THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (77 page)

Manufacturers offered free furnishings for
the home if Tom would make a sales pitch. He built a winery,
cultivating a lifelong love of the vintner’s art. He was constantly
on TV that winter and began to think about a broadcasting career.
Seaver appeared on the Kraft Music Hall, enduring a pie in his
face. He appeared on many talk shows, including Allan Burke’s. A
pilot of his own show was discussed. He chatted with boxer Rocky
Graziano.

“Would you believe this – here I am, an
ex-middleweight champion of the world and a great actor, but it’s
dis kid and his wife who own their own TV show,” said Graziano.

“That’s because I’m better looking than you
and I’ve got a lovely wife,” Seaver joked.

“Oh, Tom,” Nancy cooed.

“Visually, you appear to be the storybook
version of Mr. and Mrs. America,” said Burke. “Nancy, do you feel
jealous about Tom’s adoring female fans?”

“No, I want everybody to love him as much as
I do,” she replied.

“What is the most inspiring thing that’s
ever happened in your life?” Burke asked Tom.

“My wife,” was the answer.

“Is that the key to your success?” he was
asked.

“She gives me a reason for striving,” said
Seaver. “Without her, I wouldn’t have been as successful in
baseball.”

The
Tom and Nancy Show
became, like
the pilot discussed by Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules in
Pulp
Fiction
, one of those shows “that become nothin’.” Away from
the cameras, the Seavers were “very tight,” according to one
writer. “They just want to be alone and walk on the beach.”

Sara Davidson of
McCall’s
did a
feature on them at their new home. In that article, which was based
on several interviews with both Seavers in various locations, Tom’s
reputation for not bedding women on the road was first made public,
at least in a wide-scale manner. This caused more than a little
problem for other players. First their wives asked why Nancy Seaver
could be in Las Vegas when they could not? If Tom Seaver enjoyed
his wife’s company in Sin City, why did their husbands prefer . . .
somebody else’s? They wanted to know what they
did
in Las
Vegas, a question that often leads to such time-honored lines
as:

1. “What happens in Vegas stays in . . .
   Vegas, baby.”
   

2. “Don’t you ask me, no stupid questions, and
   I won’t tell
   you
   no lies,” in the immortal words of Lynyrd
   Skynrd.
   

3. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
   

Tom Seaver’s faithfulness towards Nancy could not
help but imply that it was an
exception to the rule
; an
exception to what?

“I met Nancy for lunch on a day of incessant
gray rain,” wrote Davidson. “She was wearing a turtleneck sweater,
a brown leather vest and mini-skirt, a scarf, cap, and chains, and
Slider was huddled at her feet. On television
she appears hard and confident, but face to face she looks terribly
young, trusting, all smiles and glistening eyelashes. We stood on a
corner, shivering, trying to figure where to go, when Nancy called
with childlike gaiety to a man passing by, as if he were on Main
Street in Fresno, ‘Where’s a good restaurant?’ The man recognized
the face under the beige tam o’ shanter, beamed and suggested
Slate’s, a block away.”

Nancy ordered a half bottle of rose wine and
a Caesar salad, chattering in a California accent.

“He doesn’t fool around on the road because
he doesn’t have to prove anything about himself,” she told
Davidson. “He’s so honorable. We were both raised with the idea
that you get married because that’s the one person you want to
spend your life with.”

Athletes, she said “usually have good
physiques. They’re all male, well proportioned, they don’t look
like a librarian. When I was dating, I would usually go with guys
on the swimming team or football or basketball team. We had common
interests because I liked swimming, diving, gymnastics, and always
cheerleading. I was a cheerleader seven years straight. Now I’m a
professional cheerleader.”

She said the players who chase on the road
are the ones who get married too young, grow up in small towns and
cannot handle the big city. “You can’t exactly blame them for
that,” she rationalized. “I’m not prudish about people going to bed
with each other. It doesn’t bother me at all. Just don’t rain on
my
parade.” Nancy said now that they had bought a house,
“the baby’s going to come next.”

When Tom was on the road she “gets together
with the wives” for pizza or movies. She said she liked all the
Mets’ wives, “and you would, too.” Davidson felt she was a little
flighty, waving good bye to her salad, using words like “baloney .
. . zilch . . . icky,” and talking to inanimate objects like the
camera.

“I love to talk,” Nancy continued. “Don’t
you love to climb in bed at night and just visit? Tom’s trying to
sleep and I’m talking. Weird. I got that from my old-day slumber
parties.”

When the writer sat down with the husband,
she found him to be cautious, wary of journalists. He was “guarded
and suspicious.” Dismissing questions with a shrug, Seaver told
her, “Shall we go round and round? I took journalism courses in
college, so I know what most reporters are up to.”

“Then he stood up abruptly, went to get a
beer, read some papers, then dropped to all fours and crawled
across the rug toward Slider,” wrote Davidson.

He told her he was upset about the anti-war
pamphlets because he been “taken advantage of . . . I am against
the war and want us to get out as quickly as possible without
endangering lives,” an interesting side comment especially in light
of what we now about “The Killings Field,” in which 1.5 million
humans were murdered by the Communists after the U.S. finally did
pull out. Seaver said he and Nancy were part of “The Silent
Majority” that Nixon identified with so much success during the
1968 campaign: family people, Christians, patriots, traditionalists
opposed to protest and immorality. He and his wife would never
attend an anti-war rally, be “anti-President,” or criticize Nixon.
“You just don’t get along that way.” Seaver now more resembled
Johnny Cash’s famed description of himself as “a dove . . . with
claws.”

It was an era of changing moral codes
reflected in entertainment at that time: the nude Broadway musical
Hair
, the homosexual-themed
Midnight Cowboy
, and the
wife swapping soft porn film
Bob and Carol and Ted and
Alice
. In March of 1969, Doors lead singer Jim Morrison had
been arrested for exposing himself at a concert in Miami. X-rated
films were becoming popular. A few years later,
Deep Throat
became all the rage. The wife-swapping theme did not escape
baseball. Athletes were always notorious for “sharing” girls, but
Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich took it another
step when they scandalously exchanged wives. Seaver said he did not
approve of X-rated movies or wife swapping. “I just could never
live that way,” he stated.

His success was based on “hard work,
dedication, concentration, and God-given natural talents.” He was
charming and diplomatic with a “warm, hearty, sexy laugh.” The
couple was just overwhelmingly happy. “Nancy doesn’t want to be
treated as an equal, she wants to be treated as a woman,” said
Seaver. Nancy admitted to being “dominated,” that “It’s a man’s
world. I don’t want to see Tom with an apron on. He’s considerate
and helps me when I need it. I’m not that enslaved. And as a woman
I like being treated special – like I’m soft and round and
shouldn’t be knocked around.”

“I like my wife,” Tom said simply.

A few weeks later Davidson met the Seavers
at Top of the Sixes for an event honoring Cliff Robertson and his
socialite/actress wife Dina Merrill (of the Merrill Lynch brokerage
dynasty). “I don’t know any of these people,” Nancy whispered to
the writer before being introduced to George Plimpton, Paul Anka,
Estee Lauder, and assorted press agents.

“What’s wrong with a backyard barbecue?”
Seaver said to Davidson.

“At that moment, my heart went out to Tom
Seaver,” she wrote.

“We don’t socialize much at all,” Nancy
said. “We don’t like parties, they’re too impersonal.” Nancy liked
books by Pearl Buck. Tom read about sports, politics or the TV
industry. At a signing in Manhattan, Seaver told somebody baseball
“clings to the values of the past. I find myself very gun-shy
watching football these days. Football has all the elements that
certain segments of our society frown upon – violence, pain,
collision. People go to football for ripping and things like that.
Even the terminology upsets me. But baseball has maintained some of
the principles that parts of our society have lost. Baseball has a
sense of fair play; it’s non-violent, wholesome, a clean-cut and
clean-played game.”

Seaver said he would not use his name to
protest the war. His experience with the Moratorium Day organizers
had soured him on the protest crowd. Suddenly rich and hoping to
get much richer, he had more to lose and was cautious. Perhaps he
now understood more, not just about his image but also what America
stood for and protected. “Advertising Wheaties is not denouncing
the war in Vietnam,” he stated, clarifying why he pitched products
but not political ideology.

17-year old Vicki Curran, standing in a long
line of people waiting to get Seaver’s autograph, said the pitcher
“typifies the youth of today. Not everybody our age has long hair.
He seems interested in this country and he works hard for what he
wants.”

On December 31, 1969, Tom and Nancy Seaver
placed an ad in the
New York Times
: “On the eve of 1970,
please join us in a prayer for peace.”

At some point, players started to complain
that Seaver had become a “different guy . . . aloof,” more
concerned with outside things and TV appearances. The endorsements
and attention lavished on all the Mets in the immediate aftermath
of the glorious victory started to fade for most, but not for
Seaver.

“He was somewhat more verbally polished than
Jerry Koosman, his pitching partner, and considerably whiter than
Donn Clendenon, the batting hero of the Series,” wrote Robert
Lipsyte in the
New York Times
.

Seaver signed a new contract for $80,000 and
made it clear that his goal would be to some day be the first
“$200,000 ball player,” which was seen as money hungry.

“No one roots for Goliath,” Wilt Chamberlain
said, and as the Orioles could attest. Seaver was no longer the
peppy leader of a hungry band of underdogs. He was a superstar with
all the trappings. “The cheering fades and the envy grows the
nearer one is to the top,” wrote Devaney.

Seaver told writer Milton Grossman that he
was trying to keep his “feet on the ground,” admitting he was more
“introverted.” Every day situations, restaurants, places where it
was “fun to be recognized” were now problems. He had become a true
New York Sports Icon. The things that made Joe DiMaggio a pain,
Mickey Mantle prickly, now effected Seaver. This was the Apple, not
Pittsburgh. He began to question whether people saw “a human being
and not just a baseball player,” adding that while he owed the fans
full effort, off the field it was a two-way street.

In the spring of 1970, Ron Swoboda had a
blow up with Tom Seaver. The players took up a collection for a
clubhouse guy. Swoboda was not there so somebody told Seaver to,
“Get the money out of Ron’s pants pockets.” Swoboda had planned to
give money to the man at Miller Huggins Field anyway. Seaver
announced he had taken it out of Swoboda’s pants, which were
hanging in his cubicle. He implied that otherwise Ron would not
have contributed. When Swoboda found out, the two had a screaming
match in front of the writers.

“Then he was an apple guy,” Maury Allen
said, referring to Seaver. “Very bright, articulate, honest, if a
little dull with his detailed description of pitching mechanics.
From 1970 on Seaver really has been a different guy. He is bright,
articulate, easy to talk to but still aloof . . .”

“Following the winter of his great content,
writers covering the Mets – and they are the closest that anyone
could be outside of his own teammates – detected a certain
aloofness in Seaver very early in Spring Training,” wrote Jack Lang
in
The Sporting News
. “Tom frequently did not have time to
sit through long periods of questioning like he formerly did and
there were many times he was in a hurry to get out of the club
house.”

Seaver set 30 victories as his goal for
1970. Denny McLain had done it pitching on a four-day rotation in
1968. It was not an outlandish prospect. Seaver had always been a
late bloomer: non-prospect at Fresno High, coming into his own at
Southern California, steady improvement in New York. He was one of
the first to benefit from weight lifting. From his first year at
triple-A Jacksonville until the 1970 season, he got better every
year. He seemed to improve every month.

A look at photographs of the pitcher reveals
distinct body changes over the years. He turned 25 in November of
1969, and by 1970 was finally losing his baby fat, the source of
Donn Clendenon’s humorous “chubby right-hander” remarks. His face
hardened from its original boyishness. His work ethic was such that
he simply continued to get better.

As good as Seaver was in 1969, he
had not
yet reached his full potential!
It was a frightening,
awe-inspiring notion that the best was still yet to come. Seaver
probably did not reach his full, mature physical peak until
1970-71.

Some time between 1968 and 1969, Seaver
morphed from a hard sinkerball artist to a fast ball/slider
pitcher. In the first four-and-a-half months of 1970, Seaver threw
much harder than he had in 1969. His fast ball just
exploded
. Like Sandy Koufax in his prime, he was unhittable.
Big league hitters
feast
on fast balls but Seaver threw with
such blazing speed that, even knowing it was coming, the best
batsmen in the National League could not catch up to it. He had
reached the point where very few hurlers in the game’s long and
hallowed history ever were. Today, radar guns routinely read “100
MPH.” It is a sham, as much for show and fan entertainment as any.
In Seaver’s day, the radar gun was much more accurate, if not
reading a little slow. He was consistently in the high 90s,
occasionally around 100. The idea that any number of modern hurlers
throw as hard now as Seaver did then is a joke.