A or double-A, then worked his way up.
Instead, he did start as a rookie in 1967. In truth, he was as
ready as can be. Manager Wes Westrum not only put him in the
starting rotation at the beginning of the season, he was talked out
of starting him on Opening Day only out of caution.

The Mets were as bad as ever in 1967, only
now they were just terrible, not funny. The old Casey Stengel
stories, the wacky “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry antics, were gone.
Now they just lost. Seaver was appalled.

“I was not raised on the Met legend,” he
said. He had no affinity for any of that stuff. Despite being a
rookie, he quickly ascended to a position of leadership on the
club. When teammates laughed at their ineptitude, he refused to let
them get away with it. Once, when Mets players were fooling around
in the dugout during a game, Seaver found some spiders nesting in a
corner. He scooped them all up and threw them at the offenders,
telling them to wake up and pay attention. His attitude would have
been taken exception to, except that he was so shockingly good. It
earned him immediate respect.

Seaver’s work ethic was legendary, his
concentration and seriousness unprecedented in Met history. He was
immediately successful. When his brother, Charles Jr., a New York
City social worker, visited a client he saw a poster of his brother
hanging in his tenement apartment. It was an era before ESPN and
the lowly Mets were not on national TV very much. Cincinnati’s Pete
Rose openly wondered who “the kid” was at Gallagher’s, a New York
steak house, when he saw an out-of-place Seaver sitting at a table
by himself. Told whom he was, Rose then made the connection. This
was the guy who beat his Reds, 7-3, on June 13.

He sure looks young but the kid’s got a
helluva fast ball
.

Against his hero Henry Aaron, Seaver induced
the slugger into a double-play, but was almost in admiration of his
opponent when Aaron adjusted later and hit the same pitch over the
fence. Henry told him he was “throwing hard, kid.” He “stalked”
Sandy Koufax at the batting cage when the now-retired legend was in
town as a broadcaster. When Koufax recognized who he was, Seaver
was taken aback but pleased.

Seaver earned a spot on the National League
roster for the All-Star Game, played near his college stomping
grounds, at Anaheim Stadium. This meant more embarrassed mistaken
identity. Cardinal superstar Lou Brock thought he was the clubhouse
boy and asked him to fetch a Coke. Seaver dutifully did that, but
Brock had to apologize when he was informed who he was.

In the game, Seaver came on in extra innings
to retire the American League, saving the National’s 2-1 victory.
On the season he was 16-13 with a 2.76 earned run average, easily
garnering Rookie of the Year honors. His 16 victories came with
little offensive or defensive support from the 10
^th
place Mets. He easily could have won 20 games in a year in which
the great pitching aces of the era – Koufax, Don Drysdale, Bob
Gibson, Juan Marichal – were retired, hurt or slumped. Mike
McCormick, a journeyman southpaw with the Giants, won the Cy Young
award, but in truth did not pitch better than Seaver.

The Tom Seaver of 1967-68 was still
developing. In the beginning, he was considered a sinker-slider
pitcher whose fast ball was excellent but not nearly at the level
of such heaterballers of the time as “Sudden Sam” McDowell or Bob
Gibson. But the late maturation process that began when he entered
the Marine Corps had not reached fruition. His hard work and weight
lifting paid off, and by late 1968 Billy Williams of the Cubs told
teammates “he brings it” after being set down by him.

Seaver was honest with his manager when
asked how he felt. Whereas most pitchers lied, Seaver put so much
into pitching that by the eighth inning he was worn out. He and
Nancy took to the New York scene feet flying. If ever a “sports
couple” was seemingly born for the Big Apple, it was the
Seavers.

“Nancy and I love this town,” Seaver told
sportswriter Maury Allen. “We walk around Manhattan, up Fifth
Avenue, past Carnegie Hall, down Broadway. We want to get to the
Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History on our next day
off.”

Seaver felt a natural intellectual
curiosity, fueled by his surroundings. The literary nature of New
York society did not escape him. He read books by John Steinbeck,
who had written of the central California that they both grew up
in. Steinbeck’s vision of California was much different from
Seaver’s easy affluence, but Tom had an inquiring mind and absorbed
all of it. He read books about politics, satire and the classic
baseball history book
The Glory of Their Times
, which
allowed him to realize that he was part of something bigger than
himself; that being a New York baseball star was special over and
above playing in other cities. He had respect for the game and its
traditions, and to Mets fans number 41 began to represent the sort
of idol Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle meant to Yankee supporters.
They chanted “Seav-
uh”
as he mowed hitters down at Shea
Stadium.

Seaver studied opponents and maintained
detailed scouting reports. His dedication was total, but he also
smiled and joked around. He was the quintessential “fan” living the
fantasy of playing in the Major Leagues. Almost all big leaguers
were high schools superstars who took their ability for granted,
strutting around like they owned the place. Seaver was still
pinching himself. Not only was he privileged to wear the uniform,
he was the ace of the staff! On a bad team he was a “stopper” whose
victories ended losing streaks.

“There was an aura of defeatism about the
team, a feeling of let’s get it over with,” Seaver recalled. “I
noticed that the team seemed to play better when I pitched but . .
. that wasn’t right and I said so. I probably got a few people mad,
but I went around and told the guys that if they did that for me
and not for somebody else, it was wrong.”

“When Seaver’s pitching, these guys plain
work a little harder,” noted catcher Jerry Grote.

“You notice his concentration out there on
the mound when he’s pitching,” said Bud Harrelson. “And playing
behind him, you try to match it.”

His performance in the All-Star Game filled
him with not just pride and confidence, but inspired him to try and
instill that same attitude in his teammates. He became the
undisputed leader of the young Mets. After one dismal game he stood
on a stool and announced: “Gentlemen, after watching that
performance, I would like to take this opportunity to announce my
retirement from the game of baseball.” If he pitched well but lost
for lack of support he took the weight of defeat on his own
shoulders.

“I just don’t feel I’m pitching as well as I
can,” he lamented. “A mistake here . . . a mistake there . . . they
add up. You wonder when you’re going to come on and start
eliminating the mistakes.”

He was a perfectionist, a trait he inherited
from his father. It applied to every aspect of his life; the way he
dressed, the way he conducted his marriage, his life. He expressed
admiration at brother Charles’s sculptures, since he could attain a
sense of perfection in the work that seemed impossible in the
messy, up-and-down competition of baseball. Still, each game he
came out hoping for a perfect game, something Sandy Koufax had
done. Koufax once said that he wanted a perfect game until the
first man reached base; a no-hitter until the first hit; a shutout
until the first run . . .

He made no excuses just because he was a
rookie. He handled every aspect of his business, not just pitching
well but fielding his position, showing some pop with the bat, and
cheerleading on days he did not pitch. The older Mets were replaced
more and more by youngsters who emulated Seaver’s
professionalism.

“For the first time maybe,” Seaver told a
Sport
magazine reporter years later, “we realized that we
had guys who cared deeply whether we achieved, that we had pitchers
who could hit occasionally and who wanted to win so desperately.
Looking back I think it was the first time in my experience with
the Mets that we believed in each other, the first time I felt that
that I wasn’t here to lose.”

Pitching coach Harvey Haddix marveled that
Seaver absorbed his lessons, did not need to be told something
twice, and analyzed his performances thoroughly. On road trips, he
sat with Mets broadcasters Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner, figuring
he someday would be doing that, too. He never tailed off, as so
many young hotshots do when the league figures them out, or they
lose the psychological edge. In fact, Seaver in 1967 established a
trait he maintained throughout his career: a strong finish. After
winning the Rookie of the Year award, he said it was “nice,” but
added the unthinkable: “I want to pitch on a Mets’ pennant winner
and I want to pitch the first game in the World Series. I want to
change things . . . the Mets have been a joke long enough. It’s
time to start winning, to change the attitude, to move ahead to
better things. I don’t want the Mets to be laughed at anymore.”

In the off-season Seaver continued his
studies at Southern Cal. Years after achieving superstardom, wealth
and worldwide fame, he continued going to school in the fall,
finally earning a degree from USC in the mid-1970s. He was accorded
celebrity status first by his hometown of Fresno, who gave him the
“key to the city,” then by the USC baseball program. Working out to
stay in shape in the off-season with a team led by Bill Lee (which
would win the College World Series), he was one of their own who
had made it. The up-and-coming Trojans were eager to hear tall
tales of big league life. Seaver was good at weaving a yarn. Buoyed
by a double in salary, happily married, he was sitting on top of
the world.

In 1968, Gil Hodges took over as manager and
the complexion of the Mets began to change. Some of those
youngsters who Seaver first met during Spring Training in 1966 were
breaking into the big leagues. Jerry Koosman, Tug McGraw, Bud
Harrelson and Nolan Ryan were the face of the “new Mets.” An
incredible amount of optimism surrounded the club throughout the
winter and then Spring Training. Considering how bad they had been
it seems to have been misplaced. Considering what they did just a
year later, maybe not so much. The ultimate optimist was Seaver,
but Hodges was a winner as a Brooklyn Dodger star; a fan favorite
and one of those guys who were not so far from earning status in
the true New York Sports Icon fraternity. He expected to win,
too.

On Opening Day against Willie Mays, Willie
McCovey, Juan Marichal and the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick
Park, Seaver took a hard-earned 4-2 lead into the bottom of the
ninth inning. Exhausted, he was removed and watched in despair as
his bullpen blew the lead in a 5-4 loss.

Same old Mets.

In his next start he shut out Houston for 10 innings
but came away with a no-decision in a game lost by New York, 1-0 in
24 innings, when second baseman Al Weis let a groundball scoot
under his glove.