THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (30 page)

This blending of sports theatre with high hopes for
peace originally started with the rock music of the era. Crowds
would gather to hear the great bands of the 1960s, many of whom
sang songs of peace, convincing themselves the energy would
translate into action. At one legendary Doors concert, Jim Morrison
sang a song called “The Unknown Soldier,” with lyrics that
included:

“It’s all over,

For the Unknown Soldier.

It’s all over,

The war is over.”

In the euphoria of the moment, people were treating
the words as real, as if it was a lyrical “press conference”
announcing the end of hostilities, with concert-goers spreading
quasi-hysterical messages that, “Jim’s ended the war, man; it’s
over.”

If a guy like Joe Namath said we should get out of
Vietnam, then people listened to him. Athletes were among the most
conservative members of society. In 1968-69, many served in
National Guard and Army Reserve units, usually arranged by the
teams to satisfy military duty without actually being on active
duty or, worse, seeing combat. Only one pro football player, Bob
Kalsu of the Buffalo Bills, died in Vietnam. Tom Seaver, who was
always seemingly smarter than everybody else, had done his Marine
stint in 1962-63, before it got hot “in country,” as they called
it. He was done with his service commitment. Many Mets and Jets had
to give up a weekend a month and two weeks a year, sometimes
missing games in the process, at Reserve depots like Camp Drum, New
York.

“Seaver had done that bit,” said Ron Swoboda. It
gave him just a little more credibility than others. The athletes
were not longhaired “pinkos” fouling the nation’s campuses and
streets. They were the new
cause celebres
, and nobody more
so than Namath’s Jets. Athletes started to find themselves
approached about lending their name to the cause of peace.

As Namath was shocking the world, Seaver was
finishing up final exams at the University of Southern California.
He told people later that the last thing on his mind was the Mets’
accomplishing a similar feat. However, as he lifted weights and
worked out with Rod Dedeaux’s defending National Champion Trojans
in the winter sunshine of Los Angeles, the ever-optimistic Seaver
could not help but have . . . high hopes.

Despite Seaver’s Rookie of the Year performance in
1967, it had been a year of reversal; a 10
^th
place
finish after ending up ninth the previous season. Wes Westrum was
fired. During the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and St.
Louis Cardinals, a plan was hatched to attract Gil Hodges, then
managing the Washington Senators, to the Mets. When approached,
Hodges expressed an interest, and why not? He had done a good job
in Washington, but the Senators were not threatening to become
contenders any time soon. Hodges was of course a Brooklyn icon, and
it was the Dodgers whose memories were most closely associated with
the early Mets. He had married a Brooklyn girl, lived in the
borough during his playing days; shopped in the stores, sent his
children to the schools, worshipped in the local church. After
accompanying the Dodgers to L.A., he had returned to New York with
the Mets in 1962 and 1963. Despite having lost all his skills, he
was a fan favorite. Gil was one of the game’s all-time gentlemen
and good guys, but as a manager he was no pushover. He seemed to be
just right for the times, the kind of man who could handle the
modern player, the black player, the Latin American player. A deal
was worked out with New York sending a prospect who never panned
out and $100,000 to the cash-strapped Senators. Hodges was the
Mets’ manager for 1968.

“The ownership, Donald Grant, Herbert Walker, and
Luke Lockwood, quickly came to me and said, ‘We want you to do
whatever you want to do, but we would like you to take a long look
and think about Gil Hodges,’ ” recalled Bing Devine of his last
move with the Mets before going back to St. Louis.

The deal was effectuated in large measure because
Devine’s assistant, Johnny Murphy and Washington GM George Selkirk
were old Yankees teammates. Murphy took over as the Mets’ GM.
According to Whitey Herzog, a member of the Mets’ front office at
the time,
he
was the man who got things done.

“When left the Mets, they made John
Murphy the general manager,” said Herzog. “John was a fine man, but
his nickname was ‘Grandma’ – he just couldn’t make a decision. That
was fine with me, since I moved in to make all the tough ones for
him . . . He let me run the organization pretty much as I
wanted.”

The outspoken Herzog told writer Peter Golenbock
that M. Donald Grant “was a stockbroker who didn’t know beans about
baseball but thought he did. I’ve run into guys like Donald Grant a
lot in my career, and everywhere they show up, they’re
trouble.”

A similar situation occurred at this time in Los
Angeles, where industrialist and media magnate Jack Kent Cooke,
owner of the Lakers, fancied himself a basketball expert.

“He thought he knew,” said Jerry West. “He didn’t
know.”

“All of us knew Gil, knew who he was and what kind
of ballplayer he had been,” said Bud Harrelson. “He brought
credibility to the team as soon as he arrived. Because he had come
from the American League, he kind of just let us play in 1968 and
didn’t presume he knew everything about the league and the Mets.
But you always knew he was in charge. Gil was a big, strong man,
and I don’t think anyone wanted to find out how strong.”

Ken Harrelson, a star hitter with the Red Sox of
that era, said Hodges was a “tyrant.” Jerry Koosman, a 1968 rookie,
heard that and expected to see that side of him. Instead, “Gil was
just the opposite. I found him to be a fun person, joking around a
lot, a good guy all year.” However, once 1969 rolled around, “he
got tougher.” Koosman surmised, correctly, that “Maybe it was
because he felt he had a team that could win. He became stricter
that year,” but he was “always fair.”

Ed Kranepool symbolized the “old Mets.” He had been
there since the beginning. A high school
wunderkind
and
local product, Kranepool had gone through the motions for six years
before Hodges arrived. He had little incentive to do much more than
that. The team was bad, if not outright comical. Little was
expected of anybody. Hodges inspired him that maybe he could
experience true excellence before hanging up his spikes. He also
sensed that the fans were ready to close an old chapter and start a
new one.

“I always felt that New York fans were and are the
greatest in the world,” he said. “They were always knowledgeable,
and by 1967 last place wasn’t fun anymore.” When Hodges came on the
scene, “It wasn’t a matter of just showing up any more . . . so
many guys were used to losing that they had negative habits. It’s
contagious.”

Ed Charles was an American League veteran, where he
had seen Hodges operate. He had just a few good years left and had
never been with a winner.

“Hodges changed the losing mindset,” Charles said in
Miracle Year: 1969 Amazing Mets and Super Jets
by Bill
Gutman. “He was an upfront type of manager, very knowledgeable
about the game, very firm in what he expected from the players. He
told us when we were out there he expected 100 percent effort. If
we couldn’t give it because of a physical reason, he wanted us to
tell him, because he wouldn’t put us on the field.”

This required a level of trust and team sacrifice
that was unusual for ball players. Seaver, for instance, told his
manager when he was tired instead of fibbing so he could stay in
the game past the point of effectiveness. It was a fine line that
some could perceive as a lack of guts, but Hodges knew Seaver left
it all out on the mound. His drop-and-drive pitching style required
a level of fitness, strength and endurance like few others. The two
developed rapport that quickly became mutual respect.

The young 1968 Mets drew well but were totally
overshadowed by the Jets. Young players Bud Harrelson, Jerry Grote,
and Ron Swoboda improved. Young pitchers Nolan Ryan, Dick Selma,
and Jim McAndrew showed promise. Veterans Phil Linz, Al Weis, Art
Shamsky, Don Cardwell, Ron Taylor, and J.C. Martin gave the team
stability. Cleon Jones looked to be on the verge of stardom. His
childhood pal from Mobile, Alabama, Tommie Agee, came over from
Chicago. Agee hit .273 with 22 home runs and 86 RBIs in 1967,
swiping 44 bases for manager Eddie Stanky’s “Go Go White Sox” as
they battled for the pennant until the last week. But in the “Year
of the Pitcher” (1968) Agee was overwhelmed. His .217 batting
average, five homers, 13 stolen bases and
17 runs batted in
were pathetic.

Seaver and Koosman dominated on the mound, Koosman,
a native of Minnesota, had signed in 1964. Without the college
polish of Seaver, he took longer to develop, but had come up at the
end of the 1967 campaign. Nobody could have predicted his 19-win,
2.08 ERA performance in 1968. Despite winning three more games,
Koosman said, “I probably wasn’t on the same level as Seaver.”
There was no sense of rivalry between the right-handed Seaver and
the southpaw Koosman, other than healthy one-upmanship. Koosman was
happy to let Seaver take the lead as the “face” of the team.
Koosman was not the kind personality who needed extra
attention.

Hodges had played for Casey Stengel with the Mets,
and even though the Dodgers teams he starred on had a “set in
stone” line-up, he became a disciple of Stengel’s platoon system.
It was a matter of necessity, especially in the offensive doldrums
of 1968. Swoboda clashed with the manager, but most saw its
benefits.

“When Gil got there I was coming off my best year in
1967, thought I had arrived as a Major Leaguer, and probably
thought I was a little more important than I should have,” Ron
Swoboda recalled. The young outfielder was head strong, but
introspective. He rubbed some people the wrong way and was
irritated by others, but he had the ability of discernment; to
study things, learn from his faults, and admit his mistakes. “I was
never cool with” the platooning, “but in the end Gil proved that he
knew what he was doing.”

The Mets finished in ninth place with a 73-89 mark,
one game better than Houston in 1968. It was a tremendous
improvement over all previous Mets teams, but the high hopes of
individual players still looked unrealistic entering 1969. The lack
of offense seemed to be impossible to overcome. After Seaver and
Koosman, the only pitcher with a winning record was Cal Koonce. Tug
McGraw had seemingly lost ground. Nolan Ryan was a project like the
Pyramids or the Tennessee Valley Authority. However, on September
24, 1968, Hodges suffered a heart attack on a hot day in Atlanta.
It was mild. The consensus was that he could return in 1969.

1969 offered an intriguing new twist on the pennant
races. Expansion had come to baseball via the Los Angeles (by ‘69
California) Angels and Washington Senators in the American League
(1961); the Mets and Houston Colt .45s (by ’69 Astros) in the
National League (1962). Seven years later the Seattle Pilots (now
Milwaukee Brewers in the National League) and Kansas City Royals
(fulfilling a special interest promise in the wake of Charlie O.
Finley moving the A’s to Oakland in ’68) were added to the American
League. The National’s saw the addition of the San Diego Padres and
the first Canadian team, the Montreal Expos (now the Washington
Nationals).

With this second round of expansion came East and
West Divisions. For the first time teams played a staggered
schedule instead of facing every club in the league an equal number
of times. Teams would play 18 games with divisional opponents, 12
against non-division foes. The National League West featured San
Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Cincinnati and, despite
being just a relatively short drive from the Atlantic Ocean,
Atlanta.

The planners wanted to maintain some of the
traditional rivalries. The East included obvious members like the
Mets, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Montreal. Chicago and St. Louis
were deemed too inseparable a rivalry to split up so they were in
the East instead of Atlanta and Cincinnati. For those Mets fans and
players who were either crazy, dumb or overly optimistic, the East
Division meant a “good news, bad news” scenario. The good news was
they only needed to beat five teams to win the division. The bad
news was the best team, St. Louis was in the East. Chicago promised
a big year under Leo Durocher, too. A very scary play-off loomed
for the winners; after battling for 162 games, a too-short best of
five series would determine the World Series participants.

The divisional format had the effect of diluting the
“rivalry” with the Giants and Dodgers, the two greatest draws at
Shea Stadium. Some baseball experts predicted a possible .500
finish, but Las Vegas set the odds at winning the pennant, which
meant first the division and then the play-off, at 100-to-one.

Ron Swoboda later said he thought the 1969 Mets
“could go out and play with anybody,” but his limited expectations
were the .500 mark. “I don’t think anyone came out of Spring
Training aiming at the Moon.”

Bud Harrelson recalled Hodges holding Spring
Training meetings in which he said New York had lost 36 one-run
games the previous season, and that, “If you won half of them,
you’d be in contention.” Hodges put it in logical, easy to
understand terms; if each pitcher won just one more game than he
lost, this goal could be achieved. Since it seemed obvious that
Seaver and Koosman would do much better than that, optimism
soared.

Kranepool admitted that in other years he and his
teammates “just showed up,” but Gil “wanted us to learn how to win,
to be able to find ways to win.” This was the key; finding new,
inventive ways to win, since in the past they had specialized in
new, inventive ways to lose.