April 25, 1969: Fergie Jenkins smashes home run in complete-game win over Tom Seaver, Mets

Hall of Fame right-handers Tom Seaver and Fergie Jenkins combined for 595 victories and 1,241 starts in their big-league careers. In their first matchup facing each other, Jenkins bested Seaver, tossing a complete-game six-hitter and belting a home run.

After the Chicago Cubs finished third in the National League in both 1967 and 1968, there was a rare feeling of pennant fever on the North Side of Chicago in April 1969. Skipper Leo Durocher got the Cubs off to their hottest start in franchise history, winning 11 of their first 12 games in the first year of major-league baseball’s realignment into divisions and expansion to 24 teams. Despite four straight losses – each by one or two runs – the Cubs (11-5) held a half-game lead over the Pittsburgh Pirates in the newly created NL East Division when they arrived at Shea Stadium on April 25 for a four-game set against the New York Mets.

Like the Cubs, the Mets “generated considerable optimism,” declared sportswriter Leonard Koppett of the New York Times.1 New York had finished ninth in the NL in 1968, but manager Gil Hodges – who had begun his major-league playing career at age 19 with the 1943 Brooklyn Dodgers under player-manager Durocher – led his squad to a franchise-best 73 victories. Compared with the Cubs, the Mets were off to a relatively lackluster start at 6-8, but they occupied third place, just four games behind Chicago.

The managers called on their aces to lead their teams. Jenkins was a 26-year-old, 6-foot-5 yet lanky 200-pounder, whom the Cubs acquired at the beginning of the 1966 season in a lopsided trade with the Philadelphia Phillies and converted from a reliever to a starter.2 He was the only major leaguer with consecutive 20-win seasons in 1967 and 1968. Furthermore, the durable Jenkins had logged more innings (597⅓) and struck out more batters (496) than any other NL hurler in the previous two seasons. Shelled in his first two starts of the ’69 campaign, Jenkins rebounded with consecutive complete-game victories and entered the game against New York with a 2-1 record but uncharacteristically high 4.18 ERA.

With 16 wins and All-Star berths in each of his first two seasons, as well as the 1967 NL Rookie of the Year Award, the 24-year-old Seaver was already considered among the best hurlers in baseball and carried the weight of a franchise savior. The stocky 6-foot-1, 195-pounder was the brightest silver lining among the Mets’ subjection to an “infinite variety of embarrassments” since their inception in 1962, opined Arthur Daley, a sports columnist for the New York Times.3 Seaver (1-1 with a 2.45 ERA in three starts) was originally scheduled to start the previous day against the Pirates, but the Mets’ third weather-related cancellation in seven days pushed his start back.

On a cool, dry, 65-degree Friday night, a crowd of 18,548 filed into Shea Stadium in Queens.4 While Seaver breezed through the first two frames, Jenkins faced a threat in the second. Ed Kranepool, who began his career as a 17-year-old and a teammate of Hodges with the expansion Mets in 1962, led off with a walk and Ron Swoboda singled. Jenkins worked through traffic, striking out Jerry Grote and Seaver, sandwiched around Kevin Collins’s fly out.

Seaver started the third inning strong, recording two quick outs. Light-hitting switch-hitter Don Kessinger, who had hit only two home runs in 2,338 career plate appearances entering the game, surprised everyone by connecting on Seaver’s 2-and-2 fastball that “easily cleared the right-field barrier,” according to George Langford of the Chicago Tribune.5 “You might not believe it,” Kessinger told the Tribune, “but when I hit it I thought it was gone, and I don’t know much about feelings like that.”6 The home run was Kessinger’s first of his career away from Wrigley Field and his first from the left side of the plate. Glenn Beckert followed with a single to center field, but the inning came to an end as Billy Williams flied out to left field.

Bud Harrelson singled to lead off the bottom of the third, but Ken Boswell grounded into a 4-6-3 double play and Amos Otis fanned. Otis was playing center field in place of Tommie Agee, who was benched for more than a week after falling into a 3-for-28 slump.7

Cubs cleanup hitter Ron Santo entered the batter’s box to start the fourth mired in a woeful slump of his own, hitless in his last 18 at-bats to drop his batting average to .161. With two strikes, Santo spanked a home run over the left-field wall “in the direction of the [Serval Zippers factory] sign that flashes ‘Zippers’ throughout the night,” wrote sportswriter Bob Waters of Newsday.8  It was Santo’s fourth round-tripper of the season and the 228th in his career.

The Mets rallied in the fourth with Cleon Jones and Kranepool leading off with consecutive singles to left field. Swoboda laid down “a fine bunt” in response to Hodges’ signal for the sacrifice, opined beat reporter George Vecsey.9 While the runners advanced, the Mets’ chance of scoring quickly disappeared. After Grote popped out to Kessinger, Jenkins intentionally walked Collins, loading the bases to face Seaver. For the second time in as many at-bats, Seaver ended an inning with runners in scoring position, this time by grounding to third. “If I had the chance to do it now,” lamented Hodges about Swoboda’s bunt, “I’d do it differently.”10

With one out in the fifth, Seaver faced Jenkins, who was known for his athleticism and once played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters. Hitting, however, was no slam dunk for the Canadian-born Jenkins, who entered the game with a career .154 batting average on 39 hits. According to the Tribune, Jenkins hadn’t “taken batting practice in two years.”11 “I threw my shoulder out once swinging too hard,” quipped Jenkins, “so I don’t take batting practice any more.”12

Shocking the Shea Stadium crowd like teammate Kessinger, Jenkins smashed Seaver’s offering over the right-field fence for his third career home run and a 3-0 lead. “I didn’t think it would go all the way. … I know a lot of pitchers like to be noted as hitters, but not me,” revealed Jenkins to the Tribune after the game.13 It was the first time since his seventh big-league start, on May 17, 1967, that Seaver had surrendered three home runs in a game. “I don’t know how to explain it,” muttered Hodges about his star hurler’s gopher balls.14

After Jenkins’ first one-two-three inning, in the bottom of the fifth, Seaver worked around two baserunners in the top of the sixth. Santo, who had led the NL in free passes four of five seasons (1964 to 1968), drew a one-out walk and moved to second on Randy Hundley’s two-out single.

With two outs in the sixth, Jenkins faced Swoboda, who was “off to a flying start,” gushed the Associated Press, entering the game with 10 hits in his first 30 at-bats.15 A fan favorite, Swoboda belted a long shot to left field for his first home run of the season. According to Waters of Newsday, the Baltimore native rounded the bases waving his arms in excitement. Jenkins later told the Daily News he believed “it would have taken a 10-cent cab ride to get that one [baseball] back.”16 Jenkins struck out Grote to end the inning.

Both Seaver and Jenkins pitched a clean seventh. Rookie Rod Gaspar pinch-hit for Seaver in the inning’s bottom half.

In the eighth, Seaver was replaced on the mound by Canadian right-hander Ron Taylor, a journeyman long reliever in his third season with the Mets and fourth team in eight seasons. He retired six of the final eight Cubs, yielding a ninth-inning double to Al Spangler followed by Don Young’s walk.

After laboring through much of the first six innings, Jenkins found his groove, facing the minimum nine batters in the last three innings. He surrendered only an eighth-inning leadoff single to Boswell, who was erased in a 6-4-3 double play. Jenkins secured the Cubs’ 3-1 victory by retiring Grote on a popup to Beckert, ending the game in just 2 hours and 15 minutes.

In their first of two matchups in the 1969 season, Jenkins got the upper hand in his duel with Seaver, spanking a home run and finishing with a six-hitter that included nine punchouts and three walks, and, more importantly, the victory. Seaver labored through seven innings, surrendering five hits while fanning seven and walking two.

Epilogue

The Cubs won the first three games of the four-game set at Shea Stadium, but the Mets won the season series, 10 games to 8. In a rematch of the two aces on September 9, the Mets pounded Jenkins for seven runs (five earned) on 10 hits while “Tom Terrific” twirled a five-hitter for his 21st win of the season. The next day the Miracle Mets overtook the Cubs for first place in the NL East and stayed there through the end of the season, eventually winning their franchise’s first World Series championship. Seaver won the league’s Cy Young Award, his first of three in his career, and topped all of baseball with 25 wins. Jenkins reached the 20-win plateau for the third of six straight seasons and led the NL with 273 strikeouts.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Ray Danner and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the authors consulted the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent material and the box scores noted below.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196904250.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B04250NYN1969.htm

Notes

1 Leonard Koppett, “Mets Crush Cardinals, 5 to 0, and Break Camp Optimistically,” New York Times, April 4, 1969: 25.

2 The Cubs sent graybeard pitchers Bob Buhl and Larry Jackson to the Phillies for Jenkins, John Herrnstein and Adolfo Phillips on April 21, 1966.

3 Arthur Daley, “Sports of the Times: Triomphe pour Montreal,” New York Times, April 9, 1969: 34.

4 “Daily Almanac,” New York Daily News, April 25, 1969: 2.

5 George Langford, “Cubs Beat Mets, 3-1; End 4-Game Loss Streak on 3 Homers,” Chicago Tribune, April 26, 1969: 1-2.

6 Langford.

7 Dick Young, “Hodges Shaking Up Shook-Up Mets,” New York Daily News, April 19, 1969: 29.

8 Bob Waters, “Mets’ HR 2 Innings Late,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), April 26, 1969: 26.

9 George Vecsey, “Jenkins of Cubs Subdues Mets, 3-1, With Six-Hitter and Clouts a Home Run,” New York Times, April 26, 1969: 26

10 Vecsey.

11 Langford.

12 Larry Fox, “Cubs Outhomer Mets, 3-1; Jenkins Belts, Gives 6 Hits,” New York Daily News, April 26, 1969: 32.

13 Langford. (In fact, Jenkins hit 13 major-league home runs.)

14 Vecsey.

15 Associated Press, “Swoboda Playing the Same,” Rockland County Journal (Nyack, New York), April 25, 1969: 37.

16 Fox.