THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (14 page)

The seven-game masterpiece between the
Knickerbockers and Lakers of 1970 remains one of the true hoop
classics. Passionate Madison Square Garden fans chanted
“DE-fense,”
and the glitterati came out to cheer their
heroes from courtside seats. The odd dynamic of the
Jets-Mets-Knicks ascension of 1968-70 was in the enthusiasm of the
crowds; a paradigm shift from longtime Yankee Stadium fans, who
took their victories in the manner of Caesar eating grapes while
the prisoners from Gaul were paraded before him.

Screenwriter William Goldman wrote such classics as
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
,
A Bridge Too Far
,
All the President’s Men
and
Marathon Man
. He was so
enthralled with the New York Knickerbockers that he missed the 1970
Oscar ceremonies, when he won the Academy Award for
Butch
Cassidy
, in order to watch them play.

At the Garden, Jerry West threw in a desperation
62-foot heave at the buzzer to force overtime, which was won by New
York. Reed later endured an excruciating deep thigh tear.
Chamberlain dominated game six so thoroughly that, without Reed,
game seven seemed hopelessly lost. At the Garden, Bradley and Dave
DeBusschere pleaded with Reed to suit up. There was virtually no
hope that he could actually play, but they felt that simply having
the big man in uniform might be a lift.

All that day, New Yorkers pessimistically predicted
a Knicks loss, while hoping against hope that Reed could play. By
game time, it had become an urban legend, with wild rumors of
Reed’s condition spreading from the East Side to the West Side,
from uptown to the docks. The crowd filed into the Garden, slightly
subdued. The teams warmed up. No Reed. Murmurs filled the
arena.

In the Knickerbockers’ dressing room, Reed faced the
biggest needle he had ever seen. According to reports, the injury
was so deeply embedded within his leg, and his thighs were so huge,
that the doctor needed to plunge the needle until his fist was
touching Reed’s skin. Reed found God or something; whatever it took
to endure the pain. It was like Sandy Koufax, who claimed the
treatments for his sore pitching arm were more painful than
actually pitching.

Then, with the game minutes away, a single figure
emerged from the Knicks’ dressing room: a hobbling Willis Reed.
Chamberlain and the Lakers stared at him from across the court,
like Apollo Creed when Rocky picks himself up from the canvas.

New York sports fans are notoriously loud, but to
those who there, the sound accorded Reed as he ambled onto that
court was off the hook, electric like nothing heard in the Garden
before or since, which is saying something. Chamberlain and the
Lakers tried to play it off, told themselves Reed was just there
for show, but they were doomed.

At the tip-off, Reed told Chamberlain, “I can’t go
to my left.” Wilt just stared at him. Reed
never
went to his
left, ever. The game started and Reed hit a medium-range shot. The
Garden went ballistic. As the game went on, Reed was not much of a
factor, certainly not on offense, but it did not matter. He had
inspired his team. The game was all over but the shouting by
halftime, with the Knickerbockers cruising to the NBA title. They
repeated the feat in 1973, again beating Chamberlain, West and
then-defending NBA champion Los Angeles.

In 1919, eight members of the Chicago White Sox
“threw” the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds at the behest
of gambling interests. The first Commissioner of Baseball, Judge
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned the “Black Sox” from ever playing
baseball again.

In the first two decades of the American League, the
Boston Red Sox were the class of the junior circuit, winning the
1903, 1912, 1915, 1916 and 1918 World Series. Their greatest player
was George Herman “Babe” Ruth, a recalcitrant reform school dropout
from the streets of Baltimore. Ruth was the best left-handed
pitcher in baseball.

In the years in which the Red Sox dominated, the New
York Yankees were an also ran. At first, they called themselves the
Highlanders. They did not have their own stadium. In 1919 they
rented the Polo Grounds from the Giants.

After the 1919 season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee
needed money to finance a Broadway play called
No, No
Nanette
. In order to do this, he sold to the Yankees not merely
Babe Ruth, but future Hall of Fame pitchers Herb Pennock and Waite
Hoyt. Later, he traded excellent catcher Wally Schang and stalwart
third baseman Joe Dugan to New York. Thus was born the “Curse of
the Bambino.”

Ruth had demonstrated so much power-hitting ability
that the Red Sox turned him into an outfielder in 1919. After the
“Black Sox scandal,” baseball needed something to regain its
popularity. The baseballs were tightened, replaced with a livelier
core, allowing for it to travel longer distances. Umpires were
instructed to use new, shiny white baseballs instead of keeping
old, scuffed-up balls in the game. Spitballs were outlawed with the
exception of a handful of known “spitball specialists.” The results
were revolutionary.

America had entered a stalemated World War I in
1917, giving victory to the Allies a year later. Suddenly a major
world power, the American economy exploded under Republican
leadership in the “Roaring ‘20s,” its populace taking to sports
like never before. People moved to the cities, radio was
popularized, silent movies were all the rage, new heroes emerged;
Charles Lindbergh flying solo over the Atlantic, Rudolph Valentino
on the silver screen.

The National Football League was born in 1920.
Harold “Red” Grange electrified college crowds at Illinois, then
did the same with the Green Bay Packers. Notre Dame and Southern
California started their rivalry and become idols of collegiate
football. New sports palaces emerged across the Fruited Plain.
Crowds of 75,000 watched the Irish and Trojans at the Los Angeles
Memorial Coliseum; upwards of 120,000 at Soldier Field in Chicago.
The Rose Bowl was erected in Pasadena, California, drawing
spectacular crowds and making college football a national game.

“The Swamp” in Florida, the “Big House” in Michigan,
the “Horseshoe” in Ohio; Stanford Stadium and Memorial Stadium in
California; and Notre Dame Stadium, were all built over the next
decade.

Ruth was beyond anything seen before or since. No
athlete has ever dominated his game as Ruth dominated baseball in
the 1920s. To put it into perspective, it would have been as if,
when Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001, the next-highest total
would have been 25 instead of Sammy Sosa, who hit
more than
Roger Maris’s old record
,
64!
When Ruth hit 54 home runs
in 1920, the next man in the American League was George Sisler
(19). In 1921 Ruth hit 59 followed by Ken Williams and Bob Meusel
(24).

In 1923, Yankee Stadium was built in the Bronx. It
was immediately dubbed the “House That Ruth Built.” That season,
the Yankees defeated the Giants for their first World Series title.
Shortly thereafter, Lou Gehrig joined the Yankees off of the campus
of Columbia University. The Ruth-Gehrig home run duo became the
greatest in history, the core of the famed “Murderers Row” line-up
that captured the 1927 and 1928 World Series. The 1927 Yankees
under manager Miller Huggins are still thought of as the best
baseball team of all time, at least in many circles.

Ruth retired with 714 lifetime home runs, a record
since broken by Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds, both of whom took
season’s worth of at-bats more to do it. Many arguments have
ensued, and in 2000 ESPN even did a poll that said Michael Jordan
was the greatest athlete of the 20
^th
Century. Muhammad
Ali has his supporters, and there are other contenders.

Babe Ruth is not only the greatest baseball player
who ever lived, he is the greatest athlete of all time.

After Ruth retired Gehrig took over. He played in a
record 2,130 straight games, spearheading the Yankees’ World
Championship teams of 1936, 1937 and 1938. In 1939 the Yankees won
their fourth straight World Championship under manager Joe
McCarthy. Led by the great Joe DiMaggio, the Yankees won the World
Series again in 1941, 1943, 1947, 1949, 1950 and 1951.

Casey Stengel took over and led them on a stretch
even more dominant than before: five straight World Championships
between 1949 and 1953, then two more in 1956 and 1958. Superstars
Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford were giants of the game. They were
corporate, Wall Street pinstripers, as unstoppable as George
Patton’s Fifth Army on the march. Rooting for them, it was said,
was like “rooting for U.S. Steel.” The most popular Broadway play
of the era was
Damn Yankees
, the premise being that the only
way to beat the Yankees was to do a deal with the devil.

Ralph Houk became the Yankees’ manager in 1961, the
year right fielder Roger Maris broke Ruth’s single-season home run
record of 60, set in 1927. Under Houk, the Yankees won the American
League championship four straight years (1961-64) and the World
Series in 1961 and 1962.

After a dormant period, owner George Steinbrenner
took over and manager Billy Martin’s Yankees won the 1977 World
Series. Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in the game six clincher
against Los Angeles, a total of five for the Series. New York
repeated in 1978, coming from 14 games back to beat Boston, then
going on to beating the Dodgers in the Fall Classic again. Great
pitchers of the era included Catfish Hunter, Ron Guidry, Sparky
Lyle and Goose Gossage. Third baseman Craig Nettles was a glove
standout, and the late Thurman Munson starred behind the plate.

Manager Joe Torre led the Bronx Bombers to four
World Championships in five seasons between 1996 and 2000. Overall
they have won 26 World Championships. There are other obscure
records, such as Southern California’s 26 NCAA track titles, but it
is the most awesome record in sports. Other great dynasties – Notre
Dame and USC in college football; UCLA in college basketball; the
Boston Celtics’ 16 NBA championships; the San Francisco 49ers and
Pittsburgh Steelers with five Super Bowl victories; the Packers,
Canadiens, the U.S. Olympic team being medals winner in 17 Summer
Games – all pale in comparison.

The Yankees are the ultimate symbol of American
superiority, and therefore represent all that is bigger, better,
richer and more successful about New York City. They, like America,
are viewed much the same way: loved, hated, admired, emulated,
fought for, and when fought against, usually in futile manner.

When Bill Terry asked the rhetorical question, “Are
the Dodgers still in the league?” in 1934, it heated up the natural
Giant-Dodger rivalry in that Brooklyn knocked New York out of the
pennant chase. The rest of the 1930s were still dominated by the
Giants, although they found
themselves
at the mercy of the
Yankees in both the 1936 and 1937 World Series.

A power shift occurred in 1941. The Giants entered a
period of stagnation in which they became a victim of their ball
park; left-handed home run hitter-heavy, no speed, mediocre
pitching. Leo Durocher took over as the manager of the Dodgers. He
wanted nothing to do with the “Daffiness Boys” image, instead
urging pitchers to “stick it in his ear.” Led by the fabulous Pete
Reiser, the Dodgers won the 1941 National League championship, but
found themselves up against the Yankees in the Fall Classic.

Yankee history includes no “Merkle Boners” or
“Snodgras Muffs.” Their highlight tapes feature no pinstriped Bill
Buckners letting easy grounders under his glove, or Yankee fans
interfering with key pop flies, as in the Steve Bartman incident at
Wrigley Field in 2003.

This being the 21
^st
Century, we now know
that after “waiting ‘til next year” for 14 years, in 1955 the
Brooklyn Dodgers finally won the World Series. But before the Red
Sox’ “Curse of the Bambino,” before the White Sox finally got
there, before the century-old drought of the Cubs; before tales of
the long-suffering fandom of the Raiders, Cowboys, Rams, Lakers,
Angels and other sports teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers were the kings
of disappointment.

Herein we have the unique connection between the New
York Mets and the Brooklyn Dodgers. When the Dodgers and Giants
left New York in 1958, they ceded it to the Yankees. The Yanks won
a war of attrition. It was like terrorists who keep blowing
themselves up until one day there are not any more left to
detonate. The stronger unit, rich and powerful enough to withstand
the whole mess, “wins.”

But when the New York Mets came into existence,
there was an immediate connection not with the Giants (even though
they played at the Polo Grounds for the first few years), but with
the Dodgers. It was that Dodgers image; lovable losers, a little
wacky, a little “daffy,” colorful, eccentric; that they saw in the
Mets. The Mets reached into New York’s baseball past, and when they
did they went mostly for old Dodgers – Duke Snider, Gil Hodges,
Charlie Neal, Don Zimmer, Roger Craig - not old Giants. There was
little connection between the Mets and the Yankees. The Casey
Stengel who managed the Mets from 1962 to 1965 bore more
resemblance to the Stengel who produced a sparrow from his cap, the
“clown act” who managed lowly Dodgers teams, than he did to the
manager of the lordly Yankees.

The “Daffiness Boys” image might have been replaced
by serious baseball when “Leo the Lip” took over, but the
succession of frustrations, disappointments, “close but no cigars”
and “wait ‘til next years” had the same comical,
we’re-Brooklyn-so-laugh-it-off flavor to it that inculcated early
Mets fandom.

“I am not superstitious, but I do think it is bad
luck to bet against the Yankees,” said writer Ring Lardner.

So it was in the 1941 World Series, with Brooklyn
trailing New York two games to one. Dodgers pitcher Hugh Casey
struck out the Yankees’ Tommy Henrich to win the game . . . except
that the ball got by catcher Mickey Owen. Owen went after the ball
“in a vivid imitation of a man changing a tire, grabbing monkey
wrenches, screwdrivers, inner tubes, and a jack, and he couldn’t
find any of them,” according to the
New York Herald-Tribune
.
Henrich made it to first, and from there “the roof fell in,”
according to sportswriter Tommy Holmes. Casey got two strikes on
Joe DiMaggio, who had hit in 56 straight games that year. Every
patron of Ebbets Field knew he would get a hit prior to his
accomplishing the act. The rest is quite desultory; a story of
Yankee efficiency and Brooklyn clumsiness, the result being a 7-4
New York win en route to a five-game Series championship.