THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (59 page)

It caused a howl in the New York press, and
caused
The Sporting News
to editorialize that pitchers were
the “step-children in the MVP poll,” reminding the Baseball Writers
Association of America members that indeed hurlers are eligible. It
caused the rules to be changed so that the vote would no longer be
kept secret; writers would face accountability.

Seaver never complained, expressing only
class and admiration for “Stretch.” McCovey has held popular elder
statesman status in San Francisco, but he and Willie Mays, in
truth, became (if they were not all along) egotistical blowhards.
In 2001, Mays was asked a question about Joe DiMaggio. He bluntly
stated that, “You can’t compare Joe to me.” Mays may be the greater
all-round player, but DiMaggio is certainly worthy of being
“compared” to Mays, and in 1969 was voted the Greatest Living Ball
Player.

At the same time, McCovey was asked about
the 1969 MVP vote. “Seaver had no bidness winnin’ that award,” said
Big Mac. “I was far superior.”

Horse feathers. Seaver blew the Giants away
in key games, willing to his team to ultimate victory in a manner
so heroic as to be compared only to a very, very few athletic
feats: Carl Yastrzemski of Boston in 1967 perhaps. Maybe Joe Namath
and the Jets in 1968. DiMaggio in 1949 comes to mind. Bill Walton
of the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers cast a similar, singularly large
shadow in 1977. Joe Montana’s first Super Bowl title with the 1981
49ers is worthy of mention.

Neither McCovey nor Mays ever had that kind
of take-the-team-on-my-shoulders season. Mays had a reputation for
popping up in the clutch. McCovey was a great RBI man, but nobody
mentions his name with Reggie Jackson when it comes to clutch
hitting. Sometimes inches separate a man from this kind of glory;
in McCovey’s case, the inches differentiating the last play of the
1962 World Series from a victorious two-run single and an F-4 to
Bobby Richardson.

Seaver
was
the MVP in 1969, just as
Ron Guidry should have won the 1978 A.L. award or Orel Hershiser
the 1978 N.L. trophy. Roger Clemens did win the 1986 American
League Most Valuable Player award. Even relief pitchers have been
MVPs: Rollie Fingers of Milwaukee (1981), the incongruous Tiger
Willie Hernandez, of all people (1984) and Oakland’s Dennis
Eckersley (1992).

Seaver and the Mets revitalized the sport of
baseball. They drew 2,175,373 fans to Shea Stadium, and 1,197,206
on the road (3,372,579 total). At the time, the 2 million mark in
home attendance was what the 3 million mark became (inching towards
4 million as the new modern standard). Cleveland drew over 2
million under owner Bill Veeck in 1948. The Milwaukee Braves became
the first National League club to crack the mark in the 1950s. Los
Angeles set what the existing attendance record was in 1969, having
drawn 2,755,184 in 1962. The Dodgers’ record would stand until they
broke their own mark in 1977. Eventually 3 million would be passed,
and attendance figures in Toronto, Colorado, Baltimore, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Anaheim, New York (Mets and Yankees), as
well as other cities, would eclipse the size of crowds in the 1960s
and ‘70s.

But considering the dire predictions for
baseball in 1968, the Mets had truly done a major service for
baseball, and for New York City. New stadiums were in the works for
Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and later other cities. Each
of those traditional baseball towns would experience a Renaissance.
Expansion succeeded and continued (1977, 1993, 1998). In 1969,
baseball fever gripped Chicago as well as New York. After a
moribund period, Los Angeles began to pick up the pace
attendance-wise.

Kansas City, a city that had failed with the
A’s, was off to a good start and would succeed. Oakland and San
Francisco were down in popularity, but both would survive, then
thrive. So would the California Angels. Minnesota was on the
rebound with a bright future. Boston helped carry the game in the
late 1960s, too, and would develop into nothing less than a
phenomenon. Part of their appeal came in their rivalry with the
Yankees. A
big part
of the Yankees’ rebound as a franchise,
on the field and at the gate, can be attributed to their reaction
to the 1969 Mets.

The Yankees were the greatest dynasty in the
game when the Mets came along. Even with the Giants and Dodgers
competing for the New York fan base, the Yankees still made the
most money, and were complacent about it. The combination of down
Yankee teams between 1965 and the early 1970s, the Mets’
phenomenon, and changing times, forced them to re-evaluate their
approach. In 1969, the Yankees drew 1,067,996 fans to Yankee
Stadium. Like him or not, George Steinbrenner left no stone
unturned. He saw the Mets as competitors and endeavored to make the
Yankees the best team in New York. The Mets outdrew the Yankees for
the most part between 1964 and 1975. In 1974 and ’75, the Yankees
even played at Shea while Yankee Stadium was being renovated. The
new Yankee Stadium played a huge role in the advancement of
baseball popularity. The two-team town is a concept that had for
the most part failed in Philadelphia and St. Louis. The White Sox
were second in Chicago. Ultimately, three teams in New York did not
work itself out. In 1969, two teams looked to be a losing
proposition in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in the Los Angeles
Basin (from Orange Counties’ perspective, at least). But the Mets’
spurred a successful two-team existence in the Big Apple.
Eventually, the Bay Area, L.A., Chicago, and even the
Washington-Baltimore corridor all thrived.

In winning the East Division title, the Mets
had stunned the world, no question about it. That feat, in and of
itself, was miraculous,
amazin’
, but to re-visit the Ronald
Reagan quote, nobody had “seen nothin’ yet.”

Not by a long shot.

- General William T. Sherman

National League baseball existed in Boston
since the league’s founding in 1876, but almost as soon as the
upstart
American League
franchise started play in 1901, they
were royalty. The Braves were Boston’s
other
team. In 1903,
the first World Series was played, and won, by the Boston
Pilgrims
, whose ace pitcher was Denton True “Cy” Young. They
defeated Honus Wagner and the Pittsburgh Pirates while their fans
sang an incessant, constant, annoying song called “Tessie.” It
apparently had the same effect on Pittsburgh as USC’s “Tribute to
Troy” and “Conquest” has on their oft-beaten football
opponents.

By 1912 the Pilgrims were called the Red
Sox. They played in a new baseball palace called Fenway Park. The
city’s mayor, John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald (JFK’s grandfather)
attached himself to them in the same manner John Lindsay did to the
Mets 87 years later. The Red Sox won four World Championships in
the 1910s.

In 1914, the Boston Braves under manager
George Stallings were in last place on the Fourth of July, but the
“Miracle Braves” got hot, captured the flag from John McGraw’s
stunned Giants, then beat one of Connie Mack’s greatest
Philadelphia A’s teams in the World Series. However, Braves Field
became a wasteland, the team a comedy act, even managed by the
self-styled “clown prince” himself, Casey Stengel (1938-43).

In 1948, the Braves came seemingly out of
nowhere to win the World Series behind the dynamo pitching
combination of Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain (“Spahn and Sain and
pray for rain”). Over time, the Red Sox had their ups and downs,
but they dominated Boston baseball, filling Fenway with fans who
rooted for Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, and Ted Williams.

Also in 1948, Chuck Yeager broke the “sound
barrier” in the skies over the California desert. With jet travel
now made convenient, baseball looked to the West, like George
Washington seeing the future past the Alleghenies after dispatching
the British back to England in 1883. The Braves moved to Milwaukee,
Wisconsin in 1953. They were followed by the Philadelphia A’s to
Kansas City (1955), the Dodgers and Giants to California (1958),
expansion and franchise shifts to Los Angeles, Minnesota and
Houston (1961-62), followed by franchise shifts and expansion
(Oakland, 1968; San Diego, Montreal, Seattle, Kansas City again,
1969).

Immediately, the Milwaukee Braves were
successful, on the field and off. Suburban fans filled County
Stadium. Having the benefit of a rising Hank Aaron, superstar Eddie
Mathews, catcher Del Crandall, slugger Joe Adcock, defensive wizard
Red Schoendienst, speedster Billy Bruton, ace pitchers Spahn, Lew
Burdette, Bob Buhl and Johnny Antonelli; all led by one of the best
minds in baseball (Fred Haney), turned them into the “Braves who
made Milwaukee famous,” a paraphrase of the beer ads of the day.
They won the 1957 World Series and came
this close
in
1958.

What happened in succeeding years is hard to
explain. Some people say it is a four-word answer: the Green Bay
Packers. More precisely, the Green Bay Packers under Vince Lombardi
in the 1960s; Starr, Hornung, Kramer, Wood, Taylor. Legends. The
Braves were talented and competitive, but the novelty wore off and
attendance dropped. The club looked to greener pastures.

1966 was a fateful year in the franchise’s
history. In January, they drafted G. Thomas Seaver off the
University of Southern California campus. They also jumped the gun
in signing him, therefore losing his services ultimately to the
Mets. In April, they played their first game at brand new
Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Baseball people did not like what
happened to Milwaukee, just as they did not like the way Kansas
City lost their team after a similar short-lived run. K.C. got an
expansion team in 1969 and Milwaukee got the second-year Seattle
Pilots, calling them the Brewers beginning in 1970. The whole
musical chairs of baseball continued: Seattle re-loaded with the
Mariners (1977); Washington lost the Senators, gained the Senators,
who became the Texas Rangers; and Montreal became the Washington
Nationals (2005).

It was difficult for many years to judge the
merits of baseball’s move to Atlanta in 1966. A Southerner, Lyndon
Johnson was elected to the Vice-Presidency (1961-63) and occupied
the White House (1963-69). His signature social initiative was the
Great Society. Like its predecessor, the New Deal, its intended
beneficiaries were, first and foremost (at least in theory), black
Americans. This dynamic has been the bone of historical contention
between liberals and conservatives for decades.

LBJ represented the so-called “New South.”
With the invention of air conditioning; major works projects like
the Tennessee Valley Authority; Harry Truman’s integration of the
Army; the
Brown vs. Board of Education
decision outlawing
segregation (1954); followed by enforcement of
Brown
at
Little Rock (1957), the University of Mississippi (1962) and the
University of Alabama (1963); by gum, “modernization” was
gonna
come
to Dixie – kicking and screaming – whether they liked it
or not.

The aforementioned advancements in civil
discourse, if you can call it that, were met by equally jarring
acts of civil disobedience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed
in 1960 and wrote “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” Mississippi
Governor Ross Barnett defied President John F. Kennedy when JFK
wanted the African-American student James Meredith to enter Ol’
Miss in 1962. That same year, Alabama Governor George Wallace
stated that his policy was, “Segregation today, segregation
tomorrow, segregation forever.” The next year, with ‘Bama football
coach Paul “Bear” Bryant looking on from his corner office, Wallace
“blocked” the entrance to the school before Federal troops
intervened, letting two black students enroll in the school.

White America half pretended, at least until
the 1960s, that the South was really no different than the rest of
the country. There was oil in Texas, big money in the booming
1950s, and by golly they got a big league ball club. The 1962
Houston Colt .45s were the direct result of an “I’ll scratch your
back if you scratch mine” deal between George W. Bush’s
grandfather, U.S. Senator Prescott Bush (R.-Connecticut), U.S.
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D.-Texas) and Senate Majority
Leader-turned-President Johnson. Direct beneficiaries included
Senator Bush’s nephew, Herbert Walker, with the result being an
expansion team in New York partially owned by him, and his son,
George, elected to Congress in the Houston suburbs.

Whether it was a problem for black pro
athletes in the South was immaterial to the fact that the region
wanted, and had enough political clout to get, baseball and
football franchises. In Atlanta, that meant the Braves (baseball),
the Falcons (NFL) and the Hawks (NBA). In Dallas, the Cowboys. The
American Football League was formed, and with it teams in Dallas,
Houston and Miami. Following that: the Johnson Space Center, NASA’s
headquarters in Houston.

While all of these entities went about their
business, the “elephant in the corner” were the colleges. Texas,
Alabama, Ol’ Miss; the Southeastern Conference, the SWC, all
throughout Dixie, collegiate athletics remained virtually all
white, with mere token exceptions.

In 1966, Texas Western shocked the world
when they started five blacks against all white Kentucky, winning
the NCAA basketball title. Four years later, integrated USC with
Sam “Bam” Cunningham and a black tight end who grew up hearing
about Tom Seaver in Fresno (Charles Young), beat Alabama in
Birmingham, essentially ending segregation in college sports south
of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The black players who played on the Hawks,
Braves, Falcons, Cowboys, and Texans had to walk a fine line, which
meant: do not get out of hand, do not get drunk in public, and
do not
parade around town with white women, as football
stars Jim Brown and Fred “the Hammer” Williamson were
oh-so-conspicuously doing in Cleveland, Kansas City . . . and
Hollywood.