THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (52 page)

“Oh, you’re the young man who won for the
Mets when they were losing,” President Nixon said to him.

Seaver told him it was great to finally be a
winner.

Nixon smiled. He had lost the 1960
Presidential election, the 1962 California Gubernatorial race, and
was counted out by many before attaining the Presidency the
previous November.

“I know what you mean,” he said to
Seaver.

Mother Nature did not oblige, raining out
the last daytime All-Star Game. Pushed back to Wednesday, Detroit’s
Denny McLain eschewed the honor of starting for American League
manager Mayo Smith because he had to make a dental appointment.

McLain was one of the true characters in the
game’s history, which is saying something. As a young pitcher, he
was Seaver’s equal, no questions asked. An absolute future Hall of
Famer, McLain was baseball’s last 30-game winner in 1968, when he
pitched Detroit to the World Championship over Bob Gibson’s
Cardinals. In 1969 he was almost as good, on his way to 24 wins and
a repeat Cy Young award.

McLain liked to play the piano in hotel bars
and hang out with gamblers. In 1970 he was suspended by Bowie Kuhn
for nefarious gambling activities. When he returned, all the
greatness was sapped out of him. It was as if God came down from
Heaven and
removed
his ability as penance for wasting His
gifts. After retirement, which was essentially the point where
nobody wanted any part of him, his name stayed in the news. Every
few years, it seemed, McLain got arrested or indicted on extortion
or racketeering charges of one kind or another, eventually doing
some serious prison time. His wife was perhaps the most remarkable
woman in history. She stuck with him throughout all of it.

Nixon had to miss the game to attend the
splashdown of the astronauts in the Pacific. Vice-President Spiro
Agnew, the former Governor of next-door Maryland, threw out the
first ball. In those by gone days Republicans were cheered by D.C.
crowds, kind of.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, the National League
was vastly superior to the American League in All-Star Games. The
original reason – the N.L. integrated better, faster and by bigger
numbers, thus playing aggressive “National League baseball” – was
no longer a prevalent factor by 1969. American League teams had,
for the most part, caught up socially with rosters filled by
talented black, Latino, and as a vestige from pre-Castro days, a
fair number of Cuban stars.

But the National League had gained the edge
with Jackie Robinson’s signing. The American League played the
losing game of trying to inadequately match the Yankees. Now, even
the Yankees were mediocre. The American’s had not won since 1962 at
Wrigley Field. The 1969 classic featured a galaxy of all-time
greats and near greats. Mel Stottlemyre of New York started for the
Americans, but he and successor John “Blue Moon” Odom of the A’s
got knocked all around the park, ending any pretense of
competitiveness in the first couple of innings. McLain arrived from
the dentist in time to toss an inning.

The American League roster demonstrated that
by 1969 at least, the junior circuit was just as good, just not in
All-Star Games. Featuring such stalwarts as Minnesota’s Rod Carew
and Harmon Killebrew, Oakland’s Reggie Jackson and Sal Bando,
Baltimore’s Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell,
Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski, Washington’s Frank Howard, and
California’s Jim Fregosi; their failure in this and so many other
years before and after that, is unexplainable.

Steve Carlton of St. Louis, enjoying his
breakout year, was manager Red Schoendienst’s choice to start,
followed by teammate Bob Gibson. The fact that the Cardinals had
two pitchers as superb as Carlton and Gibson had fans gasping at
their around-.500 record, thanks mainly to anemic offense (as if
the Cards forgot the “Year of the Pitcher” was over). After Gibby,
Bill Singer of the Dodgers, Koosman (one and two-thirds innings, no
runs), Houston’s hard-throwing Larry Dierker and Atlanta
knuckleballer Phil Niekro closed out a 9-2 N.L. win. Seaver, named
to the squad and in attendance, did not pitch because of shoulder
stiffness.

Cleon Jones was two-for-four and scored
twice. Chicago’s Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert, Randy Hundley, Ron
Santo and Ernie Banks all played. Cincinnati’s Tony Perez and Pete
Rose, San Francisco’s Willie Mays, and Atlanta’s Hank Aaron, were
among the great stars for the Nationals, but the day belonged to
Johnny Bench of the Reds and Willie McCovey of the Giants.

When Ted Williams first saw Bench play, he
signed a baseball to him, “A Hall of Famer for sure.” The
40
^th
All-Star Game was his debutante ball:
two-for-three, a home run, two runs scored, two RBIs. But a second
homer was denied Bench when Yastrzemski stretched over the left
field fence to make one of the most spectacular fielding plays in
All-Star Game – or any game, for that matter – history.

But the Most Valuable Player was McCovey.
This was the day, and this was the season, in which Big Mac finally
extended himself out from beyond the shadow of the now-declining
Mays. He was two-for-four with two spectacular home runs.

****

The summer of 1969 was a momentous period in
this nation’s great history, for
good
and most definitely
also for
bad.
On the good side was America’s landing on the
Moon on July 20. It was a spectacular achievement, the embodiment
of John F. Kennedy’s “new frontier.” In 1961, JFK outlined a
“stated purpose” that America “land a man on Moon,” and then
“return him safely to Earth.” It was an outlandish proposal, yet
both the Soviets and the United States entered into a fierce “space
race,” with the Moon being the ultimate prize of the victor.

The U.S.S.R. put a man in space first, but
the U.S. won each round of the race after that. Throughout the
Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, we continually – with some
mishaps and tragedies – enjoyed success. One of the most successful
was a “failure,” that being John Glenn’s return through the Earth’s
atmosphere in 1962 with a damaged heat shield after his continual
orbiting of the Earth had to be shortened. It was all depicted in
spectacular manner first by Tom Wolfe’s
The Right Stuff
, and
later in a film version starring Ed Harris as Glenn.

By 1969, the Soviets were, to para-phrase
the late astronaut the Gus Grissom, “in our shadow.” After having
to abort a 1968 trip to the Moon within sight of the planet’s rocky
terrain, Apollo 11 took off in July of 1969. On July 20 they
landed. Neil Armstrong, like Tom Seaver a graduate of USC, was the
first man to set foot on the surface, announcing, “One small step
for man, one giant leap for Mankind.”

(Walter Schirra and several other astronauts
had advanced degrees from the University of Southern California,
because NASA contracted to have a simulator, known as “the bubble,”
located on the campus for space candidates to work in.)

Ironically, the Mets observed the Moon
landing from an airport in Montreal, where they were stuck because
their plane did not work!
The 1960s striving for the Moon
landing was Biblical in its epic qualities, inspiring a number of
films and movies with space themes during this period. One of the
most spectacular was Stanley Kubrick’s eerie
2001: A Space
Odyssey
, which was not the story of Barry Bonds’s 73-home run
campaign of that year.

On a decidedly bad note on August 12, 1969
the Manson killings rocked Los Angeles. Manson, a career criminal
who had spent the majority of his life behind bars, was a would-be
songwriter who befriended The Beach Boys’ Mike Love. Love let him
hang around because he always had a bevy of sexually active young
girls made available. Manson was even credited as the writer of one
of the group’s songs, “Learn Not to Love.” But Love got scared of
Manson and distanced himself. While with Love in the Los Feliz
section of Los Angeles, Manson noticed a nearby home and endeavored
to some day kill its occupants, who were unknown to him.

The “Manson family” lived on the secluded,
semi-abandoned Spawn Ranch in the mountains northwest of Los
Angeles. In the hot, smoggy summer of 1969,
Manson sent his “family” first to the home of a Beverly Hills hair
stylist,
Voytek Frykowski,
who was
hosting a party that evening.
Actor Steve McQueen was invited, but on his way to the
soiree
stopped at a Beverly Boulevard eatery, El Coyotes.
There, the handsome actor picked up a chick and left with her for
some recreational sex instead of going to the party. It saved his
life.

Upon orders from the absent Manson, his
“family” killed all the people at the party, using their blood to
spell words like “PIG” and “WAR” all over the walls. Among the
dead: lovely young actress Sharon Tate, star of the film version of
Jacqueline Susann’s
Valley of the Dolls
. She was carrying
the unborn, now-murdered baby of her husband, famed director Roman
Polanski (
Rosemary’s Baby
,
Chinatown
). At first,
Polanski was a suspect.
Rosemary’s Baby
was a Satanic cult
hit, thought somehow to have inspired the killings.

Neighbors heard screams, but this being
Hollywood they figured it to be an orgy, a cult meeting, a witch’s
coven, or any number of “ordinary” happenings of this time and
place. “It seemed like the world was going insane,” Art Shamsky
recalled.

A few nights later, the “Manson family”
returned (
sans
Charlie) to the city, this time to the Los
Feliz home that caught Manson’s eye a few years earlier when he was
hanging out with Love. It belonged to a businessman and his wife,
Antonio and Barbara Locci Lo Bianco. They were murdered as
heinously as the Tate-
Frykowski
party had
been.

Eventually, Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent
Bugliosi was able to convict Manson and his “family,” although a
1972 Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty was
un-Constitutional spared them their lives.

The other seminal non-sports event of 1969
was Woodstock. Whether this was good or bad is dependent upon the
interpretation. On the one hand, it was a free demonstration of
peace, love, joy and harmony. On the other, it was a dirty, filthy
event that spawned a culture of drug addiction, plus a sexual
revolution resulting in transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

History views Woodstock as the last gap of
the 1960s, mainly because a year later The Rolling Stones tried to
re-create it at a motor speedway outside of San Francisco, only to
result in mayhem. In 1971, Peter Townshend and The Who, who
headlined Woodstock, wrote a classic rock anthem called “Won’t Get
Fooled Again.” Its premise was that the young people of the 1960s
were duped into believing all the malarkey about peace and love
that supposedly came from rejecting such traditions as
Christianity, family and patriotism. Townshend said he “hated” the
Woodstock experience, which included his almost clubbing a man to
his death when he tried to take the stage and fiddle with his
beloved guitar.

Held in the Biblically named town of Bethel,
New York, it drew kids from all over the country, but naturally
most came from the Metropolitan New York area. The conservative
residents in the surrounding farming community saw it as a
religious disaster, akin to the plague of locusts that descended
upon Egypt. Poorly planned, its fences taken down every night by
those simply wanting it to be an open, free event – attempts to
sell and enforce ticket purchases were futile – Woodstock averted
disaster seemingly through the hand of . . . God. It rained. It was
muddy. There was not enough food, not enough water, not enough
medical care, no place to sleep, little shelter. After the rains it
was sticky, putrid with humid heat and the inevitable bugs and
pestilence that comes with it.

But the music was world class. It included
Jimi Hendrix at his best, including a crazy, electric, drugged-out
rendition of “Our National Anthem” from the former “screaming
eagle” of the 101
^st
Airborne Division. The Who did not
want to be there, but being pros they delivered with their usual
intensity. “Country Joe” McDonald regaled the crowd, estimated at a
million people, with anti-war folk songs. Carlos Santana may well
have made his name at Woodstock. The promoters were not
professionals and they lost their shirts, but over several decades
record sales and merchandising brought a profit.

On August 17, Hurricane Camille, a category
five storm, hit the Gulf Coast. Huge hurricanes had pounded Florida
in the 1930s, but subsided somewhat over the decades. The lessons
from the earlier storms were lost. In the 1930s, there was a small
population in the area, so the weather mainly just hit beaches with
little damage to property. There was no cable TV warning or 24-hour
news cycle sensationalizing them. When word of Camille came about,
people in Miami and other locations in its path held “hurricane
parties,” in some cases with tragic results when the storm came
through and killed people. All in all, 248 died and billions were
lost in damages. Nobody considered the possibility of “global
warming” in 1969.

John Wayne’s
The Green Berets
was an
enormous box office hit. Its theme song, “The Ballad of the Green
Berets,” was a popular tune; all belying the idea that everybody in
America opposed the war or supported the hippie protesters.

“We were all aware of what was going on in
the country,” Jerry Koosman recalled. “I remember watching the Moon
landing on television in a Montreal airport. So much was happening
then, with Vietnam and all the demonstrations and protests at home.
Yet as a team, I don’t recall us talking much about politics.”

“Baseball has always been an escape,” said
Ed Charles. “We were quite conscious of what was happening in the
country with the war and the demonstrations. But baseball has never
been a political thing.”