THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (57 page)

The closest anybody had ever seen to this
was when Boston won an exciting, last-minute game to clinch the NBA
title a few years before, but the basketball crowd was already
almost on top of the floor as it was. No baseball crowd had ever
done this; certainly not at
Yankee Stadium
. Ebbets Field
never let loose like this. When Bobby Thomson hit the “shot heard
‘round the world,” the crowd stayed in the stands.

Fans at Dodger Stadium were too laid-back
for this kind of thing. Cardinals supporters were too polite. When
Detroit won it all in 1968, they did it in St. Louis. They had
crazy fans who may have tried something, but nothing like
this
, and it was only for the division.

“When the crew saw what was happening to the
field when the people all ran out, we didn’t know what to think,”
groundskeeper Pete Flynn told Art Shamsky in
The Magnificent
Seasons
. “When we saw all the torn up turf afterward, we knew
we had our work cut out for us.”

The clubhouse was sheer bedlam, of course.
The Mets had broken out champagne when they went into first place
for the first time. Now, simply winning the division, they
celebrated as if they had captured the World Series. Angell wrote
that it was “clubhouse water sports (Great Western, Yoo-Hoo, Rise
lather, beer, cameras, interviews, music, platitudes,
disbelief).”

“Beautiful, baby,” said Ed Charles. “Nine
years in the minors for me, then nine more with the Athletics and
Mets. Never,
never
thought I’d make it. These kids will be
back next, but I’m 36 and time is running out. It’s better for me
than for them.”

Rod Kanehl and Craig Anderson, two original
Mets, met in the clubhouse and shared in the glory.

“It was wonderful,” recalled Shamsky. “There
was dousing of champagne everywhere. Everyone entering the locker
room got it.”

“I’ve gone full circle,” declared
Kranepool.

Toasts were offered “to Leo” and “to
Casey.”

George Weis hugged Gil Hodges. “1962,” he
said to the manager.

“1962,” Hodges replied to the front office
man.

“Our team finally caught up to our fans,”
said M. Donald Grant. “Our fans were winners long ago.”

The papers treated it like a . . . miracle:
“How could this team have done it?” At the heart of it all was
Seaver, who now wore a new nickname over and above his “Tom
Terrific” moniker: “The Franchise.”

There was no let-up after the clinching, as
often occurs. In Philadelphia, Koosman, Seaver and Gentry dominated
the Phillies in a sweep. Koosman and Seaver tossed back-to-back
shutouts. They were both unhittable, in absolute pitching grooves
of the finest kind. The Mets won the annual Mayor’s Trophy game
with the Yankees, a charity event. Then it was on to Chicago. The
topsy-turvy nature of the season, with the triumphant Mets now
playing meaningless tune-ups against the beaten Cubs of Leo
Durocher, had a surreal quality to it.

It was like “sticking a dagger into their
wounds,” was the way Shamsky described it. The “bleacher bums” had
nothing to say. The Mets did not gloat. Ernie Banks said little.
“He deserved that chance,” was Shamsky’s attitude towards Banks.
“Always friendly and outgoing, he was what baseball was all about.
When playing first base he would always sing a little and make
people laugh.”

“Earlier in the season when we realized we
were gaining on these guys, we talked about the possibility:
‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could come into Wrigley Field with a
four-game lead and three to play?’ ”said Swoboda.

“. . .Wrigley Field was one of those places
where cute little young girls would yell awful stuff at you, where
they would say vile words, and you’d think, ‘Jesus God,’ and they
threw pennies and hit you out in the outfield, and yet I still
loved playing there. I
loved
Wrigley Field. Wrigley Field is
a shrine of baseball. It should always be. You felt the history
when you went in there, and the fans were so close and biased.
Chicago is a wonderful town anyway, a big-hearted town. A great
town worth going to.”

As Frank Sinatra sang, Chicago is “my kind
of town,” and when the Mets came in there with the division wrapped
up, it was was for all practical purposes their
colony
,
having been won in battle. The Cubs fans pulled a purple funeral
crepe
and dropped it over the
Mets
dugout, to which
Swoboda told them, “You’re pissing in the wind, and the wind is
blowing in your face.”

The Mets won the first of the two-game
season-ending set at Wrigley Field, running their winning streak to
nine games and reaching the pivotal 100-victory mark. Finally, on
the last day, the Cubs beat the Mets; almost a cruel joke at that
point.

“Who were the Mets of 1969?” wrote Jack Lang
for
The Sporting News
. “A bunch of nobodies. A bunch of
kids. Outside of maybe Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman and perhaps
Cleon Jones, there wasn’t a regular on the club that anybody
coveted.” Lang stated that it was “a miracle.”

“For me, personally, I thought it might be
my last chance to get into the play-offs or World Series,” Banks
recalled. “It was really disappointing for me, and as far as the
city was concerned everyone was looking forward to a World Series
in Chicago. It was pretty sad three or four months after the season
ended.”

“Looking back, 1969 was wonderful,” Ron
Santo recalled. “We were in first place from the get-go. I’ve
always said the Mets won it, we didn’t lose it.”

“The Mets made a great move in August and
September,” said Ferguson Jenkins. “That’s when they got strong,
and the Cubs couldn’t win consistently. It turned out the Mets were
a much better ball club.”

“For 155 days consecutive days, the Cubs
were in first place, but it proved to be just a big buildup for a
horrible letdown,” Edgar Munzel wrote in
The Sporting News
Official Baseball Guide - 1970
. A three-game sweep by
Pittsburgh at Wrigley Field (September 5-7) was viewed as their
“turning point” for the worse.

In losing 11 of 12 games, Chicago scored
just 31 while allowing 69 and making 13 errors. They were 9-17 in
September, hitting .219 on the month. In that month, Selma was 0-4,
Holtzman 1-5, and Jenkins 2-4. During one nine-game span, one of
baseball’s most rock-solid defensive units committed 17 errors.
Billy Williams played in every game to increase his record to 982
straight.

“Maybe we did run out of gas,” growled Leo.
“But if the Mets had played only .500 ball, we still could have
hung on. But they just kept winning, winning, winning.”

At 100-62, the Mets finished eight games
ahead of the 92-70 Cubs. They won an astounding 38 of their final
49 games (29-7 when it counted), a record matched by few teams in
history. Periods of relative success include the 1946 Red Sox, who
captured 41 of their first 50 games. The 1984 Tigers opened
35-5.

In coming back from nine and a half games
out on August 14, the Mets did something that is worth mentioning
with the 1951 Giants (13 1/2 out on August 13) and the 1978 Yankees
(14 1/2 behind on July 17). Similar comebacks include the 1914
Boston Braves, who were in last place on Independence Day but won
the pennant. In 2004, Houston came out of no where to win 36 of
their last 46, getting into the wild-card berth. Teams that were
simply great, dominating the schedule from start to finish, include
the 1906 Cubs, 1909 Pirates, 1927-28 Yankees, 1929-31 A’s, 1954
Indians, 1961 Yankees, 1969-70 Orioles, 1986 Mets, 1998 Yankees and
2001 Mariners.

The Cubs have been painted as “choke
artists,” and they certainly did their share of clutch losing, but
the picture is not cut ‘n’ dried. With the Mets making a major run
in late August, Chicago won four straight games. This included one
over the contending Reds, three over the powerhouse Braves in
Atlanta, and another at Cincinnati.

A similar taint has been attached to the
1978 Red Sox, viewed as having “blown” the division to the Yankees.
Down the stretch in 1978, however, Boston won eight of their last
nine to force the play-off they lost on a Bucky Dent homer at the
Fens.

What was really remarkable was not simply
that New York came from almost 10 out with a month-and-a-half to
play, but that they rallied, tied, and sped past their rivals to
win by eight; a 17 1/2 game swing between mid-August and October 2.
The season can be compared to both the 1951 and 1962 seasons. In
1951, the Dodgers really did not blow the pennant. The Giants won
37 of their last 45 games to tie, but Brooklyn fairly played well,
even winning a clutch regular season finale at Philadelphia on a
crucial Jackie Robinson grab to stay alive.

In 1962, Los Angeles stayed strong but ahead
of a great Giants squad, only to blow it in the last week after
having led by four with a week play. The Cubs’ loss was not as big
a collapse as Gene Mauch’s 1964 Phillies, who led by four before
lost 10 straight down the stretch.

“I think Tom and I won something like 18 of
our last 19 starts that year,” recalled Koosman. Seaver was 25-7
with a 2.21 earned run average, having won his last 10 decisions.
He struck out 208 hitters in 273 1/3 innings. Considering all the
factors, it goes down as one of the finest pitching performances in
history. Others have had more dominant statistics. Sandy Koufax
(1963, 1965, 1966) won more games, struck out more batters, and
posted a lower ERA (he also did it pitching from a higher mound).
Seaver won more than Gibson did in 1968 (22 victories). Denny
McLain’s 1968 record looks better, on paper at least (31-6, 1.96
ERA). Dean Chance won 20 games with 11 shutouts and a 1.65 ERA in
1964. Luis Tiant’s earned run average was 1.68 in 1968. All of
these pitchers benefited from the aforementioned higher mound.

In subsequent years, Seaver posted lower
earned run averages in 1971 and 1973. He struck out more hitters in
numerous seasons. Mainly due to a lack of run support, he never won
25 games again. If later Mets clubs scored for him the way the
Tigers scored for McLain in 1968, to use one example, Seaver may
have been a 30-game winner.

Steve Carlton (1972, when the last place
Phillies inextricably scored tons of run when he pitched), Steve
Stone (1980), Roger Clemens (1986), Orel Hershiser (1988), Greg
Maddux (1995), Pedro Martinez (1999) and Randy Johnson (2001)
enjoyed seasons comparable to what Seaver did in 1969. Jim Bagby
won 31 for Cleveland in 1920. Philadelphia’s Lefty Grove (31-4,
2.06 ERA) was spectacular in 1931 during an era of heavy offense.
Detroit’s Hal Newhouser won 29 games in 1944. Whitey Ford (25-4)
dominated for the 1961 Yankees. The old-timers of the “dead ball
era” of course must be viewed in light of statistical relevance.
There were other pitchers who enjoyed individual seasons comparable
on paper to Seaver in 1969, but perhaps did not mean as much to
their respective teams.

Seaver carried New York like the
mythological figure on the cover of Ayn Rand’s
Atlas
Shrugged
, seemingly moving the world on his broad shoulders,
honed under the hot Camp Pendleton sun doing “up-and-on shoulders.”
Few if any pitchers were so important, stood out so spectacularly
as the single true star of a team, as did Seaver. Koufax and
Gibson; a few others. The list is short. But not even these mound
heroes were so singularly identified with their club’s success,
played such an overall role of leader and inspiration. Perhaps no
baseball player, maybe no athlete in any team sport has ever had
the image Seaver had in 1969. He was seen as a pure hero, on and
off the field, a near-perfect human being as well as athlete. This
was false, of course, since as Seaver pointed out “I drink beer and
I swear,” and “there’s only been one perfect man and he lived 2,000
years ago.” No human can maintain the kind of saintly stature of
his hallowed, magical 1969 season. Others, like UCLA basketball
coach John Wooden have lived lives of such decency and respect that
the glow of near-perfection still resides with them, but Seaver
never pretended to or sought such unattainable status.

Tom Seaver was seen as a modern Lancelot,
riding a white steed to the rescue of a team, a city, and indeed a
whole country. Subsequent reports of his ego, his human flaws,
while few and far between, were magnified because in that one year
he was seemingly flawless. There were some indications that his
image was not quite what people perceived.

“Such a combination of Galahad-like virtues
has caused some baseball old-timers to compare him to Christy
Mathewson,” wrote Roger Angell in
The
New Yorker
.
“Others, a minority, see an unpleasantly planned aspect to this
golden image – planned, that is, by Tom Seaver, who is a student of
public relations. However, his impact on his teammates can be
suggested by something that happened to Bud Harrelson back in July.
Harrelson was away on Army Reserve duty during that big home series
with the Cubs, and he watched Seaver’s near-no-hitter (which Seaver
calls ‘my imperfect game’) on a television set in a restaurant in
Watertown, New York.”

“I was there with a couple of Army buddies
who also play in the Majors, and we got all steamed up watching Tom
work,” Harrelson said. “Then – it was the strangest thing – I began
feeling more and more like a little kid watching that game and that
great performance, and I wanted to turn to the others and say, ‘I
know
Tom Seaver. Tom Seaver is a friend of mine.”

“Most of the Mets, it seems, are equally
susceptible to enthusiasm,” wrote Angell. “Young and alert and
open, they are above all suggestible. And this quality – the
lead-off hit just after a brilliant inning-ending catch; the
valiant but exhausted starting pitcher taken off the hook by a
sudden cluster of singles – is what made the Mets’ late innings
worth waiting for this year. It is also possible that these
intuitive, self-aware athletes sensed, however vaguely, that they
might be among the few to achieve splendor in a profession that is
so often disappointing, tedious, and degrading. Their immense good
fortune was to find themselves together at the same moment of
sudden maturity, combined skills, and high spirits. Perhaps they
won because they were un-bored.”