The Three Broadcast Amigos: Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner

July 31, 2021/in Essays.1969-Mets /by Jacob Pomrenke

This article was written by Curt Smith

This article was published in 1969 New York Mets book essays (2021)

Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy are together on the wall in Cooperstown that honors all recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting greatness. Between Murphy and Nelson is Bob Wolff, who was considered for the inaugural Mets booth. (Courtesy of MetSilverman.com)

The New York Mets were born in sin, cleansed by pain, and saved in 1969. Sin: the National Leagues 1957 adieu to New York City. Pain: Marvelous Marv, Roger Craig, and Casey Stengel’s other expansion ‘62ers. Salvation, coming half-a-century ago: In the year men first walked on the moon, the Amazins’ walked on air—miracle and metaphysical, climbing a stairway to baseball heaven.

“The Mets may last a thousand years, as Churchill would say,” Lindsey Nelson, their grand radio/television stylist, conjured. “’They may win a dozen championships. But they can only do it the first time once, and the first time was incomparable.”1

The 1969 Mets—Caseys Metsies—took a fractured time and briefly made it whole: then and now, crying gotcha to the soul. Let us retrieve perhaps The Greatest Baseball Story Ever Told, and their three broadcast amigos who superbly told it.

“That was a delirious once-in-lifetime year,” Nelson said of 1969, “just as 1957 was its sad opposite”2—also the Mets’ genesis. The back page of the August 20 New York Daily News screamed: “It’s Official: Giants Go To Frisco in ’58: Historic PG ] Polo Grounds] is Doomed.”3 On October 8, the area’s other NL team, the Dodgers of Brooklyn since 1890, confirmed the other elephant in the room— their exit for Los Angeles also of 1958.4 For New York, Moving Day had truly come.

Having baseball do unto him, New York Mayor Robert Wagner forged a five-man citizens committee led by lawyer William A. Shea to do unto others—as Wagner vowed, “to corral a National League team.”5 Ill-wind: The Reds, Pirates, and Phillies scorned relocationin the Apple.6 Whirlwind: In 1959, the threat of a proposed third eight-club major league—the Continental League—made the National League reconsider expansion to 10 teams: ergo, the 1962 New York Metropolitans and Houston Colt .45s.7

The Mets club began with castoff Yankees management: George Weiss, as General Manager, and Stengel, unretiring, to manage. Their park, 55,300-seat $24.5 million Shea Stadium in Queens, scheduled to open in 1963, was delayed a year by two cold winters and more than 17 different labor strikes.8 In the interim, Job One became the 1961 expansion draft, age trumping beauty. “Weiss picked old Dodgers and Giants,” mused Nelson. “Craig, Gil Hodges, Charlie Neal.” They excelled on paper, “but paper doesn’t play.”9 Unsolved: Who would air them on radio/TV? For a time, it depended on whom you read.

That October, several reports suggested that long-time Dodgers Voice and native New Yorker Vin Scully would trade coasts next season, returning east to air the expansion Mets.10 In fact, Weiss phoned another New Yorker, the Minnesota Twins’ Bob Wolff, who missed the area. The New York Daily News pealed: “Wolff Coming.”11 Problem: no station/sponsor. Time passed. “Weiss couldn’t make a commitment,” said Bob, “so I reupped with the Twins,”12 ultimately becoming the 1962-64 Voice of NBC’s Major League Baseball.

Instead, Weiss signed as the Mets’ first and— to some—forever Voice, a Tennessean who as an 8-year-old heard famed broadcaster Graham McNamee call a fight so near the ring that he could “reach out and touch the canvas.” To the boy, the box speaker—an Airphone—“looked like a question mark.”13 The answer formed at the University of Tennessee, Nelson football spotting on WSM Radio. After 1941 graduation, he taught English, joined the Army, and became a World War II Army publicist. In 1945, U.S. and Soviet troops drank captured German champagne at the Elbe River, a photo showing Lindsey with Russian officers. He prized its signature: “To Lindsey Nelson, a very busy man the day this picture was taken. Dwight Eisenhower.”14

At war’s end, Nelson, 26, back in Tennessee, became a reporter. Bored, he returned to the wireless, airing Liberty Broadcasting System re-created baseball. In 1952, NBC TV hired him, tapping him for a potpourri of gigs including college football and basketball and Major League Baseball as Wolff’s predecessor.15 How could he trade that for The Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York, Inc? Easily, as it occurred. Lindsey thought daily baseball broadcasting’s king of the hill, though NBC’s 1957-61 twice-weekly series had been blacked out in big-league cities like New York. “Many people, not knowing, said, ‘Why are they hiring this football guy?”’ Nelson laughed. “If this were Broadway,” he mused, “the tryout had run five years.”16

For seven straight (1946-52) years, Ralph Kiner led the NL in homers, saying, as he repeated for a writer, “Home run hitters drive Cadillacs. Singles hitters drive Fords.”17 At four, Kiner’s father died. Soon mom and son left New Mexico for California, where a neighbor and semipro baseball manager “let me tag along and shag.”18 Ralph’s last Pirates team in 1952 was 42-112. That fall he asked for a raise after hitting 37 homers. General Manager Branch Rickey’s reply was memorable, if impolite: “Son, we can finish last without you.”19 Kiner retired with 369: only Babe Ruth had more per at-bat. How to top the topper? It took till 1969, but Ralph found a way.

Lindsey Nelson donated one of his patented gaudy sports coats to the Hall of Fame. Even in black and white, it’s still tough to look at. (Courtesy of MetSilverman.com)

Nelson gave the nascent Metropolitans a household name. Hired in late 1961, Kiner lent an ex-jock’s cachet. Weiss felt the last member of their broadcast booth should leaven them: “be a steady professional,”20 said Bob Murphy, who got the Mets’ job shortly in early 1962. Born in Oklahoma, Bob made the Marines, returned to study petroleum engineering and do radio at the University of Tulsa, and major in the Puritan work ethic. “He had a weak voice and raw techniques,” then-college radio director Ben Henneke told The Tulsa World, but was determined to reach the major leagues. “He needed a lot of help.”21

In college, Murphy called basketball and minor-league baseball—also the University of Oklahoma football dynasty of Bud Wilkinson that went unbeaten in 47 straight games. There Bob met another Okie, Curt Gowdy, who in 1951 became Voice of the Red Sox. In 1954, Gowdy invited Bob to become the No. 2 radio/TV man at Fenway Park. “Curt was a marvelous teacher,” Murphy said. “He said, ‘Let’s announce like we’re friends, just talking to each other.’ Plus, I had a Southwestern twang. With his support, I did a lot to clean up, practicing word for word.” Ultimately, “people peg[ged] me as having come from somewhere in the Midwest.”22

In 1960, Murphy joined the Orioles. Next year Jack Fisher faced Roger Maris in the at-bat that ironically brought him to New York. “It’s number 60!” Bob bayed on WBAL Baltimore on September 26, 1961. “He’s tied the Babe!”23 in Maris’s single-season pursuit of Ruth’s home run record. Next month the Orioles’ dumped sponsor Theo. Hamm Brewery. Conceding to being “lost in the shuffle,”24 Murphy sent the Maris tape to Weiss. Listening, George found his man. Nelson saying, “Bob had a distinctive voice that filled the air.”25 Soon all three amigos found the Amazins’ to be distinctive in the extreme. In March 1962, they convened at St. Petersburg, Florida, for an inaugural spring training. “The ’62 Mets played for fun,” Lindsey conspired with memory. “They weren’t capable of playing for anything else.”26

From the start the Ol’ Perfessor composed the Mets melody, Stengelese his baton. “We got to work on the little finesses,” Stengel said. “Runners at first and second, and the first baseman holding a runner, breaking in and back to take a pickoff throw.”27 Losing the exhibition opener, 17-1, Casey saw the light, not liking what he saw. “The little finesses aren’t gonna’ be our problem.”28 Yarns stitched what were. “Only attitude made it tolerable,” Lindsey mused. “Love at first laugh.”29 The first regular-season set was truly Metsian, Roger Craig’s first-inning balk helping score a St. Louis run. The Cardinals romped, 11-4, on April 11 at Busch Stadium. Casey’s invite on first greeting the press in Florida wafted through the air: “Come see my amazin’ Mets,” he said, “some of which has never played semi-pro before.”30

The home opener was Friday, April 13, in their temporary den, the Polo Grounds. Hobie Landrith caught, Stengel’s first expansion pick, the 01’ Perfessor explaining sagely, “You have to start with a catcher, or you’ll have a lot of passed balls.”31 The puzzle was whether New York would pass. Instead, the rookies drew 922,530—“amazing,” Nelson gaped, “given our [40-120] atrocity’32 The “New Breed” scribbled on bed sheets. Placards waved at the roving camera eye. Early on, a chant arose from the jammed and rowdy stands—’’Let’s go Mets!”—even as the club lost 9 straight, then 17 in a row, then 16 out of 1733 and as Casey said, “The Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I ever knew existed.”34 It applied even when their two-headed progenitor returned home.

On Wednesday, May 30, the Dodgers packed the Polo Grounds (55,704). That weekend, crashing their old park, the Giants drew 43,742 and 41,001. Stengel said to Nelson, “‘We are frauds for this attendance. But if we can make losing popular,’ I’m for it.’ Casey never asked how the Mets lost 120. He asked how they won 40.”35 Craig was 10-24. Al Jackson finished 8-20. The Perfessor allegedly told a barber, ““Don’t cut my throat. I may want to do that later.”36 On June 17, an umpire called Marvelous Marv— Marvin Eugene—Throneberry (MET) out for missing first base on a triple.

About to argue, Stengel was told by the umpire, “I hate to tell you this, Casey, but he missed second base, too.”

The skipper was unbowed. “Well, I know he touched third base,” said Stengel, “because he’s standing on it.”37 The year ended with Joe Pignatano hitting into a triple play in his final major league at-bat. Hitting .306, Richie Ashburn was voted team Most Valuable Player. He took the prize, a boat, out on the Delaware River, where it sunk.

Wisely, the Mets’ three Voices tried when possible to divert attention from anything germane to score. WOR Channel 9’s post-game Kiner’s Korner was a black and white period piece: interviews with stars, wrote the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick, “more times than not … a Mets opponent, given that the Mets, more times than not, had lost.” It built “a cult-like following,” forged by Ralph’s “effortless capacity to just get through it, then get the heck out. It was an absolute howl.”38 To Kiner, it doubtless felt like 1952 again: The Mets could have finished last without him. Murphy, in particular, worried about competing with the world champion Yankees—and about briefly unlearning some of Gowdy’s Red Sox tutelage. “Lindsey didn’t like my conversational style. He was a straight-ahead announcer, eyes on baseball.”39

One day Nelson eyed a men’s clothing store on Broadway. “Show me jackets that you can’t sell,”40 he told the owner, buying seven “gaudy, awful” coats. 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. Against the Yankees, it pays to advertise.”41 His radio/TV mates often scavenged on the road, Murphy saying, “If we saw a wild enough jacket, we’d tell hm.”42 Once oldest 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.” Nancy beamed: “My daddy will.”43 In time, he owned 175.

By 1963, “Mets radio/TV ratings topped the Yanks,’” akin, said Murphy, to “a mule lapping Man O’ War.”44 The Polo Grounds closed. The Mets’ new abode, Shea Stadium, named for Bill, was christened April 16, 1964, with Dodgers Holy Water from Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal and Giants Holy Water at the Harlem River at the point it passed the Polo Grounds45—the first new baseball park to open in New York since 1923’s Yankee Stadium. Seats formed a four-tiered circle from one foul line to another. The circular shape included two rotating stands each of 5,000 seats. Atop motor-operated sections moving on underground railroad tracks, they converted Shea between baseball and football.46 Upper decks rose almost vertically, many far from the field. Few complained, glad to have baseball back.

Some games never seemed to end. On May 31, 1964, in 23 innings, the Mets lost the second set of a doubleheader to the Giants at Shea, 8-6.47 “Pitch to [Orlando] Cepeda. “Runners go,” said Lindsey in the 14th inning. “And it’s lined to [Roy] McMillan. And a double play! And maybe a triple play! A triple play!”48 The 7-hour, 23-minute game remained the majors’ longest until 1984.49 Incrementally, Nelson later mused, “the Mets’ hapless has-beens became hopeless maybes,” occupying the 1962-65 cellar of the Eastern Division of the National League, then vacating for a year. Basement-bound again in 1967, escaping again in 1968, would they bounce up or down as their first decade ended? Each year the broadcast trio aired 162 radio and between 130 and 1937 TV games—the nonpareil constant. Said Mushnick: “Already, the thought of anyone else calling them ever seemed insane.”50

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn right, stands with Ralph Kiner after the slugger was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

In 1975, Kiner entered the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum as a player. Nelson and Murphy made its broadcast wing in 1988 and 1994, respectively. (Ralph should, too) The early Mets had trouble turning two. “Here we are, three for three,” Bob laughed.51 Looking back, their impact peaked in a year the Republic seemed undone. By 1969, the less United than Divided States blared hawk vs. dove, hard hat vs. hippie, and Silent Majority vs. hip, camp and pop art intelligentsia. Viet Nam was a horror house. Said H. Rap Brown: “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”52 By contrast, the Miracle Mets rivaled Father Christmas. “Who can explain it? Who can tell you why?”53 the Broadway musical South Pacific had first asked in 1949. Casey told us: “The team has come along slow but fast.”54

On April 8, the Metropolitans’ road began roughly under second-year manager Gil Hodges, the beloved former Dodger-turned-should-be Hall of Famer: first-year and -game Expos, 11-10. At Wrigley Field, Willie Smith pinch-homered a first-day 7-6 home victory. For most of the year Chicago held first place in the NL’s Eastern Division like a lead Porsche racing at Lemans. Tommie Agee became first to reach Shea’s upper deck. The Mets forged an 11-game winning streak vs. the Padres, Giants, and Dodgers as May morphed into June. Donn Clendenon arrived from Montreal. On July 9, Tom Seaver retired the first 25 Wrigleys. Then: “Here’s the pitch on the way” Murphy said. “Line drive hit hard into left -center field! A clean base hit for Jimmy Qualls. And the roar goes up from the big [Shea record 58,083] crowd! A roar of disappointment.”55 Seaver recouped, winning, 4-0. Qualls didn’t, retiring after one more hit.

Yin: Next week banjo hitter Al Weis zinged the Cubs. “Swung on, a high drive well hit toward left field!” said Bob. “A three-run [5-4] homer!”56 Next day Brother Al hit his second homer of the year. The Mets won again. Yang: The Mets fell to third, 10 games behind, in August. Chicago’s Billy Williams’ 895th straight game set a league record. Baseball’s best infield—Ernie Banks (106 RBI), Ron Santo (123), Glenn Beckert (.291), and Don Kessinger (.273)—made the All-Star Game in its entirety. Santo began clicking heels upon each victory. Towel-waving reliever and ex-Met Dick Selma conducted Wrigley’s Bleacher Bums. Rarely had their Friendly Confines seemed giddier.

At this point, ’sixty-nine was not a stand-alone term, like Waterloo or later Watergate. “Pennant race?” Nelson laughed. “We were given up for dead!”57 The Metsies first swept a three-game series at San Diego, completed a 6-4 road trip, and faintly sensed the fairy dust that lay ahead. At Candlestick Park, Willie McCovey slashed an August 30 one-out apparent game-ending hit. “The throw coming in by Rod Gaspar!” said Murphy. “And he is out at the plate!”58 Wrongly thinking it the final out, Mets catcher Jerry Grote rolled the ball to the mound, where Clendenon nabbed it, threw to third, and got McCovey! Extra innings: Amazins’, 3-2. Planets realigned. Good grief, Charlie Brown: The Mets only trailed by four.

On September 8, Chicago invaded Shea two and a 2 ½ games ahead. Like Canute, hoping to reverse the tide, Bill Hands almost beaned Agee in the opener. “[The next pitch] is hit to deep left-center field!” said Kiner. “Going, going, it’s gone!”59 Agee later doubled, scoring the decisive run. A day later, appearing out of nowhere, a black cat hissed at the Cubs skipper. The crowd sang, “Good night, Leo [Durocher],” Seaver romping, 7-1. Ken Boswell’s overtime next-night hit edged Montreal, 3-2. “So, for the first time,” Ralph said, “the Mets have gone into first place! The New York Mets, seven years and four months, for the first time in their history, have gone into first place in the National League race!”60 The crowd heaved, “We’re Number One!” The moon was in its seventh house.

The Mets swept a 1-0 twin-bill at Forbes Field, starting pitchers Jerry Koosman and Don Cardwell batting in each run. The Cardinals’ Steve Carlton K’d a record 19 men – and lost, 4-3. On September 23, the magic number fell to one: “Line drive, hit sharply into left-center field for a base hit!” said Murphy. “Ron Swoboda gets the green light from Eddie Yost …and he’ll score!”61 Mets win, 3-2, in 11. Next day the East River flowed upstream. “Ground ball hit to shortstop!” Bob sang in the one-out ninth. “[Bud] Harrelson to Weis! There’s one! First base!” Double play! The Mets win! [6-0] It’s all over! Oh, the roar going up from this crowd! Oh, the scene on the field! Fans are pouring out on the field!”62

That off-season WOR produced a documentary To The Mets With Love—and The New York Times’s George Vecsey wrote a book, Joy In Mudville, “about how he saw more honest and enthusiastic joy in the crowd that [division-clinching] night and on that program than he ever saw on television,”63 mused Nelson. A reporter asked Hodges, “Tell us what this proves.” The Flatbush institution and imminent-miracle-worker sat back, spread his hands, and laughed, “Can’t be done.”64 The last laugh lay ahead, “people thinking they had no chance to move ahead,”65said Kiner. Having drawn an Apple NL regular-season record 2,175,373—Seaver’s 25-7, Koosman’s 17-9, Cleon Jones’s .340 average, and Agee’s 26 homers keyed—the 100-to-lers met the Braves in the first best-of-five League Championship Series: new gateway to the Classic. Atlanta appeared ready to have them for lunch—except that the Amazins’ seemingly added almost overnight to their own diet an unforeseen kind of strength.

“There’s a swing and drive into center field!” Nelson chimed of Jones in the opener. “It will score [Wayne] Garrett, I believe!”: 5-all. Next: “A [Ed Kranepool] swing and a ground ball topped to first. Taken by Cepeda. Play at the plate, and he’s safe!”66 Mets win, 9-5, in a rare display of power. Next day they staged an even greater power play, 11-6, then repaired to Shea, Atlanta leading the third game, 4-3. “A high drive deep to right!” Murphy gaped. “A [two-run Garrett] homer!”67 Who were these guys with the bulging biceps, ranking a mere regular-season eighth in homers and ninth in runs among NL teams? The ninth began, 7-4. “So, the Mets are one out away from their impossible dream. And the batter coming up is Tony Gonzalez,” said Kiner. “The pitch, a curve, chopped out to third. Garrett has the ball! The throw to first! And the Mets are the National League champions! A wild, wild scramble as the Mets celebrating their National League championship!”68

Growing up in Queens, future Voice Radio/TV Gary Cohen left Section 48, Row 9, “in left field, five rows from the top,” to maneuver toward Shea’s field. “Had to get my little piece of turf.”69 Heaven rarely looked so green. Looking on, less wowed, was American League champion Baltimore. “We are here,” Brooks Robinson said, “to prove there is no Santa Claus.” Don Buford dinged Seaver’s first-game second pitch. Orioles pitcher Mike Cuellar did the rest: 4-1. Next day Koosman, pitching, and Weis, driving in the decisive run, countered, 2-1. In the Birds’ ninth, Hodges devised what is possibly the majors’ first four-man outfield—here, vs. Frank Robinson.70 Elves awoke. Pre-1981’s World Series forbade even local radio, Kiner, the O’s Bill O’Donnell, and NBC’s Jim Simpson doing network wireless. Simpson aired Game Three thievery, the Classic moving to New York: “Hit high and deep to center field! Agee, who was pulled around to right, goes over with his speed … He’s got it!”71 In the sixth, O’Donnell conveyed his: “Fly ball to right-center field! Deep in right center! [Art] Shamsky with Agee! Agee dives – and he makes the catch!”72 Mets led, 5-0. The North Pole chilled, dimming Brooksie’s hope.

In Game Four, Seaver led, 1-0: one out, ninth inning, the Orioles’ tying run on third. Brooks Robinson’s line out scored it, Swoboda’s diving, sprawling catch keeping Baltimore from scoring more. In the 10th, J.C. Martin bunted “down the first-base line,” said O’Donnell, with no out and two Mets on. “[Pitcher Pete] Richert fields, throws, and it hits the runner!” on the wrist, bouncing wildly. “Here’s the runner coming on from third base! Gaspar! And the Mets win the ballgame by a score of 2 to 1!”73 Today the play would be endlessly replayed, the game endlessly delayed, the telecast needlessly bleached of color. Then, the Orioles protested Martin’s circuitous path to first, Nelson and Gowdy gaping at Mets wonderwork on NBC TV. (Before 1976, each local-team Voice also aired half of each home network telecast.) Plate umpire Shag Crawford cried humbug. Santa readied for Christmas Eve.

Game Five, sixth inning, O’s up, 3-0, 57,397 at Shea and a Nation antic, manic, and about to bust loose. Jones claims to be hit by a pitch. Eyeing shoe polish. Hodges retrieves the ball, at which point umpire Lou DiMuro explores it, whereupon Cleon takes first. “Fly ball deep left field!” O’Donnell followed. “To the warning track! It is in and up for a home run by Donn Clendenon!”74 Weis had not gone yard in five years at Shea. Dave McNally threw him seventh-inning heat. Then: “A fly ball out into deep left-center field! Buford going back! … It is over the fence for a home run!” Swoboda batted in a one-out, one-on, and three-all eighth. “A fly ball, deep left field, headed for the fence, and it’s on the warning track, picked up by Buford!”75 O’Donnell said. “On comes Jones to the plate! He throws it late”—4-3. A double O’s error doubled their deficit—and doubled down their fate.

At the eighth inning’s end, Nelson left the NBC-TV booth. “By pre-arrangement,” he said, “I headed for the elevator to get to the clubhouse for the victory celebration. That’s when it hit me—the whole enormity of the thing.”76 The Chinese discovered the 365 ½ day solar year in 2300 B.C. The Mets discovered Canaan on October 16, 1969. At 3:16 P.M., Dave Johnson swung at Koosman’s 2-1 pitch. “There’s a fly ball out to left!” said NBC TV’s Gowdy. “Waiting is Jones! The Mets are the world champions! Jerry Koosman is being mobbed! Look at this scene!”77 We still are, reliving Nelson’s “incomparable” year. Go ahead. Pinch yourself. We still do not believe it.

Nelson aired the post-game bash, then crossed the East River to Manhattan. “‘If we don’t go into town, we’ll have missed the celebration,’ I told my wife and kids. So we did and it was marvelous. Dancing in the streets, throwing confetti. Once in a while a cop would recognize me and go wild.”78 Santa cleared the chimney. A ticker-tape parade snaked through Manhattan. Said Mets chairman of the board M. Donald Grant, memorably and timelessly: “Our team finally caught up with our fans.”79

In 1843, Karl Marx wrote that “religion is the opium of the people.”80 In a real sense, the Mets have remained New York’s. The 1970 Amazins’ drew 2,697,479, more than they had, or would till 1985. The ‘73ers waved another flag, Nelson again telecasting the Series. Having swung from tenth to first, the Mets swung back. Lindsey resigned in January 1979, outlasting the Polo Grounds, seven Mets managers, and 238 assorted players from A (Ashburn) to Z (Don Zimmer).81 He moved west to be near daughter Nancy, a graduate student at University of Southern California (Nelson’s wife had died)82, aired the baseball Giants through 1981, then taught broadcasting at his alma mater and did a 26th Cotton Bowl for CBS. Inducted at Cooperstown in 1988, Nelson removed his coat and gave it to the Hall. A visitor can still see its 12 colors randomly jiggered into squares.

On June 10, 1995, Lindsey died, at 76, of Parkinson’s Disease and pneumonia. Only illness prevented him from being hailed by the Smithsonian Institution at a 1993 series in Washington, D.C. Sans senior partner, Murphy increasingly seemed “the voice of all things Mets,”83 wrote Marty Noble—at the beach, aboard the Staten Island ferry, home rabbit ears ferrying WOR Channel 9. The “Happy Recap” became a life, not game. “I remember thinking it was corny, dropping it, then mail on its behalf.” It wasn’t always easy to be happy on the Mets’ behalf. A laggard set of 1990 teams tested even the old-school Bob’s strict rule against obscenity.

Once New York led, 10-3, at Philadelphia, before the Phillies started scoring a slew of ninth-inning runs sans benefit of a real base hit. Finally and ironically, a Philly batter then hit the inning’s only smash: “Line drive—caught!” Bob bayed. “The game’s over! The Mets win it! A line drive to Mario Diaz! They win the damned thing!”84 Colleagues almost doubled over in hysterics. Likely many listeners did, too, knowing his personality like a family member’s. The ex-Marine had a baritone that rose an octave, home phone number whose last four digits read 6-3-8-7 (Mets),85 and team radio booth named after him. (It remains so at Citi Field, replacing Shea in 2008.) Retiring, Murphy died August 3, 2004, of lung cancer, having outlasted any Mets player, manager, or owner and always “trying to bring friendliness to the game.”

Only Kiner endured from 1969, its glow perceptible, inexhaustible. CBS broadcaster Peter King grew up on Long Island with Ralph’s gentling of the language. “Today is father’s day,” he recalls Kiner saying. “So to all of you fathers in the audience, happy birthday.” American Cyanamid Co. became a TV sponsor. “We’ll be right back,” Ralph said, “after this word from American Cyanide.” Some lines were planned. “Statistic are like bikinis. They show a lot but not everything.” Some weren’t. “The Mets got their leadoff batter on only once this inning.”86 In 1995, WOR canceled Kiner’s Korner. He left the air, battled Bell’s Palsy, then rejoined the Mets before WOR yielded to WPIX—for some, a culture shock, the station imbedded in their DNA—and cable’s SNY. Aptly, the new TV booth is named after Ralph at Citi Field.

In 2013, the last of the three amigos retired, for the last time having cried of a homer, “It is gone— goodbye!” Kiner’s 52 years made him the third-longest-speaking active Voice with a team, behind the Dodgers’ Vin Scully and Jaimie Jarrin. At 90, he was also the game’s oldest mikeman. On February 6, 2014, Ralph died at 91 of natural causes at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, Noble writing: “Baseball has had few in its family who were so widely revered, respected, and enjoyed.”87 His, Murphy’s, and Lindsey’s dowry remains their successors in the booth.

The inexhaustible Howie Rose did TV in 1996-2003, then moved to radio: an encyclopedia of the club’s light and dark sides. On TV, Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez sashay brilliantly on, Cohen acting as traffic cop: opinion and inside baseball, with almost a telepathic grasp of what a viewer wants and needs to hear. Born in Queens, each day, sitting there, Cohen recalled learning to see with his ears. “Lindsey and company, with those great word-pictures. [Today] I’ll be listening to someone on radio and scream when I can’t see what’s happening.”

Starting on Mets wireless in 1989, Gary moved in 2006 to TV. “The one thing I knew I wanted in radio was not to have preconceived phrases.”88 Perhaps only God could conceive the Amazins’, their plot so otherworldly it must have hatched on another planet.

In 1988, working alongside Murphy, Cohen had almost frozen airing a test game. Reaching over, Bob patted Gary’s hand. “He started talking, reassured me. It was my greatest memory.”89 Our greatest memory may be a year. In Casablanca, Bogart tells Bergman, “We’ll always have Paris.”90 We’ll always have ’69.

CURT SMITH, dubbed “the voice of authority on baseball broadcasting” by Gannett News Service, is the author of 12 books. A review he prizes was Lindsey Nelson’s of the classic Voices of The Game: “Absolutely marvelous.” Smith wrote more speeches than anyone for former President George H.W. Bush. He is a Gatehouse Media columnist, XM Satellite, and NPR Radio affiliate host, and senior lecturer of English at the University of Rochester.

SOURCES

I want to thank Lindsey, Ralph, and Bob for taking time to speak so generously over the years—and for the thousands of hours of radio/TV joy they gave to so many in the Mets’ trek from Death Valley to Mt. Sinai. Perhaps there has not been a pilgrimage like it—nor, some say, such Voices to call it. Let me also thank longtime friend and colleague Ken Samelson for his help help. Grateful appreciation is made to reprint all play-by-play and color radio text courtesy of John Miley’s The Miley Collection. In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, most especially in The Society for American Baseball Research, the author also consulted: Baseball- Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites box scores, player, season, and team pages, batting and pitching logs, and other material relevant to this history. Fan Fraphics.com provided statistical information. In addition to the sources cited in the Notes the author also consulted:

BOOKS

Allen, Maury. After the Miracle: The 1969 Mets Twenty Years Later. (New York: Franklin Watts, 1989).

Breslin, Jimmy. Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? (New York, Viking, 1963),

Cohen, Stanley. A Magic Summer: The 1969 Mets (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jonanovich, 1988).

Durso, Joseph. Amazing: The Miracle of the Mets. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970).

Fox, Larry. Last to First—The Story of the Mets. (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

Golenbock, Peter. Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

Kiner, Ralph and Dany Peary. Baseball Forever. (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2004). ang, Jack, and Peter Simon. The New York Mets: Twenty-Five Years of Baseball Magic (New York: Henry Holt, 1986).

Ryczek, William. The Amazing’ Mets 1962-69 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008).

Vecsey, Peter. Joy In Mudville: Being a Complete Account of the Unparalleled History of the New York Mets from Their Most Perturbed Beginnings to Their Amazing Rise to Glory and Renown (New York: McCall, 1970).

Zimmerman, Paul D, and Dick Schaap. The Year the Mets Lost Last Place (New York: World Publishing, 1969).

NEWSPAPERS

The New York Daily News, New York Post, and The New York Times have been a primary source about the 1969 New York Mets. Other key sources include: the Los Angeles Times, New York World-Telegram, The New Yorker, The Sporting News, The Wall Street Journal.

INTERVIEWS

Gary Cohen, with author, September 2008.

Ralph Kiner, with author, July 1986 and August 1988.

Peter King, with author, April 2006 and August 2011

Bob Murphy, with author, May 1984 and July 1998.

Phil Mushnick, with author, May 2004.

Lindsey Nelson, with author, April 1984, August 1985, February 1986, July 1990.

Nancy Nelson, with author, June 1993.

Bob Wolff, with author, February 2012.

Notes

1 Lindsey Nelson interview, with author, April 1984.

2 Nelson interview, with author, August 1985.