THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (20 page)

The Red Sox got out of the gate fast. But New York
hung tough. In June, DiMaggio returned in a four-game series at
Fenway Park that will be lauded over as long as men speak of
baseball. The Bronx Bombers beat out Williams and the Bosox for the
1949 league pennant, then knocked off Jackie Robinson’s Dodgers for
the World title. They repeated in 1950.

A typical example of the Yankee machine came in the
1951 World Series against the Giants. The Giants had momentum like
no team before after coming back against Brooklyn, winning the
pennant in a play-off on the Thomson “walk off” homer. In the minds
of many, it seemed impossible they could be beaten. They were a
team of destiny. The Yankees dispatched them in six with the ease
of a corporation buying up a competitor, all while transitioning
from the retiring DiMaggio to the rookie Mickey Mantle. In 1953
they won a record fifth straight World Series, a mark that still
stands today. Stengel’s teams won nine World Series between 1949
and 1960. It was the most dominant run in baseball history, even
greater than the Ruth-Gehrig or Gehrig-DiMaggio Yankees of the
1920s and ‘30s.

The Yankees of the 1950s were certainly talented,
featuring superstar pitcher Whitey Ford and mega-superstar center
fielder Mantle, but the dominance they displayed was beyond their
abilities. It must be attributed to Stengel. Stengel and Weiss did
not play a pat hand. The line-up changed. Kansas City became their
de facto
“triple-A club.” Young players replaced old with
little regard for a veteran’s prior service. When the National
League was integrating wholesale, the Yankees did so in small steps
and with a particular “kind” of player: Christian, family man, make
no waves. Read: Elston Howard.

Stengel revolutionized the platoon system, using
righties against southpaw pitchers, lefties against right-handed
hurlers; late-inning defensive replacements, pinch-runners,
pinch-hitters, double-switches. The old “starter goes nine”
mentality made way for a functional bullpen of middle relievers,
set-up men and closers. As great as the New York Yankees were, they
won more than they should have. A comparison of the Dodgers’ and
Yankees’ line-ups and pitching staffs in that decade very well may
favor the Dodgers in terms of talent, but Casey’s Yankees beat them
over and over again. Weiss kept costs down. The platoon system
reduced players’ statistics, which was used against them in
contract negotiations.

“You didn’t hit 30 homers.”

“You didn’t drive in 100 runs.”

Whitey Ford’s record was less than it could have
been. Stengel used him in a specific manner, mainly at Yankee
Stadium where the left field “death valley” allowed him to get away
with mistakes against right-handed sluggers. His World Series
appearances were timed for games at the Stadium, not Ebbets Field.
Once the pennant was clinched, Ford was held out of the rotation to
“rest up” for the Series. This often occurred with a couple weeks
left in the regular season. The practice cost him 20 wins on
numerous occasions, which of course was used as the excuse to keep
his salary down. The refrain always was, being a Yankee meant the
Series money, plus endorsements and
ad hoc
Big Apple
advantages. Nobody rocked the boat.

Looking at Stengel’s career as a player, failed
manager in Brooklyn and Boston, then his Mets years, there seem to
be two Caseys. When he came to the Mets, he reverted back to the
“clown” he had been before his Yankee tenure. In truth, Casey was
always the same. The imprimatur of Yankee pinstripes and glory,
however, made him an elder statesman; his “double talk” words of
wisdom, his rubbery on-field antics suddenly works of genius as he
led the “corporation” to record profits. He loved to drink,
regaling writers with wild stories well into the evening. He may
have been the most colorful, quotable figure the game has ever
known. Eventually, his age, his “un-Yankee”
persona
, and
maybe even his popularity, made him vulnerable.

He personally admitted mistakes that cost New York
the 1960 World Series in seven games to Pittsburgh; mainly a
failure to have Ford available in the final game because of the way
he used Whitey. Casey was unceremoniously let go. The success of
the Yankees continued for several more years, with new manager
Ralph Houk using Ford in a manner that allowed him to enjoy his
best years ever. This casts some doubt on Stengel, but Houk was
unable to sustain the run as Stengel had. In the end, credit for
such a long showing of dominance must be given to the “Ol’
Perfessor.”

No sooner was Stengel fired than Weiss, also fired
by the same team, decided he would manage the New York
Metropolitans. Stengel’s wife, Edna urged him not to do it. He had
other offers, including a lucrative memoir in the
Saturday
Evening Post
and a cushy banking position out in California.
The allure of baseball and maybe even proving the Yankees’ wrong in
New York was too great. His hiring made the Mets’ “good guys” and
the Yankees’ villains.

Stengel had no pretense whatsoever. He loved
everybody and gave his time to fans and old acquaintances. Once the
team arrived at two in the morning to their hotel in San Francisco
where the Women's Republican Club of California was holding a
convention.

“. . . These old dowagers had waited up for him,”
recalled beat writer Jack Lang. “They were standing in the lobby,
and he stood there regaling them with stories for another hour. He
was a charmer with everybody. He really was.”

“All the kids in New York are growing up, and they
want to see the Metsies, the Metsies, the Metsies,” he told
interviewers. He put out an “invitation” to the “youth of America”
to come “try out” for the Mets, an unprecedented approach that
seemed to say that the club was so bad they would accept scrubs,
walk-ons, unknowns, since few players ever really “try out.”

That term is a misnomer, at least in the modern era
and especially since the institution of the draft in 1965. People
who said they had “a try-out” with some team or another use the
term loosely. It is a sure indication the “player” knows not what
he speaks of and never was a prospect. “Try-outs” are occasionally
held for all comers, but these events are jokes, PR stunts in which
500 hopefuls show up and one or two is signed, if any. Half the
time a player signed from one of these events is the guy who ran
the fastest 40-yard dash. If a legitimate player is signed out of
such a try-out, he is not a guy “discovered” there. Rather, he is
probably a known quantity, recently released by another
organization perhaps; or a local college player of some recognized
ability who for various reasons (injury, grades, quit the team?)
was not drafted or signed. Modern scouting is a sophisticated
process in which few players go “under the radar.” Some clubs
sponsor “winter league” teams called the “Phillies rookies,”
“Dodgers rookies” or some such thing, but many scrubs exaggerate
their claims to professional or “prospect” status based on nebulous
“semi-pro” affiliations. But Stengel seemed to indicate that all
comers were welcome and actually had a shot. He knew better but the
PR value was terrific.

“The Mets is a very good thing,” said former
Brooklyn pitcher Billy Loes. His statement seemed to reflect the
comedy of those early Mets in a way that nobody talks anymore.
“They give everybody a job. Just like the WPA.” The WPA was the
Works Projects Administration, a New Deal construction outfit
started by President Franklin Roosevelt (which as the Venona
Project later revealed was rife with Communist espionage).

Hobie Landrith was made the first Met ever picked in
the 1961 National League expansion draft. “You gotta start with a
catcher or you’ll have all passed balls,” Stengel explained. This
of course is true, but somehow Stengel had a way of talking as if
to a six-year old child.

“Stengel was a comedian, and he was bright, and he
had total recall so there wasn’t anything that didn’t happen that
Stengel couldn’t refer to, one way or another,” said sportswriter
Stan Isaacs.

Stengel could see through phonies. He immediately
determined that Howard Cosell was just that, but if a reporter was
honest Stengel liked them and gave young writers attention, feeding
egos. According to Robert Lipsyte of the
New York Times
, one
of the reasons so many of the early Mets’ stories had a comic angle
was because the
Times
de-valued sports. They decided to make
the Mets more of a feature than a legitimate sports story, and
nobody wanted to miss a thing the “Ol’ Perfessor” said.

“I couldn’t drink along with him, obviously, but I
didn’t want to leave early, just in case he said something,”
Lipsyte said of Stengel.

Weiss and Stengel decided to go for veteran talent
instead of youth, for several reasons. In 1961, the Los Angeles
Angels used veterans with some success, which carried over to
actual pennant contention in 1962. The Mets wanted to satisfy the
old Dodgers’ and Giants’ fans by bringing back some of the names
from the past, in the hopes that they might have a little magic
left and would sell tickets. The magic was gone but they did sell
tickets. The other National League expansion franchise, the Houston
Colt .45s, went for youth.

Among players selected after Landrith in the
original draft were Don Zimmer, Roger Craig, and Gil Hodges. Others
included Jay Hook, Bob Miller, Lee Walls, Gus Bell, Ed Bouchee,
Chris Cannizzaro, Elio Chacon, Choo Coleman, Ray Daviault, John
DeMerit, Sammy Drake, Al Jackson, Felix Mantilla, Bobby Gene Smith,
Jim Hickman and Sherman Jones. Richie Ashburn, Frank Thomas, Clem
Labine and Charlie Neal, all talents, were also included. Ashburn
and Thomas still had some juice left.

The 1962 Mets were a force of nature. If there is any possible
truth to George Burns’s statement in
Oh, God!
that the1969
Mets were his
Last Miracle
, then the ’62 version was somehow
struck by supernatural forces, too. It was a comedy of errors, of
flukes, of crazy plays, players and situations, almost defying
logic, therefore lending credence to the notion that the deity got
involved. Never has a team played so badly, and never has failure
been so loved.

Certainly the “Daffiness Boys” were popular, but Dazzy Vance was
a Hall of Famer, Babe Herman a line drive impresario. It seems
completely improbable that a bad team could be received so well in
New York City. Today it would not happen. This is a town built on
excellence. The George Steinbrenner mentality, the Donald Trump way
of thinking, has completely overshadowed the old concepts. But with
the Dodgers and Giants gone, with the Yankees resembling a shark in
a tank full of minnows, somehow the whole thing played.

That spring, Stengel’s explanations of his team were classics of
baseball humor, even though it seems the “Ol’ Perfessor” was deadly
serious in his analysis. After announcing that “Chacon” was batting
second, he got into this
tete a tete
with
New York
Post
columnist Leonard Schecter and a few others:

“Chacon?” asked Schecter.

“Mantilla,” said Stengel. It sounded liked like
scintilla
. “I mean Chacon. I mean I said Chacon, but I meant
Mantilla . . . I don’t know who to hit third. If it’s a
right-handed pitcher, which it is, I might go with Bell in right
field . . . You asked me for a line-up and I can’t give it to you .
. . I got two center fielders. Christopher and Smith.”

Christopher was in the minors.

“Christopher?” inquired Schecter.

“Ashburn,” said Casey. “Smith and Ashburn. Whichever one I play
I’ll put leading off.”

This contradicted previous Stengelese about Neal leading off,
Mantilla hitting second . . .

“Didn’t you say that Neal was going to lead off?” asked
Schecter.

“Well, put Neal third and Mantilla second,” as if Schecter was
making the decisions and Casey now just offering advice.

From there: “Let’s see. You can put Hodges fifth. No, put Bell
fifth. Hodges sixth.” He looked at a reporter’s notebook. “Better
write it down so I’ll remember it.” Now the scribes were his
secretaries. “And put Marshall along with Hodges. Maybe
I’ll put Hodges in for a while and then Marshall.”

Batting fourth?

“Thomas. That’s right, Case?” a writer inquired. “Thomas in left
field batting fourth.”

“That’s right,” assented Casey, followed by some discussion of
Don Zimmer hitting seventh and playing third.

Schecter: “One more thing. Who’s the catcher, Landrith or
Ginsberg?”
“It’s Ginsberg or Landrith,” replied Casey. “Ginsberg caught him
pretty good. I’ll decide
when I get there.”

“This was the process by which Casey Stengel made up his line-up
every day,” Schecter, whose bright idea became
Ball Four
in
1970, later recalled.

Perhaps Stengel talked like this when he was with the Yankees,
maybe even made out his line-up that way – although when you have
Mantle, Berra, Howard and the like it tends to make itself – but
the Mets, as Robert Lipsyte pointed out, were a
feature
story
, not a sports story. The press coverage looked for this
angle and played it up. Still, there were comedies that went beyond
seeming coincidence. The names of players certainly had a ring.

There was “Butterball” Botz, who apparently was one of the
“youth of America” Casey invited to try out . . . and fail. It was
like the old Dodgers of the “Daffiness” era, up-dated now to “Choo
Choo” Coleman and “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry.

The opener told the whole story in a nutshell. According to
legend,
nine Mets got stuck in an elevator
, making them late
for the first game in St. Louis, an 11-4 loss. They dropped their
first nine games and celebrated the first win, behind Jay Hooks at
Pittsburgh, as if the Series had been won.