THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (48 page)

On July 10, 1966, the New York Mets lost to
Pittsburgh, 9-4, to become the first team in Major League history
to lose 500 games in their first five seasons.

The New Testament tells us that after
Christ’s death and Resurrection, there was a period of time in
which The Word was slowly spread in Jerusalem, the Jewish
countryside, then throughout the Roman Empire. At some point, a
gathering took place, among believers and the curious. At that
gathering, the Holy Spirit made His presence known. People of
different tribes and language suddenly spoke in understanding of
each other, all proclaiming the Truth. It was a moment of
ecstasy.

After that, the people went about spreading
The Gospel; to Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia, then Europe; Greece, Italy,
and beyond. The aftermath of the Pentecost proved the mettle of the
believers, the disciples, and the apostles. It was not easy. The
Holy Spirit was not made as plainly known as at the Pentecost. It
was, simply, hard work.

Tom Seaver’s “birth” as a true New York
Sports Icon on July 9, 1969 should not be placed on an equal
footing with the Pentecost. It was only a baseball game, Seaver
only a man. But many truly felt that the 1969 “Amazin’ Mets” were
an honest to God
miracle.
Who can say? But those who were at
Shea Stadium that night – there were over 59,000, a million who say
they were – experienced something magical, moving, even spiritual.
This feeling was repeated in 1969, but in truth has never really
returned to the environs of Shea Stadium in all the years
since.

But just as the early Christians faced an
uphill battle after the initial glory of ascension followed by the
Holy Spirit, so to did the Mets. In both cases, the “high” of the
first event was followed by a naturally anti-climactic letdown. It
was in how both groups dealt with the harsher realities of everyday
life that they made their respective marks on the world.

****

It was close to one in the morning before
all the fans, the kids, the hangers-on and the writers finally
cleared out of Shea Stadium after Seaver’s near-perfect game.

Cubs manager Leo Durocher, 62, was not one
of them. He showered and spiffed up for an appointment at the
Waldorf Towers for a party thrown by Frank Sinatra. It was his
second night with Ol’ Blue Eyes this week. Earlier, the two tore it
up hot and heavy at a “Rat Pack” hangout called Jilly’s.

The third and final game of the series
between Chicago and New York was played on July 10, a Thursday
afternoon; getaway day. Gary Gentry, the Mets’ rookie right-hander
from Arizona State, was awakened at quarter after six in the
morning by his son, Chris, who was running a fever. He tried to get
some more shut-eye, but without success. Tom Seaver, not to mention
Jerry Koosman on Tuesday, had made it quite an act to follow. He
was excited but anxious. Gentry was 8-6 entering the day.

At 10:15 in the morning, embattled Mayor
John V. Lindsay stood in front of city hall inspecting a new piece
of equipment to be installed in the subway trains. Trailing in the
polls, he shifted the subject.

“I don’t know what could be more exciting
than the victory of the Mets,” he announced. “Perhaps that’s what
we should be talking about.”

Lindsay then walked to his office, and with
newsmen taking photos, made a big flourish of his phone call to
manager Gil Hodges. “Hello,” he said. “Gil Hodges? This is John
Lindsay. Tell Leo that Chicago is still the second city. We’re
bursting with pride over the Mets. I know it’s an uphill fight and
I think I know something about uphill fights. Let’s go, Mets.”

Lindsay’s next call was to Tom Seaver. “Your
fantastic pitching is giving you an unbelievable year,” he told
him. “I’m just sorry you lost the perfecto last night. But it was a
great job. Let’s go all the way, the pennant and then the
Series.”

Conventional wisdom did not favor either.
Lindsay’s comments to Hodges and Seaver were corny politico-speak,
but believe it or not it gave him momentum, just like the Mets.

At Shea, Gentry refused to show nerves,
insisting that he had pitched against the “best competition” at
Arizona State (crowned National Champions about a month earlier),
had “a good year at Jacksonville,” and at 22 he knew all that
needed to be known about the art of pitching. He was only two years
younger than Seaver. In the Cubs’ clubhouse, Durocher – looking
none the worse for wear despite another evening with Frank -
refused all interview requests, saving his pearls of wisdom for his
own pre-game radio show carried in Chicago.

“There’s no way the Mets can go on this
way,” he said, eschewing any semblance of the age old “respect your
opponents” theme. “We won a few games and were eight games ahead of
everybody. Then we came back down, and they will, too. Just wait
and see.”

Then Durocher regaled his audience with a
story about Don Mueller, one of his key players on the New York
Giants: “Mueller had a funny way of moving about. It was the way he
ran. There was one club – I can’t remember which one – that always
got on Mueller and called him half-man, half-woman. This used to
bother the hell out of me. I told Don that I’d give him $500 if
he’d go back at those guys and challenge them to come out of the
dugout and repeat it. But he never did.

“I told him all the time about $500 in my
locker just waiting for him, but what they said never seemed to
bother Mueller. Why, if they’d said that to me, I’d have gone out
there, I wouldn’t have cared how big the guys were. I might’ve
ended up with them jumping on my head, but I just wouldn’t have
taken it.”

Leo was not bluffing. He had been beaten up
by “big guys,” namely Babe Ruth. The Babe reportedly knocked him
within an inch of his life after Leo stole his watch. When Durocher
and legendary St. Louis player-manager Frankie Frisch were a
double-play combination on the famed Gas House Gang Cardinals,
Frisch and Durocher would “stomp all over” the runners.

Just prior to the game, Phil Pepe of the
New York Daily News
put in a person-to-person call to Casey
Stengel, at the time holding a cushy job as the vice-president of
the Valley National Bank in Glendale, California, the home of his
protégé, Rod Dedeaux. Stengel still “kept his hand in,” cheering
the Trojans on in the spring, attending Dodgers game with Rod in
the summer time.

“85 people have called me up,” Stengel told
Pepe. “They’re doin’ wonderful, beatin’ the big fellers. I’ll be
staying back here pullin’ for that team to win and win and win.

“They’re beatin’ Chicago and everybody
thought that was a strong club and the only time that club is
weakenin’ is now. When you commence to beat the big fellers, you’re
gettin’ good and that really shocked the people because they can’t
believe it. But when you beat them it means two games and I know
because I was in a number of pennant races and I win it.

“Like I said, they are the Amazin’ Mets.
They’re really hotshots now, hot potatoes. I ain’t made plans as
far ahead as October yet, but that’s only ‘cause Mrs. Payson has so
many friends that I don’t like to call her and ask for 100
tickets.”

Ernie Banks just stared at the Mets’
dugout.

“Look at those Mets,” he said. “They’re calm
for such a young team. That’s pretty strange.”

Bob Murphy gave the starting line-ups,
describing Gentry as “the tall, slender rookie right-hander from
Phoenix, Arizona.” Tommie Agee possessed “awesome power.” Wayne
Garrett was “the Huckleberry Finn” of the team. Long fouls had the
“legs” for homers, the eldest umpire was the “senior arbiter of the
umpiring crew.” Hitters “reach on a walk” or “reach on an error,”
and when the first Cub stepped in against Seaver in the ninth
inning Murphy advised the audience to “listen to the hush falling
over this big crowd.”

Gentry then went out and did his best
imitation of Seaver, setting Chicago down in the first inning with
ease. When Tommie Agee reached Bill Hands for a leadoff home run,
the crowd of 49,753 (36,012 paid) went – slightly subdued in the
afternoon hangover – ballistic again. The three-game attendance was
163,931 (123,752 paid).

Gentry carried a no-hitter into the fourth
(retiring Qualls, who heard many a boo). Then Ernie Banks drove in
a run to tie it, 1-1. Kranepool drove in a run and New York
regained the lead in the bottom half. In the fifth Qualls doubled
and pitcher Bill Hands bunted. Qualls got caught in a rundown but
Al Weis dropped the throw, so it was runners on first and second.
Kessinger’s base hit tied it. Then Billy Williams’s sacrifice fly
sent the go-ahead run home. Grote tried to catch Glenn Beckert
tagging on the play and stretching for second, but second baseman
Ken “tuning-fork hand” Boswell missed it and another run scored,
making it 4-2. Then Ron Santo took Gentry deep for a two-run homer.
Just like that Chicago had a 6-2 victory and a four-game lead.

On “Kiner’s Corner,” Santo and Beckert were
wary of downplaying New York as Leo was blithely doing. “The Mets
are no flukes,” Santo said of the Mets. Two days earlier he said
they had an infield that could not play for Chicago’s triple-A club
in Tacoma. “I’m not joshing. They’re here. They’ve got a fine
pitching staff.”

“I’m glad to see the Mets winning,” said
Beckert. “Of course, I’ll be glad if they finish second.”

When Dick Selma saw the New York press crowd
into the Cubs’ clubhouse, he crowed, “Here come the
front-runners.”

Speaking of front-runners, Commissioner of
Baseball Bowie Kuhn chose the winning clubhouse to bring his sons
into. Durocher immediately took up an argument with Kuhn about
“umpire’s judgment,” complaining about a play in Montreal filled
with the word “lovable” in place of words that start with “f” and
end with “k,” presumably to avoid stinging Kuhn’s son’s ears. The
Wall Street attorney listened bemusedly, then concluded, “Well,
Leo, as I said before, it must have been the umpire’s
judgment.”

“Leo sure does have a nice way with words,”
stated George Kuhn, 17.

When Leo was asked if the “real Cubs” showed
up on that day, he said, “No. These were the real Mets.”

Jack Lang of the
Long Island Press
asked Hodges if the team “let down today.”

“It’s not possible to be on Cloud Nine that
long without letdowns,” replied Hodges. “The players are human, you
know.”

Gary Gentry, the losing pitcher, announced
that he planned to get “bombed” drinking beer that night.

Las Vegas oddsmaker “Jimmy the Greek”
Snyder’s mid-season odds: Cubs, 1-3; Mets, 3-1 (up from 75-1 in the
pre-season), and the Cardinals, the pre-season favorites, now at
75-1.

On July 11, 1964 the Mets committed six
errors in an 11-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. Prior to 1969,
they had won only once on July 11, in the first game of a
double-header in 1968.

The July 11 edition of the
New York
Post
revealed that for the third time, a New York Met would
start in the upcoming All-Star Game, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium
in Washington, D.C. Cleon Jones made the outfield with Atlanta’s
Hank Aaron and Pittsburgh’s Matty Alou. He beat out the likes of
Pittsburgh’s Roberto Clemente, Cincinnati’s Pete Rose, St. Louis’s
Curt Flood, and San Francisco’s Willie Mays, most of whom had good
seasons in 1969. Jones was hitting .347. Previous Mets All-Star
starters were Ron Hunt (1964) and Jerry Grote (1968).

The Mets played the Montreal Expos on July
11, a Friday night at Shea Stadium. After overcoming Tom Seaver to
win the opener, 11-10, Montreal settled into predictable
mediocrity, at one point losing 20 straight games.

That day, Seaver, Koosman, Gentry, Nolan
Ryan and Don Cardwell filmed a Vitalis commercial with Gil Hodges.
The Mets were getting endorsement deals. Gentry and Seaver were
also tapped to sing in a Royal Crown Cola ad.

The Mets went with Jim McAndrew, a 25-year
old husband and father from Lost Nation, Iowa. He had a psychology
degree – some said he thought too much – from the University of
Iowa.

The news in baseball that day centered on
excerpts from Ken “Hawk” Harrelson’s autobiography, running in
Sports Illustrated
. Harrelson played for Hodges at
Washington in 1967. He wrote that the current Mets’ manager was
“unfair, unreasonable, unfeeling, incapable of handling men,
stubborn, holier-than-thou, and ice cold.”

“It’s all just a publicity stunt to promote
the book,” was Koosman’s reaction.

“Maybe Mr. Harrelson in his immaturity
couldn’t tell the difference between professional treatment and
somebody picking on him,” said Seaver.

“Gil handles player like men, not babies,”
said Ed Charles.

“I’ve heard that holier-than-thou
description of a dozen managers,” said Swoboda.

“I’ve got no comment,” said Hodges.

With the Cubs losing to Philadelphia that
day, the Mets had a chance to regain a game in the standings. At
the batting cage, Tom Seaver walked past a writer and said “hi” to
him, calling him by his name.

“You’re the first ballplayer who ever
remembered my name,” the writer told Seaver, who had recently
transferred his major at USC from pre-dentistry to public
relations.

“ ‘New breed,’ ” Seaver said.

That night, the expansion Expos looked like
the 1929 Philadelphia A’s, slugging Jim McAndrew out of the box en
route to an 11-4 win that had restless Mets fans getting drunk and
arrested in the stands on a Friday night. It was a relapse.

Danny Frisella, a California kid who like
Tom Seaver had pitched for the Alaska Goldpanners, was unable to
hold Montreal, allowing four earned runs in two innings after
replacing McAndrew.

Heading home to his Manhattan apartment,
Frisella told Dick Schaap, “My fast ball was as straight as an
arrow. . .”