THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (32 page)

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Union problems for the first time hung over
baseball, with a strike threatening Spring Training, but on
February 16 it was resolved. Bowie Kuhn, a Wall Street lawyer, was
the new Commissioner of Baseball. A classic confrontation loomed
with Marvin Miller, the new head of the player’s union. Miller came
from the rough ‘n’ tumble world of the Steel Workers’ Union. A lot
of accusations about Socialism and Communism – prime rhetoric of
the Vietnam era – were bandied about.

“Back in 1969 we were talking about nickels,” said
Ron Swoboda. “There were nickels and dimes on the table, and we
still had to hold out. It was finite sums of money, and we weren’t
changing the system, just improving the dollars in the system that
existed.”

Worry about picket lines never materialized, but at
the beginning of camp there were no organized workouts. Players
from the Pirates and Cardinals trained informally.

The “Tom and Jerry Show” reported to camp with
raises; $10,000 (to $35,000) for Seaver and $15,000 (to$25,000) for
Koosman.

“These are the two guys we call our untouchables,
and they are worth the money,” announced general manager Johnny
Murphy.

Nevertheless, there was a rumor that New York
offered Koosman to Pittsburgh for Freddie Patek, a diminutive
decent-field, no-hit shortstop who later was a key member of Kansas
City’s clubs in the 1970s. According to Bruce Markusen’s
Tales
from the Mets Dugout
, Pittsburgh rejected the one-to-one offer.
The question: what is more unbelievable; the Pirates turning down a
19-game-winning southpaw rookie flame-thrower, or the Mets
offering
such a prize for a guy who looked more like a
jockey than a baseball player?

When the Mets were reporting to Spring Training at
Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Florida on February 9 and 10,
1969, 15 inches of snow fell on New York City. Manhattan was plowed
and cleared. Queens remained blocked. Embattled Mayor John Lindsay
was blamed.

Ron Swoboda held out but reported to St. Petersburg
and signed by March 1. Swoboda had tried to entertain the writers
at the New York Baseball Writers banquet by allowing a straitjacket
to be placed on him, which he would then wiggle out of, Harry
Houdini-style. Swoboda never got out of the straightjacket and had
to be extricated backstage.

Swoboda, known as “Rocky,” was brash, outspoken, and
articulate. His unusual facial composition came from some Chinese
ancestry. His honesty got him in trouble on more than a few
occasions. He and Seaver clashed.

“Seaver had Hall of Fame written on him when he
walked into camp and pitched his first game in ’67,” Swoboda said.
“He was a finished product when he came there. I don’t ever recall
the sense of him being a rookie. He came out of the box a big
league pitcher, and there was this golden glow about him. This was
clearly
big
talent, intelligent, capable, controlled, and
awesome stuff.”

But they were not “tight.” Swoboda admitted he said
some things he should not, that he would have been “smart had I
hung around Seaver.” Seaver and Harrelson were “California guys”
and Seaver came from “a different socio-economic level,” which
apparently rankled the blue collar Swoboda. Plus Seaver was “a
younger, more aware person” than he was.

Swoboda debuted with the 1965 Mets, as did Tug
McGraw and Bud Harrelson. He found himself on the roster after Paul
Blair, a major prospect, was left unprotected, snatched up by
Baltimore. Casey Stengel first saw Swoboda when he was at the
University of Maryland in 1964. He hit a ball over the center field
fence at Miller Huggins Field in St. Petersburg, a feat never
previously accomplished by a Met.

Swoboda
was
blue collar as a player with a
blue collar background. Perhaps he was not a Baby Boomer
statistically (having been born in 1944 in Baltimore), but he was
one in reality. In the past, a guy like Swoboda might have been a
boxer, a heavy on the docks, but in the new post-war sensibilities
he found himself in college. He was bright and observant, yet head
strong.

His dad – “my hero” - was a World War II waist
gunner on a B-29 at Tinnian, a hot spot in the South Pacific
Theatre. After the war the elder Swoboda went into the automobile
business. He had done some boxing and passed on the toughness to
Ron, who admitted that there were times it was necessary to “go out
there to bust somebody’s head.”

Swoboda’s story is emblematic of why so many players
come from the West, where the weather is good and the programs were
excellent. In Maryland, he played a total of eight games his senior
year at Towson High School. When he floundered at some curve balls
he figured that was it; he did not have the stuff.

He went to the University of Maryland and was given
some baseball money but mainly he had to work his way through. He
met his future wife Cecilia, and in the summers played for a
legendary Baltimore semi-pro outfit called the Leone Boys Club,
sponsored by an Italian restaurant called Mama Leone’s. Featured
years later in
Sports Illustrated
, it was run by a local man
named Walter Youse and offered the kind of organized baseball that
Tom Seaver was playing with the Alaska Goldpanners. Reggie Jackson
was another of the many top players who emerged from the program,
which was so good college coaches sent prospects from all over.

It was with the Leone’s club that Swoboda improved
and was scouted, becoming a bonus prospect. The Mets offered him
$35,000. Swoboda was savvy enough to realize he could shop around
and get more, but this was around the time that Casey Stengel was
inviting the “youth of America” to come play for the Mets. It was
well known that players could get to the Major Leagues faster with
this organization than any other. It was the reason Swoboda signed
with New York, and played no small role in the club’s eventual
success.

While still a minor leaguer, Swoboda hit a home run
in an exhibition game in which the catcher was Gus Triandos, a big
name in his hometown of Baltimore. Triandos had worked at a car
dealership in the off-season and gotten to know Swoboda’s father,
who had invited him to be a dinner guest at the Swoboda home.

“This was pretty heady, pretty awesome,” Swoboda
said of the experience.

Swoboda impressed people and quickly moved up to
triple-A Buffalo, where they played at War Memorial Stadium. It was
“the most depressing place I have ever walked into . . . It looked
like a prison . . . The only thing missing from the clubhouse was
bars.” This was two decades
before
it was chosen for its
decrepit appearance in
The Natural
, starring Robert Redford.
It also became the sight of some of O.J. Simpson’s greatest
exploits with the Bills.

In Richmond, Virgina Swoboda observed “the black
guys and the dark-skinned Latinos” – Pumpsie Green, Choo Choo
Coleman, Elio Chacon and others – get off at another motel. It
opened Swoboda’s eyes. He had grown up in Baltimore, a “border
city” just a half-hour from Washington, D.C. Baltimore was
notorious for its Confederate sympathies during the Civil War. The
motel incident reminded him that Baltimore was
de facto
segregated, but he had “never thought to ask why.” Occasionally
white teams played black teams. On the sandlots there was mixing,
with no trouble; but there were schools for whites, schools for
blacks. A white section, a black section. It was not like Alabama,
with “white only” drinking fountains. It was subtle, almost
subversive. Now Swoboda had minorities who were teammates, friends,
and it hit him hard that “this was 1964,” the year President
Johnson got the Civil Rights Act going, yet here this was
happening.

As a kid Swoboda had been saved from a beating by
three white kids when some blacks intervened, for reasons he never
figured out. He was taught “you have no right to look down on
anybody. You respect everybody.” Before becoming the big, tough
“Rocky” of big league fame, he had been a sensitive kid, picked on
at school, and felt a kinship with the downtrodden.

He did not make a big deal of the segregated motel
incident, but filed it way in his memory. If he would ever have the
chance, he wanted to effectuate change. The “youth of America”
Casey Stengel called for would include a number of these kinds of
fellows; young, race-neutral whites, enlightened beyond the
previous generation. The Mets of the 1960s, run by blue bloods -
Yalies like George Weiss running the front office and Herbert
Walker a minority owner - saw the future.

The colleges were developing better and better
programs, and therefore more prospects. It was not just Southern
Cal; California, Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Michigan,
Santa Clara, Fresno State and Arizona State made their respective
marks in these years. Years later, Oakland A’s general manager
Billy Beane favored college players for a number of reasons, with
great success. This was a trait of the early Mets, and it would pay
dividends on and off the field. These guys were not as rough-hewn,
and in changing times they were the “new breed.” Swoboda was the
“new breed,”

Swoboda was with the Mets during Spring Training of
1965, when they featured two of the all-time busts, Danny Napoleon
and Duke Carmel. Carmel had once been a big Yankee prospect who
could not hit the broad side of a barn. Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle
and Jim Bouton started joking, “It looks like you’re just not a
south Florida hitter, Duke,” until he went hitless in the north
part of the state.

“You’re just not a Florida hitter, Duke.”

Finally, when the team went north and Carmel was
still oh-fer, it was determined he was not much good “north of the
Mason-Dixon Line,” either.

Swoboda absorbed Stengels’s teachings and made the
club in 1965. He became a favorite with the writers; intelligent,
quotable, a little controversial. He had an inquisitive way about
him. He found interests, like the New Orleans jazz scene, studying
the history of jazz and developing rapport with Southern blacks
like Jones and Agee, using Louis Armstrong as a focal point.

Swoboda demonstrated power with 19 home runs and, in
the mid-1960s, was the closest thing the Mets had to a star. This
may have effected his relations with Seaver and Hodges. When Seaver
came along he stole Swoboda’s thunder. Swoboda was a solid player,
but Seaver “had Hall of Fame written on him.” It was natural for
Swoboda to be a little jealous, because Tom had it all; the looks,
the USC pedigree, golden boy from California, everything. Then
Swoboda clashed with Hodges over the issue of platooning, figuring
he had established his
bona fides.

“My problem with Hodges was that I had just hit
.281, and I thought I was a big (expletive deleted) deal, and he
came in with his authority, and I thought I approached the game
pretty seriously myself,” Swoboda was quoted saying in Peter
Golenbock’s
Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most
Beloved Baseball Team
.

Swoboda would “butt in” when Hodges was getting on
another player, for no apparent reason other than to be a
contrarian. He had a problem with authority, questioning
everything. But Swoboda was sharp enough to appreciate Hodges’s
baseball acumen, and in later years admitted his impetuosity got
the better of him. He felt one of his biggest regrets was not
establishing good relations with Hodges, which hit home especially
hard when Hodges died after another heart attack in 1972.

During a 23-inning game with Houston in 1968, Hodges
took a bunt away from the Astros when he had his first and third
basemen come all the way to the dirt edge of the home plate circle.
It forced the batter, a pitcher who could bunt but not hit, to try
and swing away. He struck out.

“That’s pretty sharp,” observed Swoboda.

Swoboda resented “Tom Terrific” Seaver while the ace
pitcher stayed above it, but the outfielder’s relationship with
catcher Jerry Grote was just plain ornery.

“He was a red-ass Texan who loved to (expletive
deleted) with people but who didn’t like anybody to (expletive
deleted) with him,” said Swoboda. “It was a one-way street, it
seemed like, but we’ve all grown up and gotten a little older.
Grote is Grote, and we would not have been as good without him
behind home plate.”

The pitchers swore by their young catcher, who had
great duels with Cardinals speedster Lou Brock in an era in which
the stolen base was much more prevalent than it is today.

Just as the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers featured
star players from California who gave their teams a certain
personality, so too did the Mets. Seaver was the star from USC, and
his best friend was the skinny guy from Hayward, Buddy Harrelson.
But neither of these guys had “California personalities,” at least
not in the goofy, “hey, dude” beach boy stereotype; the Jeff
Spicoli character from
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
played
by Sean Penn.

Seaver was all business, like a Wall Street
executive. He was as buttoned-down as Richard Nixon, another
Californian who did not fit the profile. Harrelson was less
corporate, but he was quiet and serious. But another stereotype had
long existed: the flaky southpaw. The original was literally
nicknamed “El Goofy.” Vernon “Lefty” Gomez was one of the all-time
World Series greats during his Hall of Fame career with the
Yankees, but he was always playing practical jokes, saying
something off the wall, and making people laugh . . . at him or
with him.

Another “Lefty,” O’Doul, was not a pitcher but a
free spirit from San Francisco. Just breaking into the big leagues
in 1969 was the ultimate flaky left-hander, Bill “Spaceman” Lee of
the Boston Red Sox. At USC, Lee was a freshman when the junior
Seaver was a star. He viewed himself as a proletariat of the
Russian peasantry, Seaver as the Czar’s nephew or some such royalty
(even though Lee’s dad was a middle class executive and his uncle
the former dean of the USC business school).