April 17, 1968: Jerry Koosman registers a pair of Mets’ firsts in home opener shutout

Asked if he thought New York Mets rookie southpaw Jerry Koosman was as good as his record (2-0, with two shutouts) suggested, San Francisco Giants manager Herman Franks replied no. “Nobody’s that good!”1

Franks’ response was understandable; the second of Koosman’s two gems to start the 1968 season had come at his team’s expense. That outing made Koosman the first Met to hurl back-to-back shutouts2 and gave the franchise then synonymous with futility its first win in a home opener.

Finishing dead last (10th) in the National League in each of their first four seasons, the Mets had shown promise in 1966. Under first-year manager Wes Westrum, they lost fewer than 100 games for the first time, drew an attendance of nearly 1.8 million, and finished ninth. But New York reverted to form in 1967, losing 101 and finishing last once again. Attendance dropped 20 percent as fans expected a more competitive team.

While the World Series played out, Mets vice president Johnny Murphy worked out a deal with the Washington Senators for manager Gil Hodges to take the reins as New York’s skipper for the 1968 season.3 An original Met and an icon to many Brooklyn Dodgers fans who now rooted for the Queens-based Mets, Hodges was expected to “bring the New Breed [Mets fans] back to Shea [Stadium in exaggerated numbers.” “There’s only one way Gil Hodges can do it,” asserted New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Young, “and that’s by winning ballgames.”4

Coming into spring training, Hodges, as expected, listed Tom Seaver, the 1967 NL Rookie of the Year, atop the Mets rotation, but made clear that no southpaw was guaranteed a spot. One of two lefties who Hodges said “figure in our present plans” was Koosman, a 6-foot-2, 205-pound 25-year-old who had “needed additional seasoning” the year before.5

A Minnesota native signed while stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, with the US Army, Koosman struggled mightily in 1965, his first year of professional baseball, going a combined 5-13 with a 4.61 ERA at Class A Greenville and Double-A Williamsport. But he turned a corner once he learned to throw a slider. He fanned 174 for the Class A Auburn Mets in 1966 and led the New York-Penn League with a 1.38 ERA. With the major-league Mets for the first and last months of the 1967 season, he went 0-2, with a 6.04 ERA in nine appearances. At Triple-A Jacksonville in between, Koosman threw 14 complete games, compiled a 2.43 ERA, and struck out 183 over 178 innings.

On the way to their Opening Day engagement at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, the Mets stopped in Phoenix for an April 4 dress rehearsal with the Giants. Koosman, by then named a starter in the Mets rotation, teamed with reliever Danny Frisella to shut out the Giants, 6-0. The regular season was set to start three days later, but it would have to wait. On April 4 Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. Baseball held off the start of its 1968 season as the nation mourned.

When Opening Day finally did come, on April 10, the Mets lost to San Francisco, making them 0-7 in season openers. The following night, Koosman scattered four hits in a 4-0 shutout of the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium to notch his first major-league win. The New York Daily News called Koosman “Amazin’ Jerry” and the “latest Mets glamor boy” – after Seaver, “the original glamor boy.”6 The Mets went 2-3 in a season-opening road trip that featured a shutout in every game, the last a 24-inning marathon in Houston that they lost to the Astros, 1-0.7

A  crowd of 52,079, the largest for any major-league game to that point of the young season, welcomed the Mets to Shea for their home opener with San Francisco on Wednesday, April 17.8 The Giants, distant bridesmaids to the St. Louis Cardinals the year before, and expected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to finish out of the running again in 1968, came into the game with a record of 3-2.9 Pregame ceremonies on the unseasonably warm afternoon included Hodges’ former Brooklyn teammate Roy Campanella, wheelchair-bound after a car accident 10 years earlier, throwing out a ceremonial first pitch.10 

Koosman got off on the wrong foot before he ever stepped on the diamond. He’d forgotten to leave a ticket for his wife, LaVonne, sending her scrambling to get into Shea.11 Koosman had to do the same to get out of the first inning. Before recording a single out, San Francisco had filled the bases. Former Met Ron Hunt singled to center leading off, then shortstop Al Weis, whose most recent fielding chance ended in the error that gave Houston its marathon win two days earlier,  booted a grounder hit by Jim Davenport. A walk to Willie McCovey put three runners on and brought up 18-time All-Star and two-time NL MVP Willie Mays.

“For a second I wondered if Shea Stadium was going to be a bad place for me,” Koosman later admitted.12 “For some reason I wasn’t alarmed,” said Met catcher Jerry Grote of Koosman’s predicament. “He didn’t look shook to me.”13

Batter by batter, Koosman worked his way out of the jam. He caught Mays looking at a 1-and-2 fastball on the inside corner for a called strike three. Jim Ray Hart, who had three homers and six RBIs in a doubleheader three days earlier, popped out to Grote for out number two. Koosman completed his escape by striking out rookie catcher Jack Hiatt swinging.

The Mets were retired in order in their first turn at-bat by 13-year veteran Mike McCormick. The reigning NL Cy Young Award winner, with four of his league-leading 22 victories in 1967 coming against New York, McCormick had taken a 13-inning no-decision in his first start of the 1968 campaign, six days earlier.14

The second inning was smoother sailing for Koosman, as he set the bottom of the Giants lineup down in order, two on strikeouts. With one out in the bottom of the frame, Met left fielder Cleon Jones went the other way with a high outside fastball from McCormick, dropping it into the Mets bullpen beyond the right-field fence.15 “They’d been pitching me outside and I knew when McCormick got behind, he’d probably try it again, so I went with the pitch,” offered Jones.16

Koosman surrendered singles in the third, fifth, and sixth, but none of the baserunners advanced. McCormick allowed a second Mets run in the sixth on a leadoff single by 22-year-old rookie second baseman Ken Boswell, a full-count walk to Jones on a pitch McCormick was sure should’ve been strike three,17 and a double into the left-field corner by third baseman Ed Charles. The soon-to-be 35-year-old Charles was an unsightly 1-for-19 heading into that at-bat.

Hoping to draw even, Franks went to his bench in the seventh. Nate Oliver, who scored the winning run in the Giants’ Opening Day win, singled for light-hitting shortstop Hal Lanier,18 but Ollie Brown, looking for his first hit of the season, fanned in place of McCormick. A walk to Hunt gave San Francisco its first runner in scoring position since the first inning, but Koosman recorded his 10th strikeout, fanning Davenport for the third time, to end the threat.

Giant swingman Bobby Bolin, who’d experienced little success at Shea in his career to that point (15 earned runs and 27 hits in 18⅔ innings, for a 7.23 ERA and 1.82 WHIP), found none on this day. Grote doubled down the left-field line off Bolin to start the seventh and advanced to third when Bolin threw wildly to first on Koosman’s sacrifice. A “looper to left” by Weis brought Grote home and sent Bolin to the showers.19 A bunt single by Boswell off the next Giants hurler, Frank Linzy, filled the bases, but the Mets scored no more. Koosman was forced out at home on a comebacker from center fielder Tommie Agee and the inning ended when right fielder Ron Swoboda hit into a 1-2-3 double play.

San Francisco managed a two-out single by Hart in the eighth and a one-out single by Oliver in the ninth, but couldn’t advance either baserunner. Pinch hitter Frank Johnson grounded into a 6-4-3 double play to end the game, with defensive replacement Ed Kranepool, the second-longest-tenured Met despite his tender age (23), recording the final putout.20 On their seventh try, the Mets finally had their first home opening win.

Koosman, who threw 112 pitches in the shutout, pitched with “the guts of a woman taxi-cab driver,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. All while battling a blister on his pitching hand from the second inning on.21 

“We’re going to have a lot of fun this year,” an excited Charles predicted after the game,22 and indeed the Mets did – winning a team-record 73 games and setting the stage for a magical run to a World Series title in 1969. Koosman finished the season as the first NL rookie to win 19 since  Jack Sanford of the Philadelphia Phillies did it in 1957, and the first rookie qualifier to register an ERA below 2.10 since Brooklyn’s Jeff Pfeffer in 1914. He finished one vote behind Cincinnati’s Johnny Bench in balloting for NL Rookie of the Year.

Still one of the Mets top three pitchers all-time in wins, strikeouts, and many other categories decades after he last threw a pitch for them, Koosman’s uniform number 36 was retired by the club on August 28, 2021.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Irv Goldfarb’s SABR biography of Jerry Koosman, John Saccoman’s SABR biography of Gil Hodges, and the Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and Stathead.com websites, including box scores listed at the links below:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196804170.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1968/B04170NYN1968.htm

Photo credit: Jerry Koosman, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Dick Young, “Franks Says Kooz Can’t Be for Real,” New York Daily News, April 21, 1968: 151.

2 Seventeen Met pitchers had crafted shutouts before Koosman’s pair of shutouts to open the 1968 season, but none had strung two together. Through the 2024 season, only Tom Seaver has thrown back-to-back shutouts as often as Koosman did, four times. Koosman turned the trick a second time in the summer of 1968 and twice during the 1969 season. As of 2024, no Met pitcher has thrown three consecutive shutouts.

3 A frustrated Westrum had resigned before the 1967 season was out, leaving third-base coach Salty Parker to finish out the season as interim manager. The Hodges deal, in which the Mets ultimately sent Washington $100,000 and a player to be named later (pitcher Bill Denehy), was announced on October 11 in Boston, where that afternoon the Red Sox won Game Six of the 1967 World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals. Dick Young, “Gil’s Home as Mets’ Pilot,” New York Daily News, October 12, 1967: 107.

4 Dick Young, “Young Ideas,” New York Daily News, February 22, 1968: 105.

5 “Mets May Field Youngest Team: Gil.” The other was Don Shaw, a rookie in 1967 who was arguably the most reliable left-hander in the Mets bullpen that year (2.98 ERA over 51⅓ innings, with 3 saves and a team-high 7.7 strikeouts per nine innings). Hodges concluded his assessment of left-handers who might help the team by speculating that “if Tug McGraw puts it all together, we can surprise a lot of people with our southpaw strength.” McGraw spent the entire season with Triple-A Jacksonville but became an important cog in the Mets bullpen during their 1969 World Series championship season.

6 Dick Young, “Mets’ Kooz 4-Hits Dodgers, 4-0,” New York Daily News, April 12, 1968: 67; Dick Young, “Lefty Kooz from Fort Bliss Has Stuff, Shouldn’t Miss,” New York Daily News, April 13, 1968: 29.

7 The Mets’ other victory during the road trip came on April 14, when 21-year-old Texan Nolan Ryan earned his first major-league victory as New York shut out Houston.

8 The crowd was also the largest for a Mets home game since 1966. Pat Frizell, “52,079 See Mets Whip Giants, 3-0,” Oakland Tribune, April 18, 1968: 50; Steve Jacobson, “Met History Getting a Rewrite?,” Newsday (New York/Nassau Edition), April 18, 1968: 48A.

9 In a poll published by The Sporting News, BBWAA members predicted that San Francisco would finish fourth and New York 10th (last place). “How Writers Voted,” The Sporting News, April 13, 1968: 8.

10 “Seems Like Old Times,” New York Daily News, April 18, 1968: 79; “Daily Almanac,” New York Daily News, April 18, 1968: 2.

11 Larry Fox, “How’s This for Openers – Mets: 3-0,” New York Daily News, April 18, 1968: 74.

12 “Met History Getting a Rewrite?” Sportswriter Dick Young suggested that “Koosman probably would have preferred to face his irate wife” at that moment. “How’s This for Openers – Mets: 3-0.”

13 “Met History Getting a Rewrite?”

14 McCormick worked 13 innings in one other appearance during his career, a complete-game loss to the Cincinnati Reds on August 24, 1960.

15 Bob Stevens, “Met Rookie Blanks S.F.,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 1968: 47. A center fielder for New York the year before, Jones had been bumped to left when the team acquired Gold Glover, two-time All-Star, and fellow Alabaman Tommie Agee. Agee was the centerpiece of the offseason trade with the White Sox that also brought Al Weis to the Mets.

16 “How’s This for Openers – Mets: 3-0.”

17 After umpire Lee Weyer called ball four, a disappointed McCormick “leap[t] straight up in the air, arms waving, eyes glaring.” “Met Rookie Blanks S.F.”

18 Lanier was hitting .063 entering the game, lower than all other qualified NL hitters other than a pair of Mets, shortstop Bud Harrelson (.056) and third baseman Ed Charles (.059). Over his first four seasons, 1964-1967, Lanier hit .234 with a .292 slugging percentage.

19 “How’s This for Openers – Mets: 3-0.”

20 Only pitcher Al Jackson, who started the third game in Mets history on April 14, 1962, had been with the team longer than Kranepool, who was not yet 18 years old when he debuted for New York as a defensive replacement for Hodges on September 22, 1962.

21 “Met Rookie Blanks S.F.” The Mets trainer punctured the blister on Koosman’s middle finger in the fourth inning. “52,079 See Mets Whip Giants, 3-0.”

22 “Met History Getting a Rewrite?”