THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (12 page)

Same old Mets.

After some early bumps in the road, however, the
Mets rebounded and by mid-June were near the .500 mark, a
remarkable record for this franchise. Hodges and Seaver developed a
professional reputation based on mutual respect. Seaver’s on-mound
demeanor was very intense, but one game he was laughing and
grinning with catcher Jerry Grote during a game he won. Hodges
advised that he should maintain a more disciplined presence, but
was surprised to hear – and accept – Seaver’s explanation that in a
game he lost he was “too tight,” and decided to loosen up in order
to pitch better. Everything Seaver did had a method behind it.
Hodges had seen many players over the years, and in Seaver he
recognized a “new breed” of highly intelligent, motivated
professionalism. The game was changing and Seaver was changing
it.

But Seaver was in many ways an old-time baseball
man. Despite his three-piece-suit, briefcase-carrying,
Wall
Street Journal
-reading reputation, he was fun-loving, chewed
tobacco and loved a few laughs over beers with the boys after the
game. His teammates loved him. He was one of the guys, only more
so.

1968 was a strange season. Known as the “Year of the
Pitcher,” it was a season in which the Most Valuable Player in both
leagues was a moundsman. In the American League, Detroit’s Denny
McLain was the last 30-game winner. In the National League, Bob
Gibson of St. Louis was
even better
, if that can be
believed, hurling 13 shutouts, posting 48 straight scoreless
innings, and a record earned run average of 1.12, a mark that may
never be broken. Gibson struck out 17 Tigers in the World Series,
but Detroit’s Mickey Lolich was the hero with three wins to earn
the MVP. The National League won the All-Star Game, 1-0. Only one
American Leaguer, Carl Yastrzemski of Boston (.301), batted over
.300. Only five did it in the senior circuit. The combined ERA of
both leagues was 2.99. Don Drysdale of Los Angeles set the all-time
consecutive scoreless innings streak with 58. Oakland’s Catfish
Hunter hurled a perfect game. Gaylord Perry of the Giants and Ray
Washburn of the Cardinals threw no-hitters against each other’s
teams on consecutive nights at Candlestick Park; a feat never
equaled before. With scoring and by extension, attendance down,
Major League Baseball decided to lower the height of the mound
beginning in 1969. Baseball was
dead
, a casualty to pro
football’s sexy image. Or so it seemed.

For Tom Seaver, 1968 was another year of great
success matched by frustration. Outside of the superhuman Gibson,
he pitched as well as anybody else in the league, but if the 1967
Mets had failed to support him, they looked like the “Murderer’s
Row” Yankees compared to the 1968 version. Seaver said they owed
the rest of the staff as much as they had given him but did not
mean that they metaphorically skip town on his day to pitch.

He again appeared in the All-Star Game. In August
his desire for perfection almost came to fruition when the
Cardinals’ Orlando Cepeda broke up his bid in the seventh inning.
It served to whet his appetite for one. He won 16 against 12
losses, with a sterling 2.20 ERA and 205 strikeouts. There was a
distinct improvement in his velocity as his body grew in strength.
Seaver dominated the opposition and could have won 20 or even 24
games in 1968, but the Mets were abysmal behind him.

They hit .228 as a team, but gave Seaver even less.
Over one 11-game stretch, his ERA was 1.91 but opposing pitcher’s
were 1.72 against New York bats, when they scored a mere 19 runs
overall. Seaver’s record during that period was 2-5.

Off the field, Seaver visited Vietnam vets in the
hospitable. Nancy was a self-confessed “liberal,” opposed to the
war. Seaver still had the Marine experience drummed into his being,
but he questioned America’s involvement. On the one hand, he read
enough and understood history, so he realized that appeasement
fails. In 1968 the world did not quite realize the horrors of
Communism, although they certainly knew enough. But Mao Tse-Tung’s
“Cultural Revolution,” then in its third year, and the 55 million
murdered in Red China, were not fully revealed yet. But for now,
Seaver was aghast at the loss of American life, the suffering of
the wounded.

He gave his time to crippled kids, leaving the
hospitable with tears streaming down his face. Seaver was a
Christian, but kept his religious views private. He had a deep
social conscience, understood that he was a role model, and knew
from having admired hero-ballplayers himself what an impact he had
on their young lives. Unlike Joe DiMaggio, a man of amoral
self-interest, Seaver was happy to give of himself. Over the years,
as he saw how those he thought were his friends really just wanted
to get something from him, he would shut down somewhat, become
wary, but in 1968 he was still a wide-eyed idealist who thought he
could change the world.

Despite the Mets’ batting woes, there were hopeful
signs. Rookie of the Year Jerry Koosman got the support Seaver did
not. He also made the All-Star Game, winning 19 against 12 losses
with a 2.08 ERA. The southpaw from Minnesota threw almost as hard
as Seaver. Jerry Grote also made the All-Star team. With good young
pitching, New York finally lifted themselves from 10
^th
to ninth with a 73-89 record, which despite a second half slump was
reason for celebration amongst their supporters. But Seaver, Hodges
and the young team found no reason to jump for joy over a
below-.500 season. They had their hopes set on bigger and much
better things. However, Hodges suffered a late-season heart attack
in 1968. His availability was in doubt when the season ended.
Somebody wished Seaver luck the next year; hopefully more run
support.

“So much depends on number 14,” Seaver said of 1969.
14 was Hodges’s number.

If you can make it there, you can make it
anywhere

“Go west, young man.”

- New York publisher Horace Greeley, who stayed east
and made a fortune

The story is a well-worn one: Manhattan Island
purchased from local Indian tribes for a few beads. From there, it
was developed by the Dutch into a trading colony. Its location made
it a strategic city of importance to the American Revolution, the
young U.S. economy, and then the government, which made it the
capital until a settlement was made with the Southern states to
turn a swamp in Washington into the Federal city.

It never needed to have the White House or Congress
in its midst. New York was the most important of all American
cities. As time wore on and the United States grew into the
greatest, most powerful empire in the annals of human existence, it
replaced the old seats of power: Athens, Rome, Byzantium, Paris,
London.

Every form of human endeavor needed to be given its
imprimatur there; that is, if it was to be given legitimacy,
stamped with greatness. Art, literature, theatre, academe, finance,
trade, even film and political power, supposedly centered in
Hollywood and D.C., respectively, needed its NY stamp of
approval.

Then there are sports, which were practically
invented
there. Of all the things considered important in
and by New York, perhaps nothing matches the fervor for sports.
Baseball came to America from English soldiers, who played cricket
and a crude game called “rounders.” An Army officer named Abner
Doubleday may or may not have taught his troops how to play
baseball in Cooperstown, a small upstate New York village, in 1839.
There are some reports that Doubleday was not even there at the
time. Never mind. He eventually became a famous general and a Civil
War hero. With a little good public relations, the story of
Doubleday inventing baseball stuck. Soldiers on both sides of the
lines were popularizing the game when they were not shooting at
each other during the war.

It was in New York City where the landscape, the
rules, and the dimensions of baseball were formulated. Some green
plains were chosen and a “base ball diamond” was carved into the
Elysian Fields, named after the mythical resting place where Roman
soldiers went after they died.

Teams were formulated, fan bases established, the
newspapers wrote it all up. A man named Jim Mutrie owned one
franchise, which he admiringly called “my giants.” The city was
giant
. The team became the Giants. An organization, calling
itself the National League, started in 1876. Next to Manhattan was
a borough called Brooklyn.

Americans did things, accomplished things, built
things that other countries never dreamed of. In Russia, a railroad
was built in Siberia on flat ground. It took decades, was fraught
with peril and mishaps. In the United State, the Trans-continental
railroad connected the East Coast with the West Coast. It was built
over both the Rocky and Sierra Mountain ranges, and as historian
David Ambrose said in the title of his book, there was
Nothing
Like It in the World.

Americans erected tall buildings, eventually calling
them “skyscrapers.” They defied nature, such as in the forging of
the Erie Canal. They built great structures, and in 1883 the
Brooklyn Bridge connected the borough to Manhattan. It was
therefore brought, in some cases kicking and screaming, into
official annexation with New York City. Immediately and forever
after, Brooklyn had an inferiority complex.

The New York Giants played at the Polo Grounds and
were the most successful organization in baseball. Brooklyn had a
team, but it was always in search of an identity. The team never
knew what to call themselves. They were the Atlantics, the Superbas
and the Robins. Their fans arrived at their games via a precarious
trolley car system in Brooklyn. They required a certain amount of
dexterity in order to avoid being run over by the trolleys, and
soon came to be known as “Trolley Dodgers.” Eventually, the team
came to be known simply as the Brooklyn Dodgers. They played at
Ebbets Field, a bandbox ballpark in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
(Bed/Stuy) section of Flatbush, Brooklyn.

The Dodgers featured a player and later a manager
named Casey Stengel. He was considered a “clown act” despite being
a fine player and first class baseball man. Stengel reportedly
missed one season because he had gotten a dose of venereal disease.
On another occasion, Stengel doffed his cap and a sparrow flew out.
As a manager, he presided over losing teams.

Wilbert Robinson managed Brooklyn to two losing
World Series appearances (1916, 1920). The 1920 loss to Cleveland
was marked by Brooklyn victimized by the only unassisted
triple-play in Series history. A roly-poly, comic character,
Robinson once tried to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane.
Instead of a baseball, the aviatrix dropped a grapefruit, which
splattered all over Robinson. Feeling the warm juice and pulp all
over himself, Robinson’s first reaction was that he had been struck
by the baseball and was bleeding to death. He called out to his
“lads” to come to his aid, like a soldier taking his last breath on
the Somme.

In the 1920s, Brooklyn’s baseball identity was
considered part-carnival act. Columnist Westrook Pegler dubbed them
the “Daffiness Boys.” Pitcher Dazzy Vance was a Hall of Fame
hurler, but his reputation was that of a clown. Old photos of Vance
reveal a man who looked to be 60 when he was 30 or 35. He looked .
. .
daffy
. Photos of ball players in those days reveal
extraordinary faces; hollowed cheekbones, ears sticking out like a
cab driving down the street with both doors open, sunburns, bad
skin, haunted eyes.

Life was difficult. Diets and training regimens were
not what they are today. They drank heavily but had to play all day
games with hangovers. Hygiene was a problem. Amenities like air
conditioning were non-existent. They traveled by train, breathing
soot along the way. Diseases like VD, polio, Rocky Mountain spotted
fever, pneumonia and mumps cut people down. In 1918, a worldwide
influenza epidemic killed millions.

Nicknames were freely given in those early years.
There were the “Thundering Herd” USC Trojans out west, the
“Galloping Ghost,” Red Grange of Michigan. George Herman Ruth was
“Babe,” the “Sultan of Swat,” and the “Bambino.” Lou Gehrig was the
“Iron Horse.” Christy Mathewson was known as “Big Six.” His mound
partner was “Iron Joe” McGinnity

Everybody, it seems, was named “Rube.” There was
Rube Marquard, Rube Bressler and Rube Waddell. Charles Stengel got
“Casey” because he was from Kansas City (K.C.). Chris Berman would
have had a field day with the Dodgers of that era, who featured
“Uncle Robbie” Robinson, “Chick” Fewster, “Babe” Herman, “Jigger”
Statz, “Watty” Clark, “Sloppy” Thurston, “Jumbo Jim” Elliott,
“Lefty” O’Doul, “Pea Ridge” Day, “Ownie” Carroll, “Boom Boom” Beck,
“Curly” Onis, “Whitey” Ock, Maximillia Carinus (Max Carey), “Buzz”
Boyle, “Rabbit” Maranville, “Snooks” Dowd, and “Frenchy”
Bordogaray.

Why not? The alternatives were Hollis, Walter,
Manuel, Ralph, William, Raymond, Francis, Harold, Wilson, Clyde,
Owen, Arnold and Clarence (Dazzy).

“What baseball fan of sound mind and body would
choose to root for Hollis and Clyde and Clarence when offered the
option of cheering for Sloppy and Pea Ridge and Dazzy?” wrote Glenn
Stout in
The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball
. Then
there was Van Lingle Mungo, whose actual lyrical name inspired jazz
ballads.

Many players wore white, long-sleeved undershirts.
Vance took the white undershirt and sliced it up with scissors so
that it hung in strands off his right arm. Wilbert Robinson often
saved him to pitch on Mondays at Ebbets Field. Why?

“You couldn’t
him ‘im on a Mundy
,” said Rube
Bressler in
The Glory of Their Times
. He pronounced Monday
Mundy
. “On a clear
Mundy
the batter never had a
chance.”