THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (53 page)

While Charles may be right, Jim Bouton
painted a different portrait in
Ball Four
, which was a
snapshot of not just the 1969 season, but the country. Bouton was a
self-described liberal, a hippie living inside a crew-cut family
man who sympathized with the protesters, even driving over to San
Francisco’s Golden Gate Park to express solidarity with them when
the Seattle Pilots played at Oakland. Bouton described certain
Right-wing teammates who accused him, only half-joking, of being a
Communist. Bouton identified a small group of teammates who looked
at the world as he did. In 1969 they kept their views mostly to
themselves.

“I had gone to Vietnam in 1968 as part of a
USO tour, and places I had been were always popping up on the
news,” said Ron Swoboda. When the Tet Offensive began in 1969
, I knew just where that was and I
knew what Saigon looked like, so it was hard to ignore what was
going on . . .

“I remember Tom Seaver once quoted as saying
if the Mets can win the World Series, America could get out of
Vietnam.”

Late that summer, Lieutenant William Calley
was charged with six counts of murder in the deaths of 109
Vietnamese civilians in My Lai.

“As a young professional athlete you are so
engrossed in what you are doing that it is difficult to be totally
emotionally involved in what is going on around you,” Tom Seaver
told Art Shamsky years later. “The city was in a dire financial
mess. The country was dealing with Vietnam and demonstrations . . .
Every night on television you were seeing people being shot up and
it was surreal. I was in the Marine Reserves, and I knew I could
have been there. I thought about that a lot.”

1968-69 saw major events in other countries,
and not just Vietnam. The North Koreans kidnapped American sailors
on the U.S.S. Pueblo, holding them a year before releasing them
after drawn-out political negotiations. Czechoslovakia, attempting
to distance themselves from the Soviet Holocaust, declared
“Socialism with a human face” under reformist leader
Alexander Dubcek
.
The Soviets
responded as they had in East Berlin in 1953 and Hungary in 1956,
with tanks rolling into their streets during the so-called “Prague
spring” of 1968.

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, a Catholic
street protest was met by shots from British soldiers on the
infamous “bloody Sunday.” It began a 30-year period of occupation
and “war” between the British and a terrorist organization, the
Irish Republican Army, known as “The Troubles.”

****

After the All-Star break, the Mets
experienced the kind of metaphorical baseball lows that the ancient
Jews experienced after being freed from Egyptian bondage. Thinking
perhaps they would simply walk to the Promised Land of Israel,
settle down, grow crops, and live in bliss forever, they instead
wandered aimlessly in the desert. They incurred God’s wrath. They
faced enemies with strong armies blocking them from their
destiny.

The Mets, after Seaver’s
bravura
imperfecto of July 9, and in beating Chicago in both home-and-away
series, were too young, inexperienced and naïve to realize just how
difficult the road ahead was. Serious baseball would have to be
played in the remainder of July, August and September if
their
Promised Land would be found. Many diamond Canaanites,
Hittites, and Philistines would have to be fought and defeated.
Then, on top of that that, they faced the wrath of Gil.

Tom Seaver may very well have felt like one
of those ancient Roman generals who found it necessary to have a
slave whisper in his ear, “All glory is fleeting.” No sooner had he
been become a true New York Sports Icon than he saw that all of it
could be taken away in a flash.

Herb Score had once been a pitcher of such
promise as to warrant comparison with Lefty Grove and Hal
Newhouser, but a Gil McDougald line drive to his face ended that
dream. Wayne Simpson came “straight out of Compton” to dominate
National League hitters in the first half of 1970, but a mid-season
injury did him in.

Seaver felt pain and stiffness in his first
start after the imperfecto, when the Wrigley Field mound apparently
knocked him off stride. He did not pitch in the All-Star Game
because of it, and the Mets reverted to their pre-1969 ways in late
July and early August.

Doctors examined Seaver’s shoulder. It was
theorized that with all the adrenaline of the imperfecto against
Chicago, he had simply thrown
too hard
for the human
shoulder to endure. “It’s only a muscle strain, maybe from throwing
so hard in that one-hit game against Chicago,” one doctor told him.
“It’s not a muscle tear and there’s nothing wrong with the joint.
With proper treatment, it will be okay again.”

He was given Butazolidin pills and bathed
the shoulder under heat lamps, but the pain would not go away. The
unhittable master suddenly was very human, his record falling from
14-3 to 15-7. He lay awake at night, trying to convince himself it
would be alright, but the harder he tried the more he worried. He
used logic, refused to panic, thought it through, but came back to
the basic question all athletes ask:
What do I do if I can’t
play anymore?

One of his heroes growing up, Don Drysdale
of Los Angeles, had been as healthy as an ox for years, never
missing a start, even pitching victory after victory down the
stretch in 1965 with broken ribs. Just last year, Big D had been as
dominant as ever, throwing 58 straight shutout innings, but in
1969, without warning, a persistent pain in his arm forced him to
retire years too soon.

After the Reds clobbered him, Seaver almost
convinced himself he was done. He walked the streets of Cincinnati,
reasoning that he would go back to college, that he had the
intelligence to have success outside of baseball. Maybe he had
earned enough notoriety in three years in New York to parlay that
into broadcasting. But to have gone from the mountaintop of July 9,
to be an
icon
only to fall so perilously fast was
mind-boggling. Seaver’s religious beliefs have always been
privately held. His intelligence and capacity for reason led him to
seek logical answers, not to surrender all to a deity who seemed,
according to The Who’s rock opera “Tommy” at least, like a game of
pinball; one’s life and destiny subject to the whims of a bouncing
ball.

But God’s plan does not always – usually
does not – rarely does, in fact, lead a man to great heights of
fame, riches, and pagan idolatry. To be truly famous, especially in
the fishbowl existence of the Big Apple, can be a perilous journey
in which a man is tempted by things that try his soul, literally.
Seaver had resisted the kinds of temptations that destroy most men.
In later years, Mets stars Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden,
when placed in a similar position, allowed it to destroy them.
Seaver was faithful to Nancy, held to his values, but was God
saving him from something? From himself?

Tom Seaver was on a path towards that rarest
form of fame and hero worship. There are people who look at the
famous – actors, Hollywood celebrities, models, best-selling
writers, political leaders – and seriously question whether some of
these people, many of whom are utterly sleazy and immoral, have
done a secret pact with the devil in order to get what the person
who possesses the same ability but not the willingness to sell his
soul, does not get; at least in
this
lifetime.

But Tom Seaver would let God sort it out. In
the mean time, he knew that God helps those who help themselves, so
he was going to work as hard as he could to stay in baseball, and
let the chips fall where they may. There were tests ahead, for
Seaver and his teammates. In the middle of August, New York
traveled to the Astrodome, curiously one of their worst stops even
in the years when the Astros were barely better than New York. They
dropped all three. St. Louis passed them. Dick Young, the old sage
that he was, might have been right after all. The cream was rising
to the top, as it does in a 162-game season. It was hot. They call
August the “dog days.” Momentum and spring enthusiasm was long
gone. Pick the cliché: separate the men from the boys; the rubber
hits the road . . .

Seaver contacted USC and told them to expect
him to start classes in early October, as the Mets would not be in
the post-season after all. Down by nine-and-a-half games, however,
Gil Hodges still demanded professionalism.

On July 30 the Mets faced old nemesis
Houston. Like the Mets, for the very first time the Astros were in
contention, in the “wild, wild West” Division with Atlanta, San
Francisco, Cincinnati and Los Angeles, all neck-and-neck. Houston
featured Larry Dierker and Don Wilson, two of the hardest-throwing
pitchers in baseball. They set records for strikeouts of opposing
hitters. Wilson managed a no-hitter in 1969. Their plush in-door
facility, the Astrodome (known as the “eighth wonder of the world”)
was built for pitching and defense, their specialties. The Astros
were a loose group.

Joe Morgan was still with Houston that
season. Center fielder Jim “the Toy Cannon” Wynn was a power
threat. The 1969 Astros, like that season’s expansion Seattle
Pilots, were immortalized by Jim Bouton’s
Ball Four
. Bouton
was traded to Houston in the second half of the year, and revealed
a bawdy drinking song the team recited after wins. Catcher Johhny
Edwards would “drink too much and call some long home runs.” The
team’s ability to exasperate old school manager Harry Walker with
their penchant to “drink and fight and (expletive deleted) ‘til
curfew comes around” was glorified.

In the ninth inning of the first game of a
doubleheader at Shea Stadium, Houston scored 11 runs – including
two grand slams - to win, 16-3. “Using the word ‘played’ is
somewhat of misnomer – we were massacred in both contests,” was the
way Art Shamsky described it. The second game was “even
uglier.”

In the third inning of game two, Houston
scored 10 runs
after two men were out
to complete the sweep,
11-5. “This was the worst day I’ve seen as a Met,” said Seaver. “It
was like it must have been seven years ago.”

An incident in this game has long been
called the “turning point” of the season, although that is
debatable on several levels. Johnny Edwards hit a slicing ball down
into the left field corner. Cleon Jones barely jogged after it,
picked it up and lobbed it back into the infield. The home fans
booed his obvious lack of hustle.

Hodges headed out to the mound. He was
superstitious about not stepping on the first base line, but this
time paid no attention. He was furious. Instead of stopping at the
mound to remove a hapless pitcher, he continued on. Bud Harrelson
saw him coming and thought maybe he had done something wrong, but
the seething Hodges continued into the outfield grass. Hodges
confronted Jones. After a few words, Hodges headed back to the
dugout, a contrite left fielder a few steps behind him.

“Nobody knows what really happened except
Gil and myself,” Jones told Shamsky years later. “All anybody knows
is that he came out on the field and pulled me out of the ball
game. But, this is what happened. The ball was hit down the left
field line and there was no way you were going to stop him from
getting a double. So I ran after the ball the best way I could. It
was soaking wet in the outfield that day and I had a bad ankle.
When Gil walked out to me I was surprised as everyone else. First,
I thought he was going to take out the pitcher. Then, I thought he
was going to say something to Harrelson. But, then, when he walked
past Buddy I looked back. I thought something had happened behind
me. When I turned around he was right toward me. He got to me and
said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘What do you mean what’s wrong?’ He
replied, ‘I don’t like the way you went after that last ball.’ I
said, ‘Gil, we talked about this in Montreal. You know I have a bad
ankle and as long as I wasn’t going to hurt the team I would
continue to play.’ And then I said, ‘Look down.’ And he did. His
feet were in water. He said, ‘It is bad out here. I didn’t know it
was that bad. You probably need to come out of the game.’ So I
said, ‘Fine’ and we walked in together. A few days later we had a
conversation and he said, ‘You know I wouldn’t embarrass you like
that, but I look at you as a leader on this club. Everybody seemed
like they were comfortable getting their tails kicked, and I didn’t
like that . . .’

“Everybody misinterpreted what happened. But
in a way it proved a point and woke us up. That was his way of
trying to shape up the ball club.”

When Hodges came home that evening, his wife
Joan told him that he should not have embarrassed Jones the way he
did. “You want to know something?” Hodges told Joan. “I didn’t even
realize I was doing it until I was past the pitcher.”

“. . .Hodges and Jonesy had a rocky
relationship,” Swoboda recalled, because “Cleon wouldn’t go out
there for outfield practice or sometimes Cleon wouldn’t take
batting practice.”

Swoboda’s assertion that Hodges and Jones
had a “rocky relationship,” in part because of Jones’s failure to
practice his defensive skills, brings up a conundrum of sorts,
since Swoboda also claimed that
he
and the manager were on
uneven terms because Swoboda
practiced defense too much
.

“Houston was the toughest club we faced,”
said Koosman. “They had a great pitching staff with Larry Dierker
and Don Wilson. We had a heck of a time beating them.

“But, I didn’t see what Gil saw. I didn’t
see that Cleon didn’t hustle after the ball.” Still, Koosman added,
“You don’t slough off when you play for Gil Hodges. You give him
100 percent all the time. It sends a message to the rest of the
ball club.”