THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (76 page)

Ed Charles said the platoon system gave each
player the feeling that he needed to “do it now,” because “there’s
no big man going to do it for you.”

“A lot of the writers said that no matter
what happens in baseball, or our own careers, we’ll never have as
much fun or as much excitement as we had watching the 1969 Mets,”
Maury Allen told Art Shamsky. “All our lives were effected.”

Providence was the general answer most
people had for the 1969 Mets. It was not just the games. There was
Seaver’s fortuitous draft and subsequent re-draft by the Braves and
then the Mets; Clendenon’s “retirement” ended by Bowie Kuhn’s
intervention, allowing for a trade when he resisted going to
Montreal and Houston; and the groundskeeper’s son who saw Jerry
Koosman pitch in the Army, writing his old man to inform his boss
of the prospect.

“It was described by some as the ‘The
Impossible Dream’ come true,” wrote Jack Lang, “but others, more
realistically, called it ‘The Preposterous Dream.’”

“A strange thing happened to the Orioles on
their way to becoming a baseball dynasty,” wrote Doug Brown in
The Sporting News Official Baseball Encyclopedia – 1970
.
“They stumbled over the Mets in the World Series.”

4,000 people arrived at Baltimore’s airport
in a teary, emotional scene. They held banners proclaiming, “We’re
Still No. 1,” touching fingers with the players through a
fence.

“Seaver and Koosman may have been the most
celebrated of the Mets’ miracle workers, but the list of surprise
heroes and true saviors seemed almost endless,” wrote Peter
Bjarkman in
The New York Mets Encyclopedia
.

The “new breed” Mets were “articulate and
educated,” Angell wrote, noting that 22 of 26 were college boys in
a game once dominated by reprobates. They
were
the 1960s:
love beads, business suits, books, rock music, stocks, sex,
alligator shoes, politics and sex. Ron Taylor was known to say that
a double-header was scheduled, “Barring nuclear holocaust.” They
were a truly race-neutral group, maybe not all friends, but they
each sensed something: the Mets were different and maybe even a
little better men than their predecessors.

Angell was no different in his praise of Seaver –
“good looks, enthusiasm, seriousness, lack of affectation, good
humor, intelligence” – even though the writer had a touch of the
New York cynic in him, finding self-serving spin in the motivations
of most.

****

“I remember that day I was interviewing
McGeorge Bundy,” said author David Halberstam of game five. “He was
one of the architects of the Vietnam War. It had been a very
unpleasant interview. It was for my book,
The Best and the
Brightest
. It was an interview that was quite combative. I had
gone to Harvard and he had been dean there. I knew he didn’t
believe in the war anymore and I said, ‘Why are you silent, you
were the dean of our college? We looked up to you as a great figure
and here’s the most pressing issue of our time and you’re silent on
it.’ He said to me, ‘You’re very arrogant and that’s a very
arrogant thing to say.’ I said, ‘No, you’re the arrogant one
because you are sitting on the sideline at a terrible moment and
you’re remaining silent.’ So, it was pretty hostile. When I left
his office, I was feeling terrible. I came out of the interview and
went by a store window and the World Series was on. A lot of people
were gathered around watching. The Mets were winning. I went from
sort of a dark interview that wasn’t fun, a dark moment for me, to
where my whole attitude changed from dark to smiling. Maybe it
effected a lot of people like that.”

For his book
The Magnificent Seasons
,
Shamsky interviewed a Vietnam veteran named Ned Foote. In April of
1969, Marine Corporal Foote stepped on a land mine. He was at St.
Albans Naval Hospital in Queens until September, then transferred
to the VA Hospital in Albany, New York, having lost his foot.

“I can’t tell you how much listening to the
Mets that year helped me,” he recalled. “There wasn’t much else to
make me feel good.”

Mets fan Kerry Schacht was a sergeant in the
Army. He went on patrol just before the first game, and was gone10
days. When he came back, the first thing he wanted to know was, who
won? He was ecstatic to learn it was the Mets. “I have to say God
works in a funny way,” he told Art Shamsky. “. . . When I think of
the1969 Mets it still brings a smile to my face. Their win put
re-assurance back in my life that things happen for a reason and
now when I go to ball games I appreciate it more than I did.”

“As the season progressed, I think New
Yorkers kind of drifted away from some of the problems of the world
and the country and began to focus on what was happening with the
Mets at Shea,” said Charles.

The Mets “were an escape,” said Kranepool.
“As you walked around the city there was a tremendous atmosphere, a
good feeling. And when we won, it got better.” Koosman did not feel
winning the series was “a miracle.” He felt the team’s talent was
not at the level of Chicago, Atlanta or Baltimore, but gave credit
to the manager.

“There was so much happening that it was
great for the city to be able to enjoy something that seemed so
right,” said Swoboda. “I had the sense that it gave people
relief.”

“
The Jets and Mets
represented working class people more than the elite in New York,”
said New York Jets defensive tackle John Elliott. “I remember the
Jets had a lot of guys from Texas on our team and the Mets had
Texans, too. That made me feel good.”

“Believe it or not, Glenn Beckert and I took
our wives to Las Vegas to the old Flamingo Hotel,” recalled Ron
Santo. “We’re sitting at a blackjack table and this big curtain
opens and it’s the World Series. It was the last thing we wanted to
watch. Everybody in Vegas was pulling for the Mets. When (the Mets)
lost the first game, I remember Frank Robinson getting interviewed.
He said, ‘How did the Mets ever get here?’ And, I looked at Beckert
and we both said, ‘He shouldn’t have said that.’ ”

Ferguson Jenkins felt the Mets could win
because they had better pitching and, “That’s how you win,
particularly in a short series.”

The Mets “ended the drought of missing the
Dodgers and Giants,” said Maury Allen.

“Like us, it was heart and persistence, the
desire and courage to keep going,” said Joe Namath.

“It was like an angel in Heaven looking over
us that year,” said Charles.

“The Mets winning the World Series is the
greatest thing I have ever seen in my lifetime of sports,” said
groundskeeper Peter Flynn.

“It was something you cannot put words to,”
said Joan Hodges.

“There is a real explosion in your mind when
all of a sudden it is happening to you, and you can be World
Champion,” recalled Seaver.

“People still tell me how priceless that
time was to them and what we meant to them,” said Swoboda.

“It was proven that crime was down in New
York City when the play-offs and World Series were being played,”
recalled Ron Taylor.

“The city embraced the team because what we
did was totally unexpected,” said Bud Harrelson. “It was something
that can never be duplicated.” Like the parting of the Red Sea, or
as Joseph Durso put it in his October 17, 1969 game story for the
New York Times
: “The Mets entered the Promised Land
yesterday after seven years of wandering through the wilderness of
baseball.”

“There are two sentences inscribed upon the
Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man’s life;
‘Know Thyself,’ and ‘Nothing too much’: and upon these all other
precepts depend.”

- Plutarch, Greek philosopher

“A man’s got to know his limitations.”

- Clint Eastwood as “Dirty Harry”
Callahan,
Magnum Force

“All glory is fleeting.”

- George C. Scott,
Patton

The Mets’ World Series share was $18,000 per
man. After winning the Series on Thursday, the whole team appeared
on the
Ed Sullivan Show
on Sunday. Ron Swoboda lived off his
appearance fees. Donn Clendenon received a Dodge Challenger for
being MVP. Little Al Weis was given a Volkswagen called “Mighty
Mite.” Boswell, Garrett and Gaspar appeared on
The Dating
Game.
The girl picked Gaspar and they went to Europe, but
“nothing happened.” Seaver was offered $70,000 by a Florida
producer to act in a stock road show touring Florida for seven
weeks. He declined. Gil Hodges received a raise to $70,000 for the
1970 season. General manager Johnny Murphy tragically suffered a
heart attack and died in January of 1970.

****

“More trouble has started per square inch in
Las Vegas, the gambling capital, than in any city since Sodom,”
wrote John Devaney in
Tom Seaver: Portrait of a Pitcher
.
“Trouble began for the 1970 Mets on a Las Vegas stage in the fall
of 1969.”

Shamsky, Seaver, Koosman, Clendenon, Jones,
Agee and Kranepool went to Vegas. They did two shows per evening,
dinner and midnight, with comedian Phil Foster. They sang “The
Imposible Dream,” the theme of
Man From La Mancha
. Each made
$10,000 for the two weeks.

“We were stars wherever we went,” said
Koosman.

Things began to fray in Vegas. They had been
asked not to include their wives; to make it just about the
players. Nancy came along anyway, annoying some of the guys who
probably wanted to let their hair down and “let boys be boys.” The
faithful wife and the faithful husband were, to them, prying eyes
looking over their shoulders. They had to answer to their own
spouses who asked, “If Nancy Seaver was there how come I was not
invited?” Nancy was always around the TV cameras, “honing in on
their glory,” according to John Devaney. Criticism of her was not
relegated to this group. Baltimore’s Pete Richert said that her
carrying that banner in Baltimore had been “bush,” and that his
wife stopped that stuff as a high school cheerleader.

“It went to our heads,” said Swoboda. “Some
stars thought they were superstars, some fringe guys thought they
were stars, nobody worked hard, nobody really cared.

“Those guys Vegas club> made some extra dough, but they created jealousies.
We won because we had been a one-for-all and all-for-one team. Now
we were cashing in separately. That created problems. It even
created problems among that group. Seaver wanted more money than
the others got and don’t forget they had to play together again a
few months later.”

Most of the big money offers came to Seaver,
who was identified as the symbol of the team. The “all-for-one,
one-for-all” concept of the season was lost in the glare of
Seaver’s larger-than-life
persona
. At 24, he was the
youngest winner of the Cy Young award, and the youngest to win 25
games since Dizzy Dean 34 years earlier.

Seaver won the S. Rae Hickock Belt as the
Professional Athlete of the Year.
The Sporting News
named
him Man of the Year.
Sports Illustrated
chose him as the
Sportsman of the Year. The two publications featured flowery,
overly flattering portrayals of the Mets’ superstar. Glowing
terminology describing Seaver, his pitching prowess and his wife
filled these pages and more. The build-up of his personality,
intelligence, charm; it was over the top. He was a fictional
character come to life, too good to be true.

“Tom is the greatest guy in the world,” said
Buddy Harrelson.

“Tom is as nice as everyone says he is . . .
he’s not just the product of an advertising campaign,” said Dick
Schaap.

Seaver, Robinson wrote, “contributed to the
restoration of baseball glory in the battered, but unbowed, city of
New York.” He was a “Huck Finn of a pitcher.”

“There are two things of primary importance
to me, and they’re both in this room – my marriage and baseball,”
Tom Seaver told the audience at the
Sports Illustrated
luncheon honoring him as Sportsman of the Year. The audience
included Joan Payson and Bowie Kuhn. “I would not do anything to
jeopardize either of them.” Glancing towards Nancy, he said, “I
wouldn’t have had the success I’ve had without Nancy’s help. I wish
you’d thank her for me.”

Hearing the applause, Nancy cried.

“Gee, I told you not to cry,” said
Seaver.

Seaver took out an ad in the
New York
Times
: “Now available: Tom Seaver, America’s top athlete and
sports personality, plus Nancy Seaver, Tom’s lovely wife, for those
situations that call for Young Mrs. America or husband and wife
sales appeal.”

Some of his friends and teammates said it
was in bad taste. His mother was “horrified.” Tom spun it: “I won’t
take any offer that would interfere with my career.”

Tom did not enroll in USC that fall.
Instead, the Seavers bought a 90-year old farmhouse in Greenwich,
Connecticut, a suburban “bedroom community” of Manhattan business
executives and socialites, located some 45 minutes from New York
City. The choice of Greenwich was telling. It was and still is one
of the wealthiest communities in the world, but not wealthy in the
nouveau riche
, Malibu sense of the term. It is the ultimate
“old money, blue blood” town. President George Herbert Walker Bush,
the nephew of Mets part owner Herbert Walker, grew up in its tony
oceanside surroundings. Ethel Skakel, the wife of Senator Edward
Kennedy, was from a prominent Greenwich family. Her nephew murdered
a neighbor girl but got away with it for years until the case was
re-opened and he was convicted. The scandal was depicted in a movie
called
Murder in Greenwich
. By making themselves residents
of Greenwich, the Seavers made a statement; about their pursuit of
wealth and status, their desire for privacy, and their
politics.