THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (6 page)

Then there are the Dodgers. In a bottom line
town of winners, they were Brooklyn’s
Boys of Summer
. Their
fan base found an attraction to them in ways the Giants’ and
Yankees’ followers never did. Their appeal was also as much social
as it was victory-oriented. Countless Jewish fans assimilated via
the Dodgers. When Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, they became
a team of underdogs off the field (they always had been on it).
Rickey and Robinson are linked by fate, and both are true New York
Sports Icons in good standing.

Duke Snider may have been New York’s “third
center fielder,” but he was the “Duke of Flatbush.” Roy Campanella
was a three-time Most Valuable Player and tragically courageous
figure who overcame a crippling car crash injury to live a life of
meaning.

With all due respect to the Giants, Dodgers,
Jets and Knickerbockers, there
would be no such thing
as the
true New York Sports Icon if it was not for the Yankees. The
Yankees are the sports version of America: bigger, better, richer,
more successful, utterly dominant over all competition. The very
image of New York City itself; as the most important of all world
capitals, is tied first and foremost to the Yankees. It is
Washington, D.C. where the levers of political power are, but the
longtime failures of two Senators franchises hung over D.C. the
unfortunate moniker, “First in war, first in peace, last in the
American League.” Despite all the grandeur of American supremacy,
Washington is considered a backwater to the Big Apple, a town of
“movers and shakers” like none other.

Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but there
is the sense that if not for Babe Ruth, New York would be just
another city, little greater in stature than, say, Boston or
Philadelphia. He is a symbol of all that is greater, bigger and
more magnificent about New York City. The Babe is the most
larger-than-life member of the true New York Sports Icon club. Babe
was in many ways the anti-Christy Mathewson. Ruth was a drinker,
womanizer and reprobate. But despite this, despite his roly-poly
visage, with all due respect for Jim Thorpe, Jesse Owens, Red
Grange, Bob Mathias, Rafer Johnson, Jim Brown, Willie Mays, Wilt
Chamberlain, Mark Spitz, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, Joe
Montana, Bo Jackson, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jackson or Barry Bonds,
he was the Greatest Athlete of All Time.

To measure Ruth’s impact on the game, try
and imagine Greg Maddux or Roger Clemens, some time in the early
1990s when both were established as the two best pitchers in
baseball, holding a press conference announcing they were retiring
from the mound to play right field. Then imagine one of them doing
over the next 15 years what Bonds has done offensively. Nobody ever
dominated his sport in his time as thoroughly as did Ruth in his.
No athlete ever revolutionized his game, sports in general, or had
the effect on society, like Babe Ruth.

Lou Gehrig was a later version of Mathewson:
native New Yorker, Ivy Leaguer out of Columbia, the ultimate team
guy, heroic and honest, perhaps the very best first baseman who
ever played. He was a man who emerged from Ruth’s shadow to lead
the Yankees to consecutive World Championships in 1936, 1937 and
1938 before ALS sidelined him in 1939, ending his “Ironman”
consecutive game streak and later his life in tragic grace. He
declared himself the “luckiest man on the face of the Earth” in one
of the most transcendent moments in sports history.
Pride of the
Yankees
starring Gary Cooper is still thought of as the
ultimate sports movie.

Joe DiMaggio was the quintessential true New
York Sports Icon. Interestingly, his statistics pale next to
Ruth’s, Gehrig’s, his contemporary Ted Williams, Willie Mays and
even Mickey Mantle. When Williams was risking it all as a fighter
pilot he was playing on a Navy baseball team in Hawaii. When
Italians were said to be either Mobsters or Fascists, DiMaggio gave
them a heroic figure to cheer and emulate, even though he
socialized with organized crime figures. Later biographers revealed
his true nature, which was disturbing to say the least, but for
some reason the press protected him with the zealotry of the
Central Intelligence Agency. There had to be a reason for it. His
aloofness was called grace, his imperial attitude called class.
DiMaggio
was
the ultimate winner. He was the personification
of a baseball idol. When he wedded Marilyn Monroe he defined the
marriage between sports and entertainment that the true New York
Sports Icon embodies.

Mickey Mantle is another of those tragic
figures, but a legend whose place in the club is completely secure.
As a player, he had few if any equals. Historians rate Ruth, Mays,
perhaps Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds, above him. However, it was his
drawbacks that are viewed as his strengths. The Mick is seen as a
cripple, but implicit in this description is the notion that had he
not had osteomyelitis, and had he not injured seemingly every part
of his great body, Mick’s records would never have been surpassed.
Mantle’s combination of awesome body strength and speed was greater
than Mays. The Yankees were never going to risk further injury by
running him, but absent his physical maladies Mick had the
potential to steal 50 bases a year had he so chosen.

As a star performer on a winning team, Mick
equaled and possibly even surpassed DiMaggio. Unlike Joe D. (who
was respected) he was beloved by teammates. He was a drinker, the
life of the party and hit more spectacular home runs that carried
the Yankees to victory than DiMaggio.

Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford are two players
whose places in baseball history are greatly enhanced by the fact
that they were Yankees. A catcher like Ernie Lombardi of
Cincinnati, for instance, was probably near Berra’s equivalent. A
pitcher such as Detroit’s Jim Bunning was as effective as Ford. But
they wore the pinstripes. It was Berra and Ford who made up the
winning battery in countless World Series victories. They were the
ultimate winners.

The manager of those Yankee teams was Casey
Stengel. His body of work as a player and manager is extraordinary,
but other than his perceived “clown act” in Brooklyn before and
with the Mets afterward, he would be a nominal figure in the game’s
history were it not for his 11 years at the Yankee helm. Among
sports coaches, only Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics and John
Wooden at UCLA matches his record of dominance during this
time.

Reggie Jackson is a player worthy of
inclusion, even though he was a free agent superstar who made his
name first in Oakland and again in Anaheim after his tumultuous New
York years. There were the arguments with Billy Martin, another
strange contender with pedestrian statistics, whose personal
foibles are enough to deny him entrance. Reggie bad-mouthed Thurman
Munson. He was somewhat overshadowed by Dave Winfield, a great
athlete whose bid for inclusion fell way short. But Reggie had five
years and shone brightly. He was a Hall of Famer who earned the
moniker Mr. October with a 1977 World Series performance against
the Dodgers that is unequaled before or since. He was larger than
life, in all ways the ultimate true New York Sports Icon.

The Yankees of the late 1990s and 2000s have
enjoyed one of their most impressive runs and in fact have had a
host of superstars as impressive as their greatest teams. This is a
result of the free agent era, in which Yankee riches have been able
to purchase the best club money can buy. In the past, the Yankees
settled for journeymen players, often in trades with Kansas City,
who may not have been great stars (with a few exceptions, such as
Maris) but were solid enough to give them the pennant-winning
edge.

Are Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera worthy of
inclusion? Yes. Each has played on four World Championship teams.
Jeter has not won any MVP awards and it is arguable whether he
pulled ahead of the other great shortstops of his era; Nomar
Garciaparra, Miguel Tejada and Alex Rodriguez. However, he has been
the team leader and symbol, as well as the ultimate class act in a
place where it is not so easy to be classy.

Rivera is on the shortest list of those
contending for the title
greatest relief pitcher of all
time
; a list that includes Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley and
very few others. Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens are mercenaries,
so calling them true New York Sports Icons is problematic, but in
the free agent era we are faced with such conundrums and must deal
with them.

Neither can be denied. One overriding factor
stands out in analyzing both of them. Like it or not, each has the
potential of consideration for being the very best at what he does
who ever played the game; A-Rod the finest all-around player,
Clemens the greatest pitcher. A healthy A-Rod will some day pass
Barry Bonds as the number one home run hitter ever. He was one of
the slickest-fielding shortstops in baseball until coming to New
York, when he had to move to third base in deference to Jeter.
Bonds stole more bases. Mays would be considered a better center
fielder than A-Rod at either shortstop or third base, but the
simple fact that Rodriguez
was
a shortstop - arguably the
most important defensive position on the field, one traditionally
handled by light hitters – works in his favor. He has never won a
World Series, but neither has Bonds (or Ted Williams for that
matter). UP-DATE

Clemens played on the 1999 and 2000 World
Championship teams, although he was not at his most dominating.
Those were his years were in Boston, Toronto and curiously Houston
at an advanced age, but his overall records are beyond reproach.
His 20-3 win-loss mark in 2001, however, requires some getting used
to, as it is not a typographical error. Get
The Baseball
Encyclopedia
or some other good reference source and start
looking up pitching records with the express purpose of
determining,
Who is the greatest pitcher who ever lived?
Clemens most definitely holds up.

****

One other pitcher remains on the short list,
the pantheon. He too is a member in good standing amongst the
fraternity of true New York Sports Icons. He is the man whose
“birth” into this elite fraternity occurred at precisely 9:55 P.M.
Eastern Standard Time on the evening of Wednesday, July 9, the Year
of Our Lord 1969, at Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New
York City.

It was at this moment that one George Thomas
Seaver of the Fresno, California Seavers, USC, Bayside, Queens and
the New York Metropolitans National League Baseball Club,
approached home plate in the eighth inning of the Mets’ game with
the Chicago Cubs.

His is the story before that moment and then
after that moment. His team’s tale also is divided by this “tipping
point” in Mets history. It was precisely at this time that a crowd
of more than 59,000 fans, standing room only on what now was
nothing less than a midsummer night’s dream, came to their feet as
one, rocking the stadium for more than a minute while young Seaver
soaked it all in. It was the kind of roar that Marilyn Monroe only
thought
she had heard in Korea; the kind Joe DiMaggio did in
fact hear directed his way in another stadium, some 20 years
earlier and10 miles to the north-east of where Seaver now stood. It
was the kind of roar reserved only for the true New York Sports
Icon, and once it has been heard it can never be forgotten!

“Seriously. There isn’t a person in the world who
hasn’t heard of Tom Seaver. He’s so good blind people come out to
hear him pitch.”

- Reggie Jackson

He was the “24-year old reincarnation of
Christy Mathewson, Hobey Baker and Jack Armstrong,” according to
sportswriter Ray Robinson. He was “so good blind people come out to
hear him pitch,” said Reggie Jackson.

He was born George Thomas Seaver on November
17, 1944 in Fresno, California. He went by the name Tom, except for
his wife Nancy, who called him George. He remains the only Met
player to be selected a true New York Sports Icon. He is the
greatest player in Mets history and the key figure in the most
amazing event in the annals of sports. In his prime he was the best
pitcher in baseball, and arguably the best either of all time or in
the post-World War II era, depending upon how one analyzes the
records and eras. He enjoyed several of the most spectacular single
seasons in history and sustained a career built on consistent
success over a long period. He transcends sports and New York City.
In a rough ‘n’ tumble town, a town of Irish Catholics, of rough
hewn neighborhood Italians, of Brooklyn Jews and Harlem blacks,
Seaver was a Park Avenue, or to be precise, a Connecticut WASP.

“Even at USC, I was a
six-pack-and-a-pick-up-truck guy, but Tom was a
champagne-and-cigar-in-the-back-of-a-limousine guy,” recalled
ex-Trojan and Boston Red Sox favorite Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

New York City likes it athletes to be
regular guys. With Seaver it was as if they found somebody from the
fanciest prep school, a best-selling author, a U.S. Senator or
college professor; put a uniform on him, and discovered to their
amazement that he could bring high, hard heat with the best of ‘em.
Over time, Seaver’s singular impressiveness as a pitcher and a
person wore thin with teammates and the press. He never suffered
fools well, but over time it was demonstrated to be who he was. It
was not an act. He was one of the rarest of the breed.