THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (68 page)

An army of reporters were on hand. Mrs.
Richard Nixon – another USC alum – was in attendance. The nature of
baseball – batting practice, players mingling with reporters –
provided festivities not found in the more rigid pre-game
preparations of a football contest. Seaver was in the middle of the
biggest sporting spectacle there was.

Finally, the field was cleared and Seaver
went out to warm up. He did not feel quite right. Something was
gnawing at him, but he could not put his finger on it. He could not
count on luck as he had in Atlanta. He tried to calm himself.

In the top of the first inning, Cuellar
retired the Mets with little effort. Seaver removed his jacket and
walked, plowboy-style, to the Memorial Stadium mound. He was, as
President Theodore Roosevelt had once sad, the “man in the arena.”
Up stepped Don Buford, a left-handed hitter, and not a power
threat. It was immediately apparent to Seaver, Buford and the
Trojan Nation that here were two USC players facing each other in
the Fall Classic.

Seaver’s first pitch was a ball, but as
Grote returned it he suddenly felt himself again. He had the
confidence to give Buford his best inside heat. He went into his
wind-up, and delivered just that, right where he wanted it in on
Buford’s letters. Seaver was stunned to see Buford turn on it, his
rising bat meeting the ball and sending a drive to right field. An
easy fly ball to Ron Swoboda, finally in the line-up against the
left-hander Cuellar. Swoboda drifted back a couple of steps,
pounded his glove, back a couple more, then his back was against
the fence, and the baseball, as if driven by unseen forces, drifted
over the fence for a home run. Not a homer by F. Robby, B. Robby or
Powell, but by
Buford
. One batter, two pitches, 1-0
Baltimore. Here we go. It was like fumbling the opening kick-off
and the other team recovers it in the end zone for six points.

“Confirmation” of Baltimore superiority,
“seemed instantaneous when Don Buford, the miniature Baltimore left
fielder” took Seaver deep, wrote Angell. Swoboda said he could have
caught the ball, but did not time his leap, the ball touching his
glove “at my apogee.”

Swoboda’s back was to a fence with a gate
that actually could be pushed back two or three feet, but he was in
unfamiliar territory and did not take advantage of it. Swoboda
watched film of that play many times and was always disappointed at
his stutter-step approach, letting a catchable ball go over the
fence. Swoboda told writer Bill Gutman that he was totally
disoriented by the first game of the World Series, comparing it to
parachute jumps that he later made. He was “petrified.” Over time,
Ron became aware of his surroundings during a jump, and compared
that eventual orientation to playing in the Series. He said he felt
like “a mechanical man” going back on Buford’s drive.

At least against the Braves, Seaver got out
of the first unscathed. Seaver retired the next two hitters, but
Powell found no mystery to him, rapping a jarring base hit. Brooks
Robinson tapped out to end the inning.

Cuellar was untouchable, mainly because he
induced half the Mets to hit grounders gobbled up by Brooks
Robinson. Seaver knew he needed to be at his best in order to give
his team a chance. He settled into a rhythm and set Baltimore down
in the second and third in the same fashion as he dominated the
National League all year. He was back. However, his legs, weakened
by the inability to run between starts as usual, were giving way.
In the fourth, he got the first two men out, but lost the hop on
his fast ball.

Elrod Hendricks stepped to the plate. All
season, hitters like Hendricks were unable to get around on
Seaver’s heat, but Ellie stroked a single, pulling it to right
field. Brooks and Frank just saw a blur. Buford and Hendricks were
all over him. Go figure.

Davey Johnson came to the plate, an
unthreatening pose, but Seaver worked him like he was Hank Aaron.
Four balls later and there were men on first and second. Then
Belanger came up. Prior to 1969 he could not hit his way out of a
paper bag, but in that year he improved from .208 to .287. Seaver
pitched to him like he was still the .208 Belanger, but the .287
Mark delivered a single on a hanging curve and it was 2-0. Then,
the unforgivable sin: a chest high nothing pitch to Cuellar, of all
people, who drilled it into center field for an RBI single.
Un-bee-lievable!

Buford up. Little Don, tired of the golden
boy getting all the USC praise, slapped one down the right field
line. The runners advanced, all station to station baseball that
Earl Weaver normally eschewed but on this occasion he welcomed.
4-0, and the crowd, as they say, “went wild.”

“When Tom is pitching and giving up hits
like this, I feel like a voodoo doll,” Nancy Seaver explained. “I
feel as if someone is sticking a needle in me with every hit.”

In the Met fifth, Brooks retired Al Weis on
a tough, deep chance. In the bottom of the fifth, Seaver felt like
a man who had just finished a marathon after running a triathlon.
He was completely jarred by the entire experience, the crushing
blows of Oriole hits coming on the heels of such excitement and
anticipation. Laboring, his knees buckling, the exhausted Mets’ ace
gave all he had to retire Baltimore, knowing he was done for the
day via a pinch-hitter in the next inning.

Cuellar was a mystery all afternoon. The
game had no further excitement except for the seventh inning. New
York scratched a run. With runners on first and second with two
outs, Rod Gaspar pinch-hit, producing a “swinging bunt” roller
towards third. Brooks Robinson came swooping in, barehanded it, and
threw the man out at first base. It was a spectacular play, but as
common in Baltimore as crab cakes and beer.

Robinson puts pressure on right-handed
batters “with his aggressive stance (the hands are cocked up almost
under his chin), his closeness to the plate, his eager appetite for
the ball,” wrote Angell. “His almost supernaturally quick reactions
are helped by the fact he is ambidextrous; he bats and throws
right-handed, but eats, writes, plays ping-pong, and fields blue
darters with his left.”

That was that. Cuellar completed the
six-hitter, a dominant performance by Baltimore as a team with one
small blip, not considered particularly noteworthy at the time. The
two Robinson’s and Powell were a combined one-for-12. Mets fans had
a difficult time finding much solace. If they were to have a
chance, it had to be with Seaver, and now he was gone, a loser
having pitched two straight underperforming games. The pipe dream
of a Shea celebration was as distant as Apollo 11 on July 20.

But confident Ed Charles walked up to
Baltimore pitching coach George Bamberger after the game, telling
him, “George, this is the last game you guys are gonna win.”

“(Expletive deleted),” replied Bamberger, a
skilled member of the Earl Weaver School of Oratory.

“Whoa, this isn’t going to take long,”
Swoboda remembered thinking. The Baltimore native had relatives at
the game. He said the whole experience was a “strange feeling . . .
woo
, baseball of this magnitude is
very
different.”

Seaver was a stand-up guy in the post-game
clubhouse, admitting that he “ran out of gas.” That night, Tom,
Nancy, his parents, brothers, sisters and their families went out
to dinner at the Chesapeake House. His relatives were surprised at
his cheerfulness. The fan in him could not be contained. He had
pitched in the World Series!

As Tom made his way to the table, he saw the
legendary Raoul “Rod” Dedeaux, his college coach at Southern Cal.
His son, Justin, who roomed with Seaver at USC, was with him. They
were dining with . . . Don Buford.

“Front-runner,” Seaver hissed. In jest.

On Sunday, the Mets picked up the papers and
read Frank Robinson’s cutting remarks. The veteran showed little
respect for the Mets. After all, this was a man who had earned his
living doing battle with Aaron’s Braves, Mantle’s Yankees, Mays’s
Giants, Koufax’s Dodgers, Yaz’s Red Sox, and McLain’s Tigers;
veteran teams all. Worthy opponents. Rod Gaspar? Ron Swoboda? Al
Weis? The Mets had sat on their hands in the dugout, too, Robinson
wondered aloud. He thought these youngsters would at least be
enthusiastic.

Gaspar, probably high on champagne and in a
moment of temporary insanity during the play-off celebration, told
somebody the Mets would sweep four straight. It got back to the
Orioles. “Bring on Ron Gaspar,” said Frank.

“Not Ron,” Merv Rettenmund corrected him.
“That’s Rod – stupid.”

“Okay, bring on Rod Stupid,” said Robby.

“Robby was one of those guys who was all
business, all the time, once the game started,” stated Art Shamsky.
“He played hard and the opposition knew it. If he didn’t like a
player on the other team, particularly a pitcher, he would get on
his case, usually from the dugout. He was tough.”

Robinson and Bob Gibson were among that
breed of ball players who frowned upon pre-game or post-game
fraternization. Even at All-Star Games, Robinson was hard to talk
to. He gave nor took no quarter. Off the field he was fair to
everybody, but he was like one of those linebackers who pretend the
opposing running back impregnated his little sister, even if he did
not, just for extra motivation.

Donn Clendenon tried to stir things up a
bit. He knew Robinson from the National League. During batting
practice, he tried to introduce Rod Gaspar and Robinson. They just
stared at each other. Gaspar took off for the outfield, trying to
avoid trouble.

Shamsky and Robinson had been teammates in
Cincinnati. During a series, ironically enough against the Mets in
1965, the Reds held a big lead. Robinson taunted the Mets and was
retaliated against by being hit by a pitch. When New York brought
in a right-handed sidearm reliever known for hitting right-handed
hitters, Reds manager Dick Sisler did not want to risk injury to
his star. He sent Shamsky in to pinch-hit for Robinson.

“You talking to me?” Shamsky asked Sisler,
incredulous that he might be asked to hit for
Frank
Robinson
. “This was like a scene right out of the movie
Taxi
Driver
,” was Shamsky’s description of it. Shamsky grabbed a
bat. He always called Frank “Mr. Robinson.” Somebody told Shamsky,
“Good luck.” He was not talking about the at-bat. F. Robby was
kneeling in the on-deck circle, unaware of Sisler’s move.

“What the (expletive deleted) are you doing
here?” Robinson asked Shamsky.

“Dick wants me to hit for you,” said the
rookie.

“You can’t be serious,” Robinson said in his
best John McEnroe imitation. “Get out of here!”

Shamsky went back to the dugout. “G-g-go
back out there and hit,” Sisler, who stuttered but was also nervous
about pinch-hitting for Robinson, said to Shamsky.

“He doesn’t want me to hit for him,” Shamsky
replied.

“J-j-just go back out there and hit,”
Sisler, who certainly did not want the job of replacing his star
face-to-face, said to Art.

Shamsky made the trek back to the on-deck
circle, whereupon Frank said, “Get out of here,” not unlike the
mustachioed reliever in
Little Big League
who tells the kid
manager, “Go away!”

“But Mr. Robinson, he wants me to hit for
you,” said Shamsky, not sure if he was going to get swung on. He
also had a bat in his hands, and that was the year Juan Marichal
clobbered John Roseboro over the head with one.

Sisler made some inaudible sound. Robby
looked at him in the dugout. The manager touched his forearm, a
sign for a pinch-hitter. “(Expletive deleted),” said Frank. Then he
turned to Shamsky and said, “You better not embarrass me.”

“Talk about pressure,” recalled Shamsky.

Shamsky hit
the first pitch over the
center field fence for a home run
. He was on Cloud Nine. In the
dugout, his teammates all glad-handed him, except for Robinson.
Finally, Art sat down, and Robinson appeared before him.

“Okay,” said Robinson, smiling and extending
his hand. “Now you can call me Frank.”

It was like being initiated into the Rat
Pack. “It’s a day I will never forget,” was Shamsky’s memory of
it.

Earl Weaver “was one of those guys like Leo
and Gene Mauch, who took so much obvious glee in beating you and
worked so hard at it,” recalled Swoboda. “You loved to beat him
because you knew how much he burned inside. You knew Earl had no
graceful acceptance of losing, that it ate him up . . . you knew he
died a little inside.”

Shamsky had played against Weaver when he
was with Topeka and Earl managed at Fox Cities. “Earl was a fiery
little guy with sort of a gravelly voice, the complete opposite of
Gil Hodges,” Shamsky recalled. Hodges carried a beef until it could
be aired behind closed doors. Weaver would get in a player’s face,
an umpire’s mug, and especially a pitcher’s grill . . .
especially
if his name was Jim Palmer.

Writer Peter Golenbock, author of
Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved
Baseball Team
, wrote that the Mets harbored the feeling that
theirs was the better league. Hodges made a point of reminding them
of this, telling them he had managed in Washington and knew it for
a fact.

The odds after the first game were now 5-16
in favor of Baltimore. “I was a little worried,” said Ralph Kiner.
“I thought (the Mets) could lose in four.”

“Doesn’t four of seven mean that you have to
win four games?” asked Yogi Berra, putting it all in
perspective.

“Seaver couldn’t blacken your eye with his
fast ball” in game one, said Clendenon, “but we had Koosman” ready
to go in the second contest.

“Baltimore wasn’t intimidating,” said Cleon
Jones.

“Two things came to my mind after the first
game,” said Seaver. “We were this group of so-called brash
individuals that had no right to be in the World Series against the
big, bad Baltimore Orioles with all the big names on that team.
After we lost the first game I remembered here were these big, bad
Orioles and they were jumping up and down in celebration. For some
reason I expected them to be much more serene in victory. I was
thinking, ‘Why are they so jubilant?’ Donn Clendenon came walking
toward me, put his arm around me walking toward the clubhouse and
said, ‘We’re going to beat these guys.’ It was the same thought I
had in my mind. I pitched lousy relative to how I pitched during
the regular season, yet Clendenon was feeling the same thing I
was.”