THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (89 page)

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Authors: Steven Travers

Tags: #baseball

Jerry Grote played for the Mets until 1977,
when a trade to Los Angeles made him part of two more World Series
in New York (both lost to the Yankees). He retired after the 1981
season having played 16 years and 1,421 games, and in four World
Series. One of the best defensive catchers of his era, he had a gun
for an arm. Cincinnati’s Johnny Bench was the unquestioned glamour
player of that position, but he was annoyed when Tom Seaver came to
the Reds and said Grote was as good. Seaver clarified his view in a
conversation with Ron Swoboda (who he made up with). Swoboda
suggested that Grote was as good as Bench.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Seaver,
adding that the fact Grote was in the same conversation with the
awesome Bench said everything about Grote’s prowess.

Donn Clendenon is remembered because he was
the MVP of the 1969 World Series, but he was an All-Star in
Pittsburgh and may have had his best year with the 1970 Mets (22
homers, 97 RBIs with a .288 average). He was one of the only
players to improve. It was his “last hurrah.” The actual “clubhouse
lawyer” took his effervescent personality with him into retirement
after the 1972 campaign.

One of the most incongruous facts in
baseball history revolved around Ken Boswell in 1970. He was
considered so bad defensively teammates made a “tuning fork” sound
or hand motion, suggesting that his glove was made of a hard
substance, not soft leather. Perhaps he was unfairly maligned, but
nobody was confusing him with Jackie Robinson at second base.

Then, in 1970, Boswell
set the Major
League record
for highest fielding average for a second baseman
at .996. He also established the National League record for most
consecutive errorless games, 85 between April 30 and September 26,
1970. He took 391 chances without a miscue! Boswell was a member of
the 1973 National League champions. The Texas native finished his
career at Houston from 1975-77, retiring after 11 seasons.

Bud Harrelson remained Seaver’s best friend.
He led the Mets in steals in 1971, also earning a Gold Glove award.
In the 1973 play-offs, Pete Rose upended the diminutive Harrelson
on a hard slide into second base at Shea Stadium. The crowd loved
Buddy and booed Rose unmercifully. The moment was credited with
spurring New York to eventual victory.

Harrelson retired after the 1980 season,
having played in the end for the Phillies and Rangers. He finished
with 127 career steals, and managed the Mets from 1990 to 1991.

Ed Charles’s last year was 1969. His name is
well remembered, and he is considered a key member of the team
despite having only played 61 games with a .207 average. Jerry
Koosman constantly laughs when reminiscing over Charles’s looping,
will-it-ever-get-there-in-time? throw to first base for the last
out of game two in Baltimore.

Some writers have suggested that Tom Seaver,
who said he was prejudiced in high school, was so unprejudiced with
the Mets that he actually
preferred
the company of black
players to white ones. This seemed to be the case with Tommie Agee,
Donn Clendendon and Ed Charles, but Seaver had little respect for
Jones. In his mind, Jones was a boozer who did not hustle, thus
taking bread out of Seaver’s mouth and wasting Hall of Fame talent.
Jones hit .319 in 1971 but tailed off after that. He left baseball
following the 1976 season with a .281 career average. He never
really came close to his great 1969 performance. Ron Swoboda later
said Jones was a brilliant analyst of hitting who, if given the
chance, could have been a great batting coach. He certainly seemed
to know Tommie Agee like the back of his hand. Jones’s most
unfortunate moment came a few year after the 1969 season when the
cops knocked on his van in a parking lot and found him in the arms
of a naked woman. The headlines were not kind and left little to
the imagination.

Tommie Agee had good years in 1970 and 1971,
but after 12 seasons retired following the 1973 campaign, having
spent time in Houston and St. Louis. In 12 years he batted .255 and
stole 167 bases. He died in 2001.

Art Shamsky has been recognized by every
Jewish organization as a “great Jewish athlete.” On several
embarrassing occasions, some Jewish group or another announces that
a “Jewish player” has been inducted into the “Jewish Sports Hall of
Fame” or been named “New Jersey Jewish Athlete of the Year,” or
some such honor. Then they find out that the player in question,
assumed to be Jewish because of so-called “Jewish features” like
curly hair or a big nose; or a “Jewish-sounding name” like Kosar or
Levy, is in fact not Jewish. Bernie Kosar had to inform the world
after winning the 1983 National Championship at Miami that he in
fact was Catholic!

In a country in which Jews found the
Promised Land of success and prosperity, very few have found it in
sports. Shamsky, who
is
Jewish, did find it; at least in
1969. He hit .293 in 1970 but .185 in 1971. He spent eight games
with the 1972 World Champion A’s but made no mark, retiring at
season’s end with a .253 career average, but his gaudy .538 mark in
13 at-bats vs. Atlanta in the 1969 N.L.C.S. is a source of
pride.

Leo Durocher never went to Vietnam, but Ron
Swoboda did. He toured after the 1969 season, just as he did after
1968. His group included Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and Yankees legend
Joe DiMaggio. The death count went up every day during his trip. At
the time, Swoboda believed that President Nixon was sincere about
ending the war.

“You flew to bases,” he said. “They dropped
you in the middle of (expletive deleted) nowhere, and you’d walk
around and visit guys. You saw kids out there conducting the war,
kids saddling up with their M-16s, walking into combat. An 18-year
old gave me his good conduct medal and cried in front of me, and
you wished you could hide this guy in your luggage when you left. I
had a doctor working in the hospital at Tonson Ute who just poured
out his guts, his frustration with all of it. He just spit it out,
and I was flabbergasted. I was expecting ‘rah-rah.’ And he went on
a rant. You’d also meet hardcore guys.”

DiMaggio “hated the Kennedys,” convinced
they had killed Marilyn Monroe in 1962. He also “hated Frank
Sinatra. He hated anybody he felt had taken advantage of Marilyn.
Like Joe, Marilyn was damaged property. Her sense of worth was
zero.”

Joe D. told Swoboda that he had been in the
same Vegas club the night Frank Sinatra got punched out. The
lesson, according to Sinatra, was to “never get in a fight with a
Jew in the desert,” in reference to the fact that his assailant was
Jewish, and the Israelis had destroyed invading Arab armies in the
1967 war. Joe D. loved watching Sinatra, who posed as a tough guy
but really was not, get his comeuppance.

Swoboda met up with Jack Lang’s son, serving
in Vietnam. After drinking with him in a bar at An-Khe, they heard
an explosion. It turned out to be a diversion followed by a small
firefight. One American was killed.

“It was like the Fourth of July,” said
Swoboda.

“I felt we needed a much better strategy for
withdrawal, because I thought we were spinning our wheels.” Swoboda
read a lot about the war, and spoke to David Halberstam. Secretary
of Defense Robert “McNamera didn’t get it then and he didn’t get it
with his hideous attempt at expiation . . . he should have stayed
in his rathole and not come out.”

We “lost our will over here . . . the war is
the pre-eminent piece of history in my life. I don’t think anything
has changed us as a country more in terms of squandering our living
capital and our living assets – young people . . .” The Vietnamese
are “really intriguing, and we just decimated their culture. I feel
a big guilt about that . . .

“I didn’t fight the war. I just went and
watched it and met some guys. It made me feel like I didn’t do
enough. When I came back I felt the way to get out of there was to
support the government’s attempt to get out of there.”

Eventually, Swoboda came to feel that Nixon
“prolonged the war,” and “I felt a little betrayed.” Asked to
campaign for him in 1972, he refused. He was re-elected by the
largest margin in electoral history, “but not with my help.”

In 1971 Swoboda was traded to the Montreal
Expos. At the time, he and Seaver were barely on speaking terms and
one of them had to go. The Mets certainly had no trouble deciding
which one.

“Seaver and I have never been the best fans
of each other,” he told Milton Gross after the trade. “We come from
different backgrounds. There are three or four people on the Mets
I’m not sorry to be leaving. And they might not be sorry to see me
go. I’m disappointed by one thing. Four of the greatest plays I
ever made, he was pitching and three of them kept him in the game.
In that respect, it bothered me a little bit.

“There were a lot incidents after the Series
that really sickened me. You can’t like everybody in the world, and
not everybody’s going to like you. You can’t get affection if you
don’t give affection. Tom has no such feeling for people. He’s
rather self-centered.”

“That is spoken by one of the greatest
self-analysts of our time, I imagine,” Seaver said when informed of
the remarks.

Swoboda was a young bull, in terms of
appearance and headstrong demeanor, but it turned out that he
was
a man of “self-analysis,” after all. In his candid
remarks to Peter Golenbock for
Amazin’
, Swoboda freely
admitted that the fault was at least half his, if not more. He said
that he was young, that he basically blew his chance, not realizing
the enormous advantages of playing in New York. In Montreal he was
a nobody going nowhere. In New York he enjoyed fleeting glory, but
his name is still revered for moments of supreme Mets greatness.
Swoboda admired Seaver’s intelligence, gave him his due as an
all-time pitching great; a tough mind and true pro, albeit a
different personality type.

Everything Yogi Berra ever touched turned to
gold. If it was a military operation, that meant D-Day, the
greatest in all history (he actually said taking part in the beach
landings at Normandy “was fun”). If it was playing baseball, that
meant 11 World Championships and three MVP awards with the Yankees.
If it was friendship, that meant Joe Garagiola, his boyhood pal
from the Italian “Hill” section of St. Louis, who became America’s
baseball buddy, best-selling author and announcer. If it was
coaching, that meant World titles with the Mets and Yankees. If it
was managing, that meant taking the 1964 Yankees and 1973 Mets to
the seventh game of the World Series. If it was marriage, that
meant a long and happy one. Fatherhood? His son went to Harvard and
played in the big leagues. Investments? Ivan Boesky called him for
advice. Endorsements? Countless, his face known and loved by
millions, including a long running AFLAC commercial. His words
carry more resonance, it seems, than Hemingway or Dickens. His
sayings are legendary: “It’s never over ‘til it’s over.” “Nobody
goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” It could fill a book and
has.

If Yogi had been at the World Trade Center
on 9/11 nobody ever would have heard of Osama Bin Laden. If he had
been on the Titanic, “global warming” would have melted that
iceberg. You want this guy sitting next to you during turbulence.
You want to share a hospital room with him before surgery.

In 1964, the Yankees all made fun of Yogi
and he was going to be fired. He told Phil Linz to stop playing his
harmonica on the bus but Linz refused. Berra knocked it out of his
hands. “On any other team, they would have folded,” said Jim
Bouton. “With the Yankees, we won 40 of 50 and the pennant.”

In the 1973 play-offs and World Series,
every move he made seemed to work out. He is the one guy associated
as a hero with both the Mets and Yankees. Berra is as much a symbol
of New York as the Statue of Liberty, and has an accent that is
straight out of the Bronx even though he is from Missouri. He lived
in New Jersey for years. Mob guys give him respect.

****

Historians have tried to give meaning to the
1969 Mets. All in all, it probably was the greatest, most wonderful
sporting moment – and one of the most upbeat overall events – in
all of American or even world history. The most significant sports
events since the 1969 Mets include the:

Baseball

1974 Hank Aaron’s breaking of Babe Ruth’s
homer record.

1977 Reggie Jackson’s five-homer
Yankees-Dodgers World Series.

1978 Ron Guidry vs. Jim Rice Yankees-Red Sox
play-off.

1985 Pete Rose’s breaking of Ty Cobb’s
all-time hits record.

1986 Bill Buckner’s error gives Mets World
Series.

1988 Orel Hershiser’s breaking of Don
Drysdale’s consecutive scoreless innings record.

2001 Barry Bonds’s breaking of Mark
McGwire’s homer record.

2001 Curt Schilling vs. Derek Jeter 9/11
Diamondbacks-Yankees World Series.

2003 Derek Jeter vs. Pedro Martinez
Yankees-Red Sox A.L. Championship Series.

2004 Curt Schilling vs. Alex Rodriguez Red
Sox-Yankees A.L. Championship Series.

2007 Barry Bonds’s breaking of Hank Aaron’s
homer record.