THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (55 page)

As Seaver – and for that matter Koosman as
well – stood on the mound, throwing baseballs that darted to home
plate, evading bats as if they were Moses’s staff turned into
slithering serpents in the Pharaoh’s presence; determining the
location of pitches and hitting Grote’s glove, their catcher not
moving a twitch, batters swinging through them as if with holes in
bats; watching grounders always hit
right at
Harrelson, fly
balls always within Agee’s reach; each break going there way
without fail . . . well, something beyond a reward for effort had
to be going through their young minds.

Physically, Seaver was a prodigy. His pure
stuff was the best in baseball. It was unadulterated athleticism,
not guile or trickery as in a Whitey Ford or a Tom Glavine. Seaver
had a weight training-induced-yet-God-given fastball comparable to
Bob Gibson or Roger Clemens. There are a handful whose pure
physical pitching gifts may have been better. Ryan threw harder,
but was never better. Koufax was a little more dominant (but not by
much). Myths and legends like Rube Waddell, Walter Johnson, Bob
Feller, Steve Dalkowski and Randy Johnson are thought to throw
maybe a mile or two per hour harder. Seaver did not always have his
best stuff. In fact, it was always said what separated him from the
rest was the ability to find the winning edge on his off-days, a
trait of true greats in all sports.

Many run wind sprints, lift weights, and
dedicate themselves completely, then fail miserably. For the most
part, pro athletes all work at their craft. It is usually what
separates them from the other high school and college heroes, who
by this time watch from the stands or on TV, beer in hand. Seaver’s
dedication accurately accounts for his great overall career, just
as the willingness to go the extra mile describes why Tony Gwynn,
for instance, is a Hall of Famer. But Gwynn was, like Seaver
mostly, a guy who put in the time, saw results pay off, had a
little luck (no injuries), and plodded through until the numbers
said
Cooperstown
. He never had that
single season
like Seaver, Koosman or the Mets in 1969.

Amazin’!

As August droned toward September, the Mets
got hot and the Chicago lead began to slip. Seaver started to think
about 20 wins. It was not a selfish goal. If he could get there, it
would help his team catch the Cubs. Chicago’s cockiness, their
bulletin board bravado, the impatience of Leo Durocher, all
combined with the Midwestern heat and the all-day-game Wrigley
Field schedule to drain them just when they needed resources.

Hodges’s platoon schedule, judicious use of
the bullpen, and five-man starting rotation, had the opposite
effect on behalf of New York. In late August, the Mets won six
straight. In early September, Chicago lost seven straight.

“We went into a composite slump,” Leo the
Lion was quoted by Edgar Munzel in
The Sporting News
. “It
wasn’t just one or two guys. It was everybody and every department.
Hitting, pitching and fielding all went bad.”

“Leo Durocher was doing well with his
veteran ball players,” said Rod Gaspar. “According to stories, Leo
was enjoying himself at that time, but the Cubs pitching fell
apart, and a young upstart team, the Mets, took their place. The
majority of Durocher’s starting line-up was All-Stars. Leo wore ‘em
out.”

On August 30 at San Francisco’s Candlestick
Park, the score was tied in the bottom of the ninth. With a man on,
New York went into the famed “McCovey shift,” ceding all of the
left side to the pull-hitting left-handed slugger.

McCovey “hit a nine-iron down the left field
line, and it lands fair,” recalled Gaspar. Gaspar, playing left
field but shifted almost to center, took chase and discovered the
baseball was
stuck to the ground
because the field was wet.
He picked it up and fired a strike to the relay man, who in turn
nailed runner Bob Burda, trying to score from first. Catcher Jerry
Grote thought it was the third out and rolled the ball out to the
mound. McCovey saw that and, having made it to third on the relay,
tried to score. Clendenon alertly picked up the ball. Grote then
stayed at home when he saw he had made a mistake. McCovey,
realizing he could not make it home, tried to get back to third,
but Clendenon nailed him there for an inning-ending 7-3-2-3-5
double-play. New York won, 3-2 in extra innings.

On August 31, Chicago (81-52) led New York
(75-53) by three-and-a-half games. St. Louis slumped and was now
out of it, nine games back. In a matter of a couple weeks, New York
had gone from nine-and-a-half back to three-and-a-half, and while
those games obviously represented a mathematical advantage for the
Cubs, the psychology of momentum worked in New York’s favor.

With friends and family from Fresno in
attendance (as a kid, Seaver and his kin made roughly an equal
number of trips to Los Angeles to see the Dodgers, and to San
Francisco to see the Giants) Tom tossed an 8-0 shutout at the
powerful Giants, who were battling hard for the West Division
crown.

The Giants had sluggers, namely Willie
McCovey enjoying his best year; Willie Mays and Jim Ray Hart. They
had two excellent starters, Juan Marichal (21-11) and Gaylord Perry
(19-14). One-year manager Clyde King had a personality problem with
Mays, which spelled his doom.

Despite a contender, baseball had fallen by
the wayside in the City by the Bay. One reason was the arrival of
the A’s in cross-bay Oakland, taking a large portion of their
market share. A more accurate explanation, however, was the times.
San Francisco was a baseball bastion, for decades the home of the
wildly successful Seals of the Pacific Coast League. The City (they
use caps there) had produced an endless number of baseball heroes,
either homegrown or courtesy of the Seals (plus the Mission Reds
and Oakland Oaks); Joe DiMaggio, Lefty Gomez, Joe Cronin, Paul and
Lloyd Waner.

When Horace Stoneham brought the Giants
west, they were welcomed with open arms. Local heroes Orlando
Cepeda, Juan Marichal and Willie McCovey brought together a diverse
cross-section of fans. The great Willie Mays, viewed warily at
first, was accepted and joined Joe D. as a Bay Area icon, just as
he had done in the Apple. In 1962, San Francisco thrilled to one of
the great pennant races in history, with the Giants narrowly
beating out Los Angeles before a seven-game World Series loss to
the powerhouse Yankees. San Francisco loved the Giants. People
talked baseball, listening with transistor radios to popular
announcers Russ “the Giants win the pennant” Hodges, Lon Simmons
and Bill Thompson on KSFO. San Francisco supported the team with
great attendance. The rivalry with the Dodgers was better than it
had been in New York. For close to a decade, the pennant race more
often than not came down to an ancient Dodgers-Giants match-up.
L.A. gained revenge for 1962, winning the 1963, 1965 and 1966
pennants.

But San Francisco was “always the
bridesmaid, never the bride,” finishing second every year from 1965
to 1969 while the Dodgers and Cardinals took turns attaining
ultimate glory. When the A’s arrived in 1968 and attendance went
down, the baseball establishment was mad at Oakland owner Charlie
O. Finley, because they had invested great hopes in San Francisco.
It was needed as a counterweight financially and competitively with
Los Angeles. Finley upset the apple cart.

By the late 1960s, Candlestick Park –
Richard Nixon called it (and this is not a mis-quote), “The finest
stadium in baseball” when he dedicated its 1960 opening – was an
albatross, old before its time; dirty, windy, foggy, in a
crime-infested neighborhood with bad car access. An embarrassment.
Worse, it stood in silent, unmistakable comparison with gleaming
Dodger Stadium down south. Candlestick’s fate was not unlike that
of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Nixon dedicated
that
place, as well, also calling it the “best basketball
arena” in the country in 1959. It actually probably was for a few
years, but when Jack Kent Cooke built the “Fabulous Forum,” the
comparison rendered a simple manifest truth: there was no
comparison.

But despite second place finishes, the rival
A’s, and a bad stadium, the 1969 Giants were an excellent ball
club; albeit a little boring, playing long ball and eschewing
aggressive base running now that Mays had lost his quicksilver. But
the chance to see superstars like Marichal, Perry and McCovey in
their respective primes should have packed ‘em in. Mainly, San
Francisco and the entire Bay Area suffered from a social
malaise
emanating from cross-bay Berkeley.

At the University of California, sports were
viewed as
bourgeoisie capitalism
. Football players for the
Golden Bears were given little more respect than soldiers enduring
anti-war filth in the form of spitting and “baby killer” epithets.
After a recruiting scandal and a lost lawsuit against USC in 1959,
sports was de-emphasized at Cal. A program that had won four
National Championships in football, two in baseball, the 1959 NCAA
basketball title, while producing numerous Olympic track stars,
became a joke. America’s Communist enemies found “aid and comfort”
on its campus in the 1960s.

This general attitude made its over to San
Francisco, where the “Summer of Love” epicentered the decade at
Golden Gate Park in 1967, ironically in the shadow of Kezar
Stadium, where those rough, tough football players performed for
the 49ers. Overall, sports fell by the wayside at all levels in San
Francisco. Its high schools stopped producing prospects. Cal was a
punching bag for USC and UCLA. The Dodgers developed a dynasty of
sorts with the Giants mere fodder for their big guns. Dodger
Stadium symbolized all that was glamorous, Candlestick all that was
low rent.

At least as far as the Giants were
concerned, they were in the early process of becoming a second rate
National League team. The once-lowly Mets, on the other hand, were
ascending to the heights of glory; not just on the field but at the
gate, via TV ratings, and in all ways that imprimatur is given to
professional franchises.

In August of 1969, New York beat the Giants
in home-and-home series, winning four of six and symbolically
accepting the passed torch. Those four losses would prove to be the
deciding factor in San Francisco eventually losing the “wild, wild
West.” When the Giants series concluded, the Mets finished 21-10 in
August, but as President Ronald Reagan so famously advised, “You
ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Back in New York, Seaver won his
20
^th
, 5-1 in the first game of a double-header with
Philadelphia. New York took the last two games of the Philadelphia
series, 3-0 behind Don Cardwell and 9-3 behind Nolan Ryan. The Cubs
came to town, now leading by a mere two-and-a-half games on
September 8. Chicago had a four-game losing streak and was ripe for
the picking. Koosman and Seaver were perfectly aligned to oppose
them in the two-game set.

It rained the first night, but the
enthusiasm level of the 49,000 people at Shea Stadium was off the
charts. The New York Jets had nothing on the Mets. Pro football,
despite the build-up of a single game played each Sunday, was no
more electric than each, individual Mets game. The Mets had saved
baseball, possibly the city, and maybe even Mayor Lindsay’s bid for
re-election. By this point, he was sticking to the Mets like glue,
football fan or no football fan.

Leo Durocher had broken into organized
baseball in the early 1920s. He had been part of great clubs; the
Murderer’s Row Yanks and the Gashouse Gang Cards. He had managed
Brooklyn’s Bums and Willie Mays’s Giants to pennants, tasting
ultimate victory in 1954. He had coached on winners in L.A., now
taken Chicago from last to first. He was the epitome of the crusty
“baseball man.” Leo had seen it all, done it all, and bragged to
anybody who would listen about it. According to him, Frank called
him
and he scored “every broad who counts.”

So it was that in a situation like this, it
seemed logical that a man of Durocher’s experience knew what
buttons to push. He had been on the other side of the coin, leading
the Giants’ “creeping terror” comeback run in 1951. It was the
other guy
who flinched, like the Soviets when they turned
back in the face of the U.S. Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Leo’s style was aggression. The war metaphors are valid: Grant
because “he fights,” Patton never paying “for the same real estate
twice.”

In game one at Shea Stadium, Leo looked at
his starter, 20-game winner Billy Hands, only he did not see Hands.
He saw Sal Maglie. He sent Hands to the Shea Stadium mound with
marching orders: a “contract” was out on the Mets. Maglie had been
the perfect guy to do it. They called him “the Barber” because of
all the “close shaves” administered using horsehide instead of a
razor (which he apparently did not own, considering his perpetual
“five o’clock shadow” and Luca Brazzi appearance). But Billy was
what was expected of a guy named
Billy Hands
. A job like
this required somebody named “Iron Joe,” “Big D,” Gibby . . . or
Sal.

But Billy Hands went out to the lion’s den,
the middle of the Roman Colosseum, armed with a whip and chair
against lions and gladiators, surrounded by a frenzied crowd out
for blood. He gulped, took a deep breath, and threw his best fast
ball right at Tommie Agee’s head.

“Stick it in his ear,” Leo yelled.

Who knows why a strategy that works in one
time and place does not work in another time and place? In this
time and place it
did not
work. If Durocher thought it would
intimidate the Mets and . . . who knows how he thought the crowd
would react? They were only the loudest, most boisterous crowd in
the entire history of sports up until that time at least, but
apparently he had not thought that far ahead.