THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (56 page)

Koosman got the ball and immediately
retaliated. He did not low-bridge Ron Santo, he plunked him hard
just above the wrist. “Koosman could throw the ball right through
you,” Santo said.

“They threw at Tommie, and I had to do it to
end it right there,” said Koosman. “. . . If Tommie doesn’t think
I’m working for him, he won’t work for me – and I want Tommie Agee
working for me. He and Cleon, they’re the two best hitters I have
out there. I want both of them working for me.”

“Our pitchers can’t let us get run off the
field,” said Agee,

The next time Agee faced Hands, with
Harrelson on base, he took him deep. The crowd was ecstatic and New
York led, 2-0. In the sixth, Chicago scored twice to tie it, 2-2.
The bean ball war was over, replaced by tense, pennant-fever
baseball. In the bottom of the inning, Agee doubled. Wayne Garrett
singled to right field. Star outfielder Billy Williams charged the
ball, hop-stepped, and fired home. Agee, the former football
player, barreled
past
Randy Hundley, stepping on home just
before the tag. It was a bang-bang play. Umpire Dave Davidson
called Agee safe.

Hundley argued the call and Durocher came
out, which was too perfect. The crowd went utterly ballistic,
cat-calling him every step of the way after he inevitably lost the
appeal. From that point, Koosman dominated, finishing with 13
strikeouts backed by solid defense, winning 3-2.

“The Mets are on their way,” the fans
chanted and sang, like Brazilian soccer fans after Pele led them to
their first World Cup in 1957. Placards were produced: “WE’RE
NUMBER ONE.” Trailing by a game and-a-half still was immaterial,
especially with Tom Seaver on the mound the next evening.

58,436 came out to see Seaver vs. Jenkins in
a game that defined why baseball still was and remains to this day
Our National Pastime. The day-to-day tension, the spectacular hopes
and expectations, the ebb and flow of a pennant chase cannot be
duplicated; not by basketball with its 50 teams making the
play-offs, not by soccer and its endless 0-0 scores, and obviously
not by football and its need for a weekend climax followed by six
days of wound licking/war preparation.

In baseball they
play for real
every
day; not a press conference, not an injury report, not practice in
full pads. They strap it on, the fans pay real money to see ‘em
play real ball, and on September 9 they got it in spades.

Now, the score tells us New York won, 7-1
behind Seaver’s dominant pitching. The standings tell us the Mets
trailed by a half-game afterwards, with Montreal coming to town and
Chicago headed for the “City of Brotherly Love” - Philly - where
foul fans in a foul, stinking, about-to-be-demolished ball park had
about as much “love” in them as the Germans in the closing days of
World War II.

But the fact is that, despite the standings,
the division was won on September 9. Furthermore, with Seaver at
the full height of his powers, mowing Chicago down with the sheer
velocity of a cannon mixed with the accuracy of a Special Forces
sharpshooter; the crowd, the atmosphere at Shea Stadium
surpassed
even the imperfecto of exactly two months earlier.
Lastly, if on July 9 the crowd witnessed the birth of George Thomas
Seaver as a true New York Sports icon, then on September 9 he had
his confirmation.

Poor Ferguson Jenkins, one of the greatest
pitchers of all time, was reduced to playing the Washington
Generals to New York’s Harlem Globetrotters. It was not a baseball
game, it was a coronation, a celebration, and in all the years that
the New York Yankees built their reputation as the most dominant of
all sports franchises, never had they played in an atmosphere like
this.

In the middle of the game, the crowd was
hooting and hollering. Little kids told their dads they loved them,
thanking them for buying tickets for this game. Young men proposed
to young women, who said yes. Maybe a few other young women were
saying yes, but not to marriage. People who had not been to church
in years found their faith again. It was a Billy Graham revival, a
Rollings Stones concert, Victory over Japan Day. Then, out of no
where, a black cat, hearing all the noise, the foot-stomping, the
thunderous ovations, darted out onto the field, right in front of
the Cubs’ dugout. Durocher just stared at the thing, as if to say,
“What next?”

Not a white cat, or a beige cat, or a
striped cat. A black cat, and not in front of the
Mets’
dugout, or out in the bullpen; no, in front of the Cubs. Mocking
them, a scaredy-cat; the crowd, the buzz, the lights freaking it
out. Apparently, feral cats lived in the catacombs of Shea Stadium.
The insane pounding had forced it out of its hole, and here it was.
After that, the East Division was clinched. All that was left was
to play out the calendar.

“It’s almost a legend now,” Swoboda said,
laughing. “But then it was the most incredible thing you ever saw.
It was like we hired the cat and trained him to run back and forth
right in front of their dugout . . . This cat . . . looked like he
was right off a Halloween poster, had the hair up on his back . . .
it’s like the Cubs can’t buy a break . . . This was like Hollywood.
This happens in movies about baseball. You know what I mean?”

Santo, who was “very superstitious,” said
the cat “just stared at Leo. It freaked me out a little.”

“The look on the Cubs’ faces was priceless,”
recalled Grote.

“I thought that was a little eerie,”
recalled Ferguson Jenkins.

Some people accused the Mets of setting it
up, but Pete Flynn, a member of the groundskeeping crew, said
nobody had “anything to do with that cat coming onto the field. As
a matter of fact, I never saw that cat before that game or anytime
after.”

“Mr. Leo Durocher, a baseball manager who
on this night is reduced to being a wax house prisoner; a dugout
denizen of ghostly superstitions; the leader of a doomed crew
playing not at Shea Stadium, but on a different kind of diamond in
a ball park known only as . . .
The Twi-Light Zone.”

Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do do-do do do doooooo
. . . do-do-do dooo.

The crowd sang
“Good night, Leo . .
.”
while waving handkerchiefs. It was surreal. The swing in
momentum was so total that Chicago, while mathematically up by half
a game, was theoretically at least
eliminated
. This is a
premise that is easy to make in hindsight, but teams have withstood
similar onslaughts. 17 years later, the St. Louis Cardinals led the
defending World Series champion Mets. New York rallied in September
of 1987, but the Cardinals regained their footing to win the East.
But the 1969 Mets were a team of destiny.
Nobody
, in New
York at least, and probably around the country (including much of
Chicago, truth be told) doubted them at this point.

The Mets felt the Cubs were tired from all
those days games in the Chicago summer, but more to the point,
Durocher had ridden this horse until it was dead; emotionally,
physically, and despite “Mr. Sunshine,” poor old Ernie Banks,
spiritually.

On September 10, Montreal came to Shea
Stadium. Yes, the 110-loss Expos, yet right to the end, those guys
played the “team of destiny” for all they were worth. While Ken
Holtzman and the Cubs were losing their sixth straight game, 6-2 at
decrepit Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia, New York and Montreal
battled to a 2-2 tie in the 12
^th
inning. The crowd was
scoreboard watching as Ken Boswell drove Gaspar home with the
winning run, 3-2.

At the precise moment New York won, their
record stood at 83-57. The Cubs, still toiling away in
Philadelphia, were now officially 84-58. The Mets were in
first
place
by .001 percentage points.

“Look Who’s No. 1” read the scoreboard. The
metaphors continue to be
apropos
: Mardi Gras, Octoberfest,
you name it. When Philadelphia held the lead, New York went to bed
and woke up in first place for the first time. They would not
relinquish it by a long shot. The weather began to cool in
September. After battling through the summer heat, it was very
refreshing.

The
New York Times
: “METS IN FIRST
PLACE” in letters about the same size as “FIDEL DEAD” or “JFK
MURDER SOLVED.” A telegram was received at the Mets’ offices:
“Congratulations being number one. Am rooting for you to take all
the marbles. As a New Yorker I am ecstatic, as a baseball person I
am extremely pleased, and as a Yankee I consider suicide the easy
option.” It was sent by Michael Burke, the chairman of CBS and, at
the time (pre-George Steinbrenner), owner of the Yankees.

“By September 10, we began to feel that
nobody could beat us. Period,” said Ed Charles. “We were sky
high.”

There was no let up. Gentry shut out
Montreal. At Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field (another relic in its last
season), the Mets won both ends of double-header, 1-0. In each
game, the pitcher (Koosman in the first, Cardwell in the second)
knocked in the winning run in addition to holding the powerful Bucs
of Clemente, Alou, Stargell and Oliver scoreless for 18 innings.
When it was over, the two pitchers had a playful argument over
whose knock was harder hit, both seeming to care more about
swinging the bat than throwing shutouts.

Art Shamsky took the day off to honor the
Jewish High Holiday. When he entered the clubhouse the next day,
somebody posted a sign, in jest: “Why don’t you take off every
day?” It was similar to something Don Drysdale said to Walter
Alston. Sandy Koufax did not pitch the first game of the 1965 World
Series because of Yom Kippur. Drysdale started but was batted
around. Afterward he said to the manager, “I bet you wish I was
Jewish, too.”

Later in the Pittsburgh series, Swoboda’s
grand slam knocked the Pirates back in the 10
^th
inning.
Then the Mets traveled to St. Louis and faced Steve Carlton, who
like Tom Seaver was coming into his own and would define pitching
greatness in the next decade and beyond. He was an unhittable force
of nature, striking out an all-time record 19 Mets (breaking the
previous mark held by Sandy Koufax). The Mets made four errors.
With the Cubs losing their third straight and 11
^th
of
12, it was a good “off day” for the Mets to accept a rare defeat at
the hands of a future Hall of Famer . . . except that Swoboda, who
“never hit Carlton well” (who did?) powered two two-run homers and
New York knocked him off, 4-3.

“How do you figure something like that?”
Swoboda said of the game, but he may as well have been asking about
the whole magical year. Al Weis throwing out a Dodger runner on a
bang-bang play in a 15-inning 1-0 Mets win; the July 8 comeback vs.
Fergie Jenkins; Seaver’s imperfecto, arm ailments and strange
healing; the black cat; two 1-0 wins with pitcher’s RBIs winning
‘em; now beating one of the greatest ever on one of his best nights
. . . ever. Chance? Luck? Or destiny?

After the game, Swoboda was on Harry Caray’s
post-game show. Caray “looked like something just ran over his
dog.” As talkative a man as has ever been associated with baseball,
Caray was almost speechless, at least by his standards, by this
point. After beating Carlton, New York led Chicago by
four-and-a-half games. They had won 10 of 11 and were at .605.

“My God, the Mets have a ‘magic number,’ ”
said Tom Seaver.

John Lindsay, who had lost the Republican
Primary but was running behind as the Liberal Party candidate, was
slowly moving back into the race, on the strength of
you-know-what.

On September 19, Pittsburgh swept New York
in a double-header. The next day, Bob Moose of the Pirates threw a
no-hitter against them. The Cubs made no advancement despite the
slight setback, losing two straight to St. Louis. On the first day
of the fall, September 21, Koosman and Cardwell repeated their
double-header act (minus the game-winning hits), beating Pittsburgh
5-3 and 6-1.

St. Louis came to Shea, enormous crowds
simply exuding electrical, religious energy. Seaver dominated the
Cardinals for his 24
^th
victory. The next game, Tug
McGraw picked up the 3-2 win over Bob Gibson, with Buddy Harrelson
driving in the winning run in the 11
^th
.

“Before 1969 I never saw any improvement in
the team,” said Ed Kranepool. “You knew you were going to be
eliminated from a pennant race by the All-Star Game.”

On September 24, 1969, before a packed Shea
Stadium throng in the last home game of the year, Donn Clendenon
and Ed Charles homered. Gary Gentry pitched his best game of the
season, a powerhouse four-hit shutout that just amped the crowd up
even more as he went along, mowing down Cardinal after Cardinal.
Steve Carlton, the Hall of Famer in his prime, fresh off a 19-game
strikeout performance against this same club, was bombed out
early.

The stands were filled with signs: “QUEENS
LITHO LOVES THE METS,” “YOU GUYS ARE TOO MUCH,” along with fly
airplanes, people grinning idiotically at each other, and programs
torn into confetti. The crowd continued to sing, “Good bye, Leo,”
wrote Roger Angell, “rendered
capella
, with the right field
tenors in especially good voice.”

A little after 9:00 P.M., Joe Torre grounded
into an inning-ending double play. Pandemonium ensued, with
ecstatic fans taking to the field, stealing bases, tearing up the
pitcher’s mound and home plate (no mean feat, as these are drilled
deep into the ground and they lacked pickaxes; they had to dig with
their hands). The turf was torn up. It was a scene never seen
before.

When the Jets beat Oakland to clinch the AFL
title at Shea Stadium in December, 1968, there was nothing like
this. In the old days at the Polo Grounds, fans would use the
stadium to leave through the center field gate, but it was just a
short cut to the subway.