THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (19 page)

There was virtually no chance that the CBL would be a
competitive league that could dilute the two established leagues.
The Shea/Rickey group, however, had created momentum, particularly
in the form of two of the most powerful political figures in
American history, LBJ and “Mr. Sam” Rayburn. Both lined up with
them. Major League Baseball decided “if you can’t beat ‘em, let ‘em
join you.” On August 17, 1960 the owners met with Branch Rickey at
the Hilton Hotel in Chicago, agreeing to add Denver and Minneapolis
to the American League in 1961; New York and Houston to the
National League in 1962.

None of this pleased Walter O’Malley, but it was nothing
compared to the eventual decision to switch the American League
franchise awards; the Senators to Minnesota, an expansion team to
replace them in D.C., and to his consternation, Gene Autry’s
awarding of the Los Angeles Angels.

Shea got several other balls rolling. Naturally a new team would
need a new stadium. Robert Moses’s plan for a state of the art
facility next to the airport in Queens was fast tracked. With that,
Harry Wismer came on board to bring an AFL franchise to New York.
They would share the stadium with the baseball operation. Many pro
football teams had previously played in New York, including teams
called the Yankees and Bulldogs. None had survived in the wake of
New York Giant dominance. The Jets would succeed.

The football team proved to be a major part of the baseball
investor group, working hand in hand. Eventually, this led to the
New York Nets of the American Basketball Association (now an NBA
team) and the New York Islanders’ ice hockey team on Long
Island.

Tom Deegan, the public relations head of the Triborough Bridge
and Tunnel Authority, began a campaign to name the stadium after
Bill Shea. Shea did not agree. No stadium had ever been named after
a living person. Stadiums were named after teams, after cities, or
they were memorials to war dead. With America having won two world
wars in the previous four and a half decades, there were more than
enough monumental figures to choose from outside of Bill Shea.

Robert Moses tried to get it named after him, which might have
paved the way for a million canned lines about the “Promised Land”
and the “parting of the Red Sea” after beating Cincinnati, but
thankfully it did not “come to pass.” Most felt that Shea Stadium
was properly named. Bill Shea brought the team to New York and made
it possible to erect it. Moses unquestionably was the one who
actually built the structure.

With the benefit of 45 years hindsight, this accomplishment is
viewed for what it was and is. At the time, it was a feat of
engineering, a trendsetter in that it was built outside the
downtown inner city (although the same could be said of Yankee
Stadium). San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, completed in 1960, was
also outside the downtown corridor, but it was most definitely not
in the suburbs. Shea Stadium was in Flushing Meadows, Queens,
obviously a part of New York City proper, but especially back then
considered safe; a suburban enclave absent the kinds of problems
that plague urban cores.

This hopeful view of the neighborhood did take a major body blow
in 1964, the year of Shea Stadium’s opening. A woman named Kitty
Genovese was brutally, repeatedly attacked outside a Queens housing
complex. Despite her anguished pleas for help, nobody came to her
rescue or even called the police in a timely manner. People they
said they “didn’t want to get involved.” That became a catchphrase
for detached big city life; a portent for things to come. Despite
this, Queens did have a neighborhood quality. It was a place
firemen and cops raised their families, the home of the mythical
Archie Bunker of
All In the Family
fame
.

Moses “made over his city as dramatically as Caesar transformed
Rome,” wrote Peter Golenbock in
Amazin’: The Miraculous History
of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team
. Moses in fact fancied
himself a modern Caesar, calling his West Side commerce center The
Coliseum, and designing Shea to be an up-dated version of the
ancient edifice. Ambitious as this was, Moses failed to achieve
what builders of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Forum
were
able to do. At a cost of $20 million, financed through
the issuance of city bonds, Shea did draw raves in the beginning.
As recently as the early 1970s it held up as one of baseball’s
better facilities. The building of “cookie cutter” monstrosities in
Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia did not make it look bad.
Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, and the
Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, all built at roughly the same
period, were not substantially better. Candlestick was worse. But
the stadium by which all baseball parks were judged and to a large
extent still is, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, was head and
shoulders better.

Over time, Shea was referred to as a “dump,” a place of many
conspicuous faults. Baseball palaces in Baltimore, Cleveland, San
Francisco and many other cities just made it worse, while Dodger
Stadium continues to hold up, eliciting no complaints. Shea’s
original plusses became minuses. Being next to the airport seemed a
good idea, in that teams could get to and fro easily; fans could
fly in; hotels were close by. But the roar of jets during games
became a bad joke.

It had what seemingly all new stadiums of the 1960s seemingly
had
to have: lots of parking; 20,000 spaces worth. This was
the new frontier; the car and the freeway were gods to be
worshipped. Horace Stoneham chose an abominable location for
Candlestick for this reason alone. Lack of parking was cited as the
reason for the Dodgers’ exit. But Fenway Park has thrived without
it. Many modern stadiums in downtown centers have limited parking
and do just fine, partly because the game has changed.

In 1964 it was a family affair, affordable for a husband, wife
and two kids. Today, prices are so high that big league crowds are
often as not corporate types. They come one or two at a time, a
client outing. Many come to the stadium from a nearby, accessible
office instead of from a home, children in tow, which is a sad
statement.

Shea was also right on the subway lines, but they targeted an
audience that drove in from Long Island, Westchester County and
Connecticut. It was the same upscale constituency of people from
Manhattan Beach, Pasadena and Sherman Oaks that Walter O’Malley had
in L.A.

Its building in conjunction with the 1964 World’s Fair made it a
place of great celebration. Few stadiums have ever opened in a
timelier manner. Its first five to six years, Shea Stadium was
conspicuously modern and preferred over Yankee Stadium, located in
the increasingly unlivable Bronx. By the end of the 1960s, the
Bronx was becoming a war zone. A movie called
Fort Apache, The
Bronx
, depicted the situation in stark detail. But Yankee
Stadium renovated in time for the 1976 season. With the Yankees
returning to glory, against all odds the Stadium, as they call it,
stood tall and proud until its final sold-out game.

The Mets were trendsetters in a number of ways, not the least of
which was majority ownership by a woman. Joan Whitney Payson’s
father, Payne Whitney, was the third richest man in America during
the era of the Rockefellers and Carnegies. A minority shareholder
in the New York Giants, she loved baseball dearly. Hers was the
lone dissenting vote cast to keep the team in New York in 1957. She
then offered to buy the team from Horace Stoneham before selling
her interest.

Her sister married legendary CBS chairman William Paley. Her
circles included the famed Harriman clan, the Astors, the Bush’s of
Greenwich, Connecticut; and others who made up a modern version of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of Hamptons society. She bought her
way into an 80 percent ownership share and agreed with the writers
who said the team should be called the “Mets.”

“Okay, let’s go, Mets,” someone responded Mrs. Payson said she
liked the name.

Mets seemed to make sense. It was shortened from Metropolitans,
which symbolized what New York City and the tri-state area of New
York, Connecticut and New Jersey truly was. Of course, it was what
the civic opera house was called, the Metropolitan, known far and
wide as “The Met” (old and new). The team’s color scheme, orange
and blue, was a combination of both the Dodgers and Giants. Its
pinstripes resembled the Yankees. The “NY” insignia was similar to
both the Giants and Yankees.

Branch Rickey’s involvement in the team changed when it became
an expansion club in the National League instead of a linchpin of
the Continental League. Rickey had been the “selling point,” the
imprimatur of respectability convincing owners to avoid a “war”
with the CBL like the one the NFL was embarking on with the AFL.
They simply accepted expansion instead.

Mrs. Payson wanted Branch Rickey to be the general manager. At
80 years of age Rickey was very old and asked for an enormous
amount of money and control. It was his way of begging out of a job
beyond his years, since he correctly assumed the terms would not be
met. He was involved in the early Mets before returning to the St.
Louis Cardinals, the team he built more than 30 years earlier.
Rickey set up his nephew, Charles Hurth, to be the GM. Then George
Weiss was fired by the Yankees. It was irresistible and he was
brought on instead of Hurth.

Weiss developed a first class organization. While mistakes were
made, and the team floundered with veterans instead of youth in the
early years, it is important to note in light of later success that
it was not all such an accident as it has been portrayed. Branch
Rickey, George Weiss, Johnny Murphy, then Casey Stengel; scouts
like Rogers Hornbsy, Red Ruffing, Cookie Lavagetto, minor league
managers like Solly Hemus; brilliant baseball men built the New
York Mets!

Weiss was, like all the Bushies, a Yale graduate who came from
money, which he used to buy his way into a minor league ownership
position. From there his business acumen, flair for promotion, and
baseball eye elevated him from being an “owner” into being a
“baseball man,” a distinct difference. Weiss joined the Yankees.
His name and reputation grew. It was the Yankees. Anybody
associated with them was gold. But Weiss earned his reputation not
by riding on the success of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio,
but by building the team into the most efficiently run organization
in the game.

After the departure of DiMaggio, the Yankees were not as
talent-laden as in the “Murderer’s Row” years, but they won just as
consistently. Weiss was a big reason. The roster turned over quite
a bit. He was a trader, a “wheeler-dealer” and a farm system
developer. Weiss always stocked the club with key players who could
replace others just as they were going downhill just a little bit.
It was ruthless but that was the Yankee way.

Branch Rickey developed the first farm system in St. Louis and
later brought his organization to Brooklyn. Weiss perfected it,
mainly because the Yankees had the economic ability to do what
other teams could not. The club did not pay players high salaries,
preferring to tout their World Series shares, New York connections
and endorsements. They developed young players, sold them for
profit, then bought them back for less. He bought Joe DiMaggio,
Tommy Henrich and a handful of others for a total of $100,000, but
sold players for $2 million. He bamboozled other general managers
the way Billy Beane of the A’s is said to have done in the 2000s.
Weiss’s conscience never bothered him. He would have made a great
Roman Caesar, more Octavian than Julius.

Arthur Richman, after having worked for William Randolph Hearst,
was hired as the Mets’ director of promotions. A first class
organization was in place. They would play at the Polo Grounds for
a year then move into Shea Stadium in 1963 (a bog was discovered
while building, pushing back the opening to 1964). They had solid
ownership and a top-notch front office. All they needed was a field
manager.

Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel was the perfect choice. He
was
New York baseball. He had played in the World Series
with both Brooklyn and the New York Giants. An outfielder for John
McGraw, he batted .400 in the 1922 World Series victory over Babe
Ruth’s Yankees. He was a fan favorite and showman, with sparrows
flying from his hat, always a practical joker.

Stengel managed the Dodgers from 1934 to 1936 and
the Boston Braves from 1938-43, but failure at both led him to the
minor leagues. He managed at Kansas City, part of the Yankees’
chain, then led Oakland to the Pacific Coast League title in 1948.
His second baseman was a fiery kid from nearby west Berkeley, Billy
Martin.

In 1949 the Yankees hired him, causing howls of
protest. Casey Stengel was antithetical to the Yankee image,
although Babe Ruth had never been a Wall Street type himself. But
after Ruth the players, managers, even their fans, became “company
men.” Manager Joe McCarthy instilled in the team a “Yankee way” of
doing things; of carrying themselves, that covered the way they
dressed, the approach to practices and games, the conducting of
interviews and inter-action with the public. A Yankee was like a
Republican political candidate. Players like Lou Gehrig and Joe
DiMaggio performed majestic feats on the field, showing little in
the way of emotion. It was expected. Their fans cheered in polite
arrogance.

Now a “clown,” a Dodger reject, a minor league
outcast, was brought in to manage the
Yankees
. It was a
tough year to make a good showing, too. The 1949 Boston Red Sox
were a powerhouse led by the great Ted Williams at the height of
his career. The Yankees had faltered down the stretch the previous
season, losing out in a tight three-team race won by Cleveland over
the Red Sox and New York. Joe DiMaggio suffered a painful bone spur
in his heel and was out indefinitely. It was a transition period;
the great stars being replaced by untested youth. The New York
catcher was a St. Louis rube named
Yogi Berra
, of all
things.