Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (25 page)

Like the Arbiphone, the question mark was the Mets. Nelson decided to
shadow their manager. "Soon we're hiding between palm trees to avoid him.
Casey was over 70 years old and running us into the ground!" Stengel
spanned Tris Speaker and Tom Seaver. "At his age, he didn't care what you
said. You had no identity."

All year Casey confused him and Bob Miller. One night the bullpen
phone rang: "Get Nelson up!" he said. Joe Pignatano knew Lindsey was a
broadcaster: "I also knew not to argue with Casey." He took a ball, put it on
the rubber, and said, "Nelson!" Miller started throwing.

Yarns still stitch the '62 Metropolitans. "I tell them myself," said Lindsey.
"But they were gruesome. Thank heavens for Stengel. He spread more happiness than anyone I've ever known-because he was doing exactly what he
wanted."

It was, he said, a last age of innocence. "The Mets played for fun. They
weren't capable of playing for anything else."

Their first game was Metsian: St. Louis, 11-4. Things went downhill from
there. New York ended 40-120. Next year: 51-11 1. The Mets' first slam
earned Rod Kanehl 50,000 trading stamps. Jimmy Piersall ran his 100th
career homer backward around the bases. "The worse we played," said Nelson,
"the more legendary we became."

Roger Craig was hardship's poster child: 15-46 in 1962-63. Another,
Marvin Eugene Throneberry, yoked Alfonse at the plate and Gaston in the
field. One mate dropped a fly. "What are you trying to do?" flushed Marv.
"Steal my fans?" The umpire called him out for missing first base on a
triple. Coach Cookie Lavagetto told Stengel, "Don't argue too long,
skipper-he missed second, too.' "

Richie Ashburn was "a rarity," said Lindsey. "His talent wasn't in the past
tense," hitting a team-high .306. The ex-Phil played center field. Frank Thomas more or less filled left. Shortstop was Spanish-speaking Elio Chacon.
They often met, without trying to.

"I got it!"Ashburn yelled. Thomas stopped as Chacon ran into him.

At sea, Richie approached bilingual Joe Christopher. "How you do say, `l
got it' in Spanish?" Joe said, "`Yo la tengo.' "

Soon a pop invaded the Bermuda Triangle. The triad merged. "Yo la
tengo!"Ashburn screamed. Chacon stopped. Thomas ran into him.

Hobie Landrith was Stengel's first expansion pick. "If you ain't got no
catcher," Casey said, "you get all passed balls." Even he wondered if New York
would pass on the Mets.The '62-63ers drew 2,002,638-"amazing,"Nelson
said, "given our atrocity." The Perfessor surveyed one house. "We are
frauds-frauds for this attendance. But if we can make losing popular, I'm all
for it." By 1963, their WABC Radio/ WOR TV audience beat the Yankees!
akin, said partner Bob Murphy, "to a mule lapping Man O' War."

That June, Stengel visited The Stadium for the first time since his 1960
firing. "The Yankees were world champions. Casey, like our fans, hated them,"
said Lindsey, whose wife and two daughters brought horns and bells to the
Mayor's Trophy Game. "The Yankees confiscated it, like all noisemakers, at the
gate. Fifty thousand people there that night, and forty-nine rooted for the Mets."

Sixth inning: Mets lead. Casey hails a reliever.

"[Vapid Ken] MacKenzie?" said a coach.

"No!" he boiled. "Carl Willey."

Nelson fell back on memory. "Casey used our best pitcher in an exhibition":
Mets, 6-2. The Bronx aped Picadilly Circus. "David killed Goliath. That's
what Stengel brought to the Mets."

The Polo Grounds closed in September: A pilgrim recalled a Mets sense
of deja vu. Ashburn was voted 1962 team Most Valuable Player. He took the
prize, a boat, out on the Delaware River, where it sank.

A 1964 New Yorker cartoon showed Mets entering the dugout. A fan says,
"Cheer up.You can't lose them all." Game two of a twinbill at their new park,
Shea Stadium, took 23 innings and a record 7 hours, 22 minutes. (Could they?
Jints, 8-6.) "Pitch to Cepeda. Runners go," Lindsey said. "And it's lined to
McMillan. And it is a double play! And it may be a triple play! A triple play!"
Jim Bunning threw a perfect game. The Mets outdrew theYanks by 429,959.
Nelson telecast NBC's All-Star Game: N.L., 7-4. Under one-upmanship, a
year later he spoke from a gondola over second base in the Astrodome.

"What about my man up there?" Stengel asked Tom Gorman.

"What man?" said the umpire.

"My man Lindsey. What if the ball hits my man Lindsey?" Gorman
shrugged. "Well, Case, if the ball hits the roof, it's in play, so I guess if it hits
Lindsey, it's in play."

"How about that?" Casey said. "That's the first time my man Lindsey was
ever a ground rule."

Nelson commuted from Huntington, Long Island. Wife Mildred, named
"Mickie," after Cochrane, grew up with baseball. Each daughter followed him
to the park. "Sharon [the older, mentally and physically handicapped] knows
things about baseball I don't. We ate the Mets at breakfast, lunch, and dinner,"
a blur of Mr. Met, Miss Rheingold, and the city's N.L. tilt.

In 1966, Stengel, now retired, made the Hall of Fame. Five times the
1962-68ers hit last. Finally they left the cellar, for how long Lindsey was
unsure. "Personally, I thought forever." Instead, miracle and metaphysical,
they climbed Jacob's Ladder.

"The Mets may endure a thousand years, as Churchill would say," Nelson said
of 1969. "They may win a dozen championships, but they can only do it the
first time once, and the first time was incomparable." Seaver pitched a nearperfect game. Ron Swoboda hit two two-run homers: Mets, 4-3, despite
Steve Carlton's 19 Ks. On September 8, Chicago held a 2 1/2-game lead.
"Before the first game a black cat crept toward their dugout, hissing the manager." The crowd did, too, singing, "Good night, Leo [Durocher]." Black
magic soon helped the Amazin's take first.

They clinched on September 24. "That night," said Lindsey, "someone
asked [manager] Gil Hodges, `Tell us what this proves.' He sat back, stared,
and said, `Can't be done.' "What could: an L.C.S. sweep. Next: World Series
vs. Baltimore. "We are here," said the Orioles' Brooks Robinson, "to prove
there is no Santa Claus."

Games One-Two split: elves awoke. New York strewed four hits, 5-0:
the North Pole warmed. J.C. Martin hunted in Game Four's tenth inning.
The throw hit his wrist, scoring the 2-1 winning run: Santa primed. Next
day the O's led, 3-2. "Al Weis hadn't homered at home since '65," said
Nelson. He struck the scoreboard: 3-all. Cleon Jones and Swoboda doubles
and a double error KO'd Baltimore, 5-3: Mets, set and year.

"The game was the most memorable event I ever covered-so far ahead I
can't imagine what's second," said Lindsey. He aired NBC's post-game clubhouse show, then drove his family to Manhattan. "We saw dancing, confetti, cops going
wild. It's a cliche, but this is, if there ever was, a once-in-a-lifetime happening."

Santa cleared the chimney. Said Casey: "They did it slow, butfast."A ticker
tape parade snaked through the island. Mets chairman M. Donald Grant was
asked what it meant. "Our team finally caught up with our fans."

In 1962, Nelson stopped at a men's clothing store at 49th and Broadway.
"Show me jackets that you can't sell," he told the owner, buying seven "gaudy,
showy, awful" coats that Liberace wouldn't wear. "We were competing with
the Yankees. I needed attention." Next month a cabbie said, "You're the guy
who wears all those wild jackets!" Lindsey told a friend, "See, he doesn't
know my name, but he knows what I do. It pays to advertise."

Andy Rooney served with Nelson in World War II. "Of all my old buddies," he said, "only he dressed better then." Murphy and colleague Ralph
Kiner scavenged on the road. "If we saw a wild enough jacket, we'd tell him."
Daughter Nancy bought a jacket in Ireland. Both were stopped at customs.
The inspector, a Mets fan, joked, "Nobody would wear a jacket like this."

"My daddy will," she beamed.

In 1988, daddy made Cooperstown. Speaking, he gave his sport coat12 colors randomly jigsawed into squares-to Hall head Ed Stack. It flanks
other Mets bric-a-brac-' most about '69." 1970: Seaver K'd 10 straight
Padres. 1972: Say-Hey returned. 1973: He retired, introduced by Nelson.
"Willie, say good-bye to America," choked Mays, sharing another Mets'
L.C.S. Its postlude resembled 1962, not '69: A's, in seven. Nelson and Curt
Gowdy again did the Series.

Having swung from tenth to first, the Mets swung back in an Elio
Chacon sort of way. The '77-78ers placed last. NewYork again became aYankees town. Once Nelson coined three rules of life: "Never play poker with a
man named Ace, never eat at a place called Mom's, never invest in anything
that eats or needs painting."

In January 1979, he hatched a fourth: "Never stay at the fair too long."

Team business manager Jim Thomson was in his office when Lindsey began a
speech that not even Marvelous Marv had prepared or conditioned him. "I
have loved every minute of my association with the Mets. Even the bad times
were memorable [losing an average of 91 games]. Despite that, I would like
to be released from the remaining year of my contract," for reasons germane
to the personal and real.

In 1973, Mickie died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Sharon lived in a residence
near New York. Nancy was a University of Southern California graduate student. Wanting to be near, daddy also recalled Mel and Red. "They were bitter at
the end. I didn't want the uniform cut off me." He aired the 1979-81 Giants,
made the NSSA Hall of Fame, and was introduced by an old Army bud. "I am
here," said William Westmoreland, "because I am a friend of Lindsey Nelson's."

For a decade the University of Tennessee had asked him to teach broadcasting. In 1982, Lindsey returned to the second cup of coffee that conspired
to change his life. He lectured, wrote a memoir, did 1985-86 CBS baseball,
and aired a 26th and last Cotton Bowl. "I hear Guy Lombardo says that when
he dies he's taking NewYear's Eve with him," mused a wag. Retiring, Nelson
took January 1. Its yearly table has an empty chair.

Once he addressed the problematic. "Near the end of their life certain
women say, `Maybe I should have married John.' We do that with professions`Maybe I should have tried something else.' I never felt that way." Lindsey died
in June 1995, at 76, of Parkinson's disease. Finally, he could rest.

LINDSEY NELSON

Nelson evoked Manhattan. The Georgian Ernie Harwell defined Detroit. In
Houston, an Iowan etched Texas-size disgust with limits of any kind. "We
couldn't get over the hump," said 1962-86 Astros nee Colt .45s Voice Gene
Elston. "If we didn't have bad luck, we wouldn't have any luck at all."

Luck carted him from hometown Fort Dodge (high school basketball)
via World War II (Navy) through 1946-48 Waterloo and 1949-53 Des
Moines (Three-I and Western League) to N.L. Chicago. Said Phil Wrigley:
"We have a defeatist attitude" understandably. The 1954-57 Cubs finished
258-357.

Roberto Clemente once plucked a bottle from the outfield wall. "He
thought it a baseball," mused Elston. "It got caught in Wrigley's vines." In
1958, dumped for tyro Lou Boudreau, Gene plucked defeat from the jaws of
victory.

He found refuge in Mutual's "Game of the Day."The state with its most
outlets blared orchards and fields and streams, falling away in endless line.
"Texas heard me," he said. "`Game' led me there." Elston found that selling
the 1962 Colt .45s was even harder than the Cubs.

Nelson liked the 1961 expansion draft. "The Mets were great on paper, but
paper doesn't play." By contrast, Houston G.M. Paul Richards offered to
trade rosters with cellar Philadelphia. The Colts trained at Apache Junction,
Arizona, near Superstition Mountain, where Indian spirits and a Dutchman's
ghost were said to guard lost gold. "Geronimo's warriors roamed here,"
mused Elston. "The way we played, maybe he warred on us."

We forget that the '62ers outdrew New York: "characters," Gene
explained, though none as iconic as The Marvelous. Jim Pendleton neared
third base, stopped, and restarted. "His cup fell out when he rounded third,
rolled down a pant leg, and was around his knee by the time he hit home."
First baseman Rusty Staub, charging the plate, said, "Whatever you do, throw
home." Pitcher Hal Woodeshick nodded, then almost hit him in the ear.

Dick (Turk) Farrell shamed Peck's Bad Boy. "He'd put snakes in lockers,
give the hot-foot," said Gene. A drive smacked his head, caroming to outfielder Jimmy Wynn for an out. Owner H. Roy Hofheinz made the team wear
"western outfits with black cowboy boots in orange, black cowboy hats, and
belt buckle embossed with a pistol with `Colt .45s,' an orange tie, white
shirts with red and blue baseball stitching." Mercifully, he deepsixed them.

"Explains a lot," said 1962-64 manager Harry Craft. Mysterious:
Houston's reverse Midas luck. In the first inning of its first exhibition game, Al
Heist stepped in a hole, breaking an ankle. Jim Umbricht died of cancer; Walt
Bond, leukemia; Don Wilson, accidental asphyxiation. Left: Bobby Shantz,
Robin Roberts, Nellie Fox, Eddie Mathews, Don Larsen, and Joe Pepitone.