THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (17 page)

Joe Willie was put in the game and responded with
heroics, driving Alabama back into the contest. Trailing 21-17 with
minutes left, he orchestrated a patented final drive. With the ball
on the Longhorn one, Namath tried a quarterback sneak but was held,
giving Texas the victory. History therefore accords legitimate 1964
National Championship status not on Alabama, but on Arkansas.

Photos of Namath dejectedly leaving the field show a
young man who called it the “greatest disappointment” of his
career. Disappointing or not, it was a winning day for the young
quarterback from the perspective of his future. A friend said to
Sonny Werblin, watching the game, “You’ve just got the benefit of
the greatest pilot film in history.”

Namath not only starred in heroic manner, he had not
been injured. The television ratings made him a national star. It
actually increased what the team paid him when the signing
eventually was finalized.

The 6-1, 195-pounder was born to star in New York.
While the 1958 Giants-Colts game was credited with popularizing pro
football, the signing of Namath made the AFL legitimate, turning
the pro game into a spectacle. The fact that he was drafted and
signed by a New York team was almost too perfect, as if manipulated
in the manner some have accused the NBA of doing in order to put
marquee players in New York, Los Angeles and Boston.

It was as if the gates of the town were opened for
him. Namath joined a team that had just moved from the rickety old
Polo Grounds to the gleaming new Shea Stadium, located next to La
Guardia Airport. They appropriately changed their name from the
Titans to the Jets. The sound of 747s roaring into the skies above
became a perfect backdrop for Namath’s aerial heroics.

Namath was a longball artist whose spectacular
successes were interspersed with untimely interceptions. The class
teams in the league were the Kansas City Chiefs (featuring Tom
Seaver’s old USC pal, running back Mike Garrett) and the Oakland
Raiders, who were led by the “Mad Bomber,” quarterback Daryle
Lamonica (from Seaver’s hometown of Fresno). These teams met the
great Green Bay Packers in the first two Super Bowls. Both times
the AFL champion went down to resounding defeat.

With his bonus, Namath became well known for his
off-field antics. Always a skirt-chaser, Manhattan was like an
adult Disneyland for him. He opened a bar called Bachelors III. It
was a swinging sports hangout with go-go dancers and beautiful
girls. It was the late 1960s; there was the “Summer of Love” in San
Francisco, “swinging London,” and the “Sexual Revolution.”
Playboy
magazine made sex mainstream. Hollywood jumped on
the bandwagon.

In New York, the old was being replaced by the new.
Namath was definitely the “new breed.” His kind was something
nobody had ever quite seen before. Babe Ruth was a libertine, but
his exploits were mainly covered up by the sporting press. When a
naked Ruth was seen running through the team’s train chased by a
knife-wielding woman, one writer cracked, “Too bad we can’t write
about that.”

Rocky Marciano had apparently been a sexual
superman, but nobody knew it outside his circle. President John F.
Kennedy set carnal records, using the Secret Service as cover for
his pool parties, but the media protected him.

Bo Belinsky, a journeyman pitcher for the Los
Angeles Angels, became a singular sensation for his love of the
ladies when he dated the likes of Tina Louise, Ann-Margret, Mamie
Van Doren, and married Playmate of the Year Jo Collins. But after a
brilliant start, his career flamed out. Namath had the potential to
be a Hall of Famer, but engendered great criticism from the
establishment types who said he was wasting his talents on wine,
women and song.

Bachelors III was a real problem, too. It became a
haven for well-known sports gamblers. Rumors swirled around Namath,
especially when he threw ill-timed fourth quarter interceptions,
which was all too often. But whether the Jets went all the way was
seemingly immaterial. Namath packed Shea Stadium, sold out road
games, and made the TV ratings roar. He and his style were made for
television, with the instant replays and close-ups of the suave
Namath; hair tousled, eye black smeared on his sweaty face, making
women sigh.

Namath apparently had the kind of metabolism that
allowed him to consume whiskey, entertain his lady friends, get
little sleep, yet still handle the requirements of a pro
quarterback. Ed Marinaro, a bonus rookie, once hit the town with
Namath. At the end of the evening, Joe Willie left with a girl
Marinaro thought was well below his high standards. He confronted
Joe about it.

“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” Namath told
Marinaro. “Miss America’s not gonna show up.”

Eventually, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle gave
Namath an ultimatum: give up his share of Bachelors III, or give up
football. Namath retired from football . . . for about 10 minutes,
then gave up his ownership share in Bachelor’s III.

In 1968, the Chiefs and Raiders again dominated the
AFL. In November, the Jets traveled to Oakland for a key nationally
televised game on NBC. The Jets forged a late lead. It was 4:00
P.M. in California, 7:00 P.M. on the East Coast. NBC had a decision
to make. The children’s classic
Heidi
was scheduled for
seven. Thinking the Jets had their game won, they switched from the
game to the girl, who lived with her grandfather in the Swiss
Alps.

Back in Oakland, Lamonica drove the Raiders to a
touchdown. For good measure, they recovered a fumble on the ensuing
kick-off and scored again. New Yorkers who went to bed thinking
their team had won were shocked by newspaper, radio and water
cooler accounts of the Raider comeback. It has forever come to be
known as the “
Heidi
game.”

Namath and the Jets got their revenge a month or so
later in the AFL championship game. After a late drive, Oakland led
23-20. This time it was Namath’s turn. On a cold, windswept
afternoon at Shea, he led the Jets down the field for the winning
score in a hard-fought 27-23 win.

The victory put the Jets into Super Bowl III, to be
played at the sight of Namath’s memorable New Year’s Day, 1965 loss
to Texas: Miami’s Orange Bowl. The opponent: the 13-1 Baltimore
Colts, considered by some to be the greatest pro football team ever
assembled. Baltimore was installed as an 18-point favorite.

Namath immediately ruffled feathers, stating that
Baltimore quarterback Earl Morrall was no better than any number of
AFL signal-callers: Lamonica, Kansas City’s Len Dawson, San Diego’s
John Hadl, Houston’s Pete Beathard, or himself for that matter.
Then he said the unsayable. Asked whether he thought the Jets would
win, he replied, “I guarantee it.”

The Colts were a high strung group. The bulletin
board bravado was over the top. Normally this kind of thing would
fire up the opposing team, but the Colts were so heavily favored
and the comment so outrageous that it had the effect of swinging
momentum to the brash
Broadway Joe and His Super Jets
.

Baltimore indeed was as tight as a drum. Namath
played superbly, engineering a spectacular 16-7 victory, giving the
Jets a Super Bowl title and respect for the AFL. In the entire
history of professional football, it is considered the signature
moment, defining the game’s popularity. In 1970, the merger of the
two leagues was completed when inter-conference play began with the
creation of the American and National Football
Conferences
.

Namath wrote a book called
I Can’t Wait Until
Tommow . . . ‘Cause I Get Better-Looking Every Day
. His
outrageous, controversial comments about going to bed with “a
blonde and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red,” and preferring “my
women blonde and my Johnnie Walker Red” became catch phrases of the
American
Zeitgeist
.

He was unlike anything seen before in his mink
coats, Fu Manchu moustache, long hair, and rock star
persona
, but Namath was a team leader, respected by
teammates. They understood that he played in great pain. In truth
his career was derailed by constantly re-injuring his knee.

In 1968, Namath helped to elevate football to the
pinnacle of its popularity. Baseball, beset by a lack of offense in
the “Year of the Pitcher,” had poor attendance. It was considered
an article of faith that football had replaced it as Our National
Pastime. In New York City, the Yankees were no where to be found
and the Mets were a joke.

1968 turned into 1969. The Mets prepared for Spring
Training amid the glare of excitement over the Jets. They had no
reason to believe they could approach the fever that the city,
indeed all of America, felt about
Broadway Joe and His Super
Jets
(the moniker attached to them and also the name of a book
by Larry Fox).

Tom Seaver and his teammates had watched and rooted
for the Jets. For the Californian Seaver, he may well have favored
Fresno’s Lamonica and the Oakland Raiders in the AFL championship
game, but he and his mates were all for Namath and the Jets against
Baltimore, even though they had set an impossible standard for them
to live up to.

Nevertheless, it was the standard that Frank Sinatra
wrote songs about. Seaver was on a world stage, and would soon feel
the hottest glare of fame on that stage.

“
Can’t anybody here play this game?”

“
You
can
play for the Mets. If you want
rapid advancement, play for the Mets. We’ve got the bonus money.
We’ll even buy you a glove. So join us. Take the bonus money. Play
a year or two. Then you can go back to school.”

- Casey Stengel

It all happened so fast. In 1955, unmitigated joy in Brooklyn
when the Dodgers won the World Series. In 1956, a pennant was
successfully defended, but a series of bizarre incidents
foreshadowed later events. Sal Maglie became a Dodger. Jackie
Robinson was traded to the Giants.

Walter O’Malley, one of those strange characters of history,
owned Brooklyn. Certainly Brooklynites find little in O’Malley’s
memory to praise, but through luck, design, or both (“Luck is the
residue of design,” Branch Rickey said), O’Malley’s amorality’s are
generally viewed as vision . His knife-in-the-back contrivances
are, to Los Angelenos at least, acts of grace. His ruthless greed
resulted in the best move baseball ever made.

The Dodgers move to the West Coast has the feel of Manifest
Destiny. The dead bodies left behind, the broken promises, the lies
and deceptions, like America’s inexorable expansion, was for the
greater good by a long shot; an act that had to happen because if
it had not it would have created a vacuum for those less worthy to
fill.

O’Malley was almost a Hollywood caricature of a “bad guy,”
something out of a Frank Capra movie. Think of the banker “old man
Potter,” who holds Jimmy Stewart’s and a whole town’s future over
their heads in
It’s a Wonderful Life
. O’Malley
actually
was
a foreclosure specialist during the Great Depression. It
was not unlike Joseph P. Kennedy, the financier who made millions
from illegal bootlegging and insider trading, “selling short” on
other people’s misery. O’Malley became wealthy kicking folks out of
their homes.

He bought his way into the Dodgers’ ownership. Branch Rickey
found himself an uncomfortable partner. Rickey was of course the
baseball genius of the operation, but lacked the financial
wherewithal to call all the shots. Rickey was a truly moral man, a
devout Christian. As a college baseball coach years earlier he
coached a black player. Seeing the prejudice he was forced to
endure Rickey vowed to do something for the cause if he ever could.
He saw it as his destiny, his calling. This was the essence of his
decision to sign Jackie Robinson.

O’Malley had no moral obligations to the cause of social
justice, but he liked the fact that Robinson would attract black
fans, especially since the Giants played in a growing
black-majority area (Harlem). They otherwise would have garnered
that segment of the paying public.

Rickey’s morality did not always play well in the rough-hewn
baseball world. His relationship with manager Leo Durocher – a
drinker, gambler, womanizer and liar – was a true “odd coupling.”
Durocher was suspended for a year in 1947 for gambling and Rickey
used it as the excuse to get rid of him. When Rickey hosted his
daughter’s wedding, no alcohol was served. Rickey told complainers
that if they desired to imbibe “there’s a bar down the street.” The
moral clash between O’Malley and Rickey came to a head eventually,
with O’Malley eventually making the power play that ended Rickey’s
association with the team in 1950.

O’Malley despised Rickey so much that he fined any employees for
mentioning his name. He kept “Rickey men” only if they were
indispensable to the running of the baseball operations. His hatred
of Rickey was the core of his bad relations with Jackie Robinson,
who revered the “savior.” In later years, the Dodgers were
criticized for not suspending play the day of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s 1968 assassination. To the credit of O’Malley’s son,
Peter, he was a good man, but Walter was a caricaturized villain,
the perfect guy for Brooklynites to blame.

In 1956, the Dodgers played seven games in Jersey City, New
Jersey, ostensibly to put the powers that be on notice that
O’Malley was looking for a new ballpark at the corner of Flatbush
and Atlantic, or somewhere else.

After losing a seven-game World Series to the Yankees, the
Dodgers made an exhibition to Japan. After the hard loss to the
Yankees nobody wanted to go. Robinson refused, reportedly the “last
straw” in his stormy relationship with the man who kicked Rickey
out of Brooklyn. Jackie was traded to the hated Giants. Robinson
never played for them, taking an executive job with the Chock Full
o’ Nuts company, a well-known billboard sponsor of the era (along
with Yoo-Hoo chocolates).