August 17, 1973: Willie Mays’s 660th and final HR goes for naught in Mets’ nailbiter loss to Reds

Willie Mays hit the 660th and final home run of his career against Cincinnati Reds left-hander Don Gullett. (New York Daily News)

Willie Mays hit his first big-league home run in New York City on May 28, 1951, connecting off Boston Braves ace Warren Spahn in the first inning of a game at the Polo Grounds.1

His legend entrenched but his skills eroded, Mays also hit the 660th and last homer of his career in New York, on August 17, 1973. He was playing for the New York Mets at Shea Stadium, neither of which existed in 1951.2

Further emphasizing the passage of time, the Braves had moved twice since Mays’ first homer –to Milwaukee in 1953, then to Atlanta in 1966. Spahn, eight years retired, was employed in August 1973 as the pitching coach of the Cleveland Indians. And the pitcher Mays victimized for his last homer, Cincinnati Reds left-hander Don Gullett, was less than five months old at the time of his first.3

Mays’ final round-tripper came in the context of a nailbiter game between the Mets and the Reds, the team New York unexpectedly faced in the National League Championship Series later in the season.

Coming into the August 17 game, manager Yogi Berra’s Mets sat in sixth (and last) place in the NL East Division with a 53-65 record, 7½ games behind the first-place St. Louis Cardinals. No team had pulled away from the pack: St. Louis, at 62-59, was the division’s only team above .500.4 The Pittsburgh Pirates, three-time defending division champions, were struggling after the death of Roberto Clemente in an offseason plane crash, as well as former pitching ace Steve Blass’s baffling, near-complete loss of effectiveness.5

The Mets had played sub-.500 ball in May, June, and July, hamstrung by early injuries to key players, including John Milner, Felix Millan, Bud Harrelson, Cleon Jones, and Jerry Grote.6 Mays, at age 42, suffered from cracked ribs, a right-shoulder injury, and knee problems during what he had already decided would be his final season.7 When he played, he was ineffective. His average stayed below .200 until July 8, and entering the game with Cincinnati, he was hitting just .212 with five home runs.8

Manager Sparky Anderson’s star-packed Reds were in the thick of the NL West race, one year after losing a hard-fought, seven-game World Series to the Oakland A’s. The Reds entered the game with a 74-48 record, 2½ games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers. Pete Rose, in left field in 1973, was leading the league in hits on August 17. Teammates Johnny Bench and Tony Perez were, respectively, first and fourth in RBIs, while Joe Morgan led the league in stolen bases and ranked near the top in doubles and walks. The Reds went 8-4 against the Mets in the regular season, including four wins in six matchups at Shea.

To open a four-game series, New York sent lefty George Stone to the mound. An offseason pickup from the Atlanta Braves, Stone pitched well for the Mets in 1973, entering the game with a 7-3 record and a 2.99 ERA. He’d worked eight innings to beat the Reds on July 14.

Cincinnati countered with Gullett, who entered with a 14-8 record and a 3.59 ERA. While Gullett primarily worked as a starter in 1973, his three previous appearances against the Mets had all come in relief. He’d earned a win on June 5 and taken the loss against Stone on July 14.

The first three innings passed without major incident before a Friday night crowd of 36,803. Home-plate umpire Shag Crawford, suffering flu-like symptoms, left after the first inning. First-base ump Doug Harvey replaced him, and the game proceeded with three umpires.9

The Reds collected two singles in the second inning and the Mets one, but both teams hit into double plays that killed momentum. In the third, the Mets’ Ted Martinez reached second base on a one-out single followed by a sacrifice, but Wayne Garrett’s grounder ended the inning.

First baseman Mays, who had flied out in the first inning, returned to the plate with one out in the fourth. Mays entered the game hitting 2-for-12 lifetime (.167) against Gullett. He’d taken the lefty deep once before, while playing for the San Francisco Giants, in Gullett’s first major-league start, on June 22, 1970.10 That game was also Gullett’s first big-league loss, as the Giants chased him in the third inning of an eventual 13-6 victory.

This time, on a 2-and-2 count, Mays drove a Gullett pitch to the opposite field, over the 371-foot marker in right-center, for the game’s first run. Only two batters in major-league history had hit more homers at that point: Babe Ruth, with 714, and Henry Aaron of the Braves, who notched number 703 the same night against the Montreal Expos.11 The Shea scoreboard lit up with the word “WILLIE” while Mays rounded the bases.12

As Stone continued to shut down the Reds, the Mets wasted chances to score. Martinez doubled to left in the fifth; Stone and Garrett stranded him. A pair of singles in the Mets sixth put runners at the corners with two out, but catcher Grote’s grounder to first ended the rally.

In the Cincinnati seventh, Morgan set the table by drawing a leadoff walk and stealing second. Dan Driessen’s fly ball, Perez’s liner to Garrett at third, and a grounder to the mound by Bench – playing right field, rather than catcher – kept the score at 1-0.13

Stone’s throw to first base on Bench’s grounder put Mays in Bench’s path, setting the stage for a jolting collision between the future Hall of Famers. After a brief pause, both men took to their feet, and Mays returned to play the eighth inning at first base. He was called out on strikes to end the bottom of the eighth, then was replaced by Ed Kranepool for the ninth.14

Entering the final frame, Stone had allowed the Reds just two hits – the long-ago second-inning singles by Perez and Andy Kosco. Relying on what one writer called “an enduring assortment of junk,”15 he dispatched Rose on a liner and Morgan on a grounder, putting the Mets one out away from a 1-0 win.

But rookie Driessen, playing third base, singled into center field. Perez, with an 0-and-2 count, singled him to second with a weak grounder to the left side. And Bench smacked a two-strike single through the left side, scoring Driessen to tie the game, 1-1.16 Perhaps too late, Berra summoned righty Harry Parker from the New York bullpen. Parker got Bobby Tolan, batting for Kosco, to end the inning with an infield pop.

The Mets wasted a leadoff single by Jones in the ninth. Tolan gathered in Milner’s hard-hit fly with a leap at the center-field wall,17 and Grote hit his second double-play ball of the game. The teams headed into extra innings with Parker on the mound for New York and righty Pedro Borbón working for Cincinnati.18

Anderson led off the 10th by summoning a secret weapon of sorts, sending Hal King to hit for catcher Bill Plummer. The New York Times described King as “a part-time player who does not hit very often, but who hits home runs almost exclusively when he does.”19 King had collected only four hits thus far in 1973 – but half of them were pinch-homers.20 King came through again on a 1-and-1 count, drilling a Parker curveball solidly into the right-field bullpen for a 2-1 Reds lead.21

The Reds couldn’t add to their lead, but the Mets did not rally. In the bottom half of the 10th, Borbón got center fielder Don Hahn to fly out, then got pinch-hitters Ken Boswell and Jim Beauchamp to ground out and strike out. The game ended in 2 hours and 23 minutes, with Borbón earning the win and Parker taking the loss. By coincidence, King’s homer – like Mays’ – was his last in the majors; he finished his career in 1974 with 24 homers.

After August 17, Mays played 12 more regular-season games, collecting five more hits and four more RBIs. He appeared in only three games in September, the last on September 9. During his near-total absence from the lineup, his teammates mounted a finishing sprint to remember. From September 1 through the end of the regular season, the Mets went 20-8, closing a 5½-game deficit and rising from fifth place to first. New York clinched the NL East title with a 6-4 win over the Chicago Cubs on the season’s final day.

Included on the postseason roster, Mays played in one game of the National League Championship Series. He delivered a key pinch-hit on an infield chopper in the decisive Game Five as the Mets upset the favored Reds. Mays then played in three games of the World Series against Oakland, going 2-for-7 (.286) with one RBI. He made his last big-league appearance in Game Three on October 16. Pinch-hitting for Tug McGraw, he grounded into a fielder’s choice to end the 10th inning of a game that – like the Series – the Mets lost.

SOURCES

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN197308170.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1973/B08170NYN1973.htm

Photo credit: National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

NOTES

1  This was Mays’ fourth game with the Giants and first home game. The homer off Spahn was Mays’ first National League hit, snapping an 0-for-12 hitless streak (including two walks) in his first three games.

2  The Mets entered the NL as an expansion team for the 1962 season, five years after the NL’s Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants left New York City for Los Angeles and San Francisco. Shea Stadium opened in 1964.

3  Gullett was born January 6, 1951.

4  The Mets were the only NL East team to finish 1973 with a winning record, at 82-79. Second-place St. Louis posted a .500 record at 81-81.

5  Blass went from a 19-8 record and 2.49 ERA in 1972 to 3-9 and 9.85 in 1973, in a downfall he was never able to explain or remedy. He left the majors after a single appearance in 1974 and subsequently became a longtime broadcaster for the Pirates.

6  On June 6, the New York Daily News ran a chart of significant Mets injuries to that time, including a broken left hand for Harrelson, a sore right hand for Jones, a jammed left ankle for Millan, and a broken right wrist for Grote – as well as a right-shoulder injury for Mays. The chart omitted Milner, who went on the disabled list in late April with a pulled hamstring, and Ed Kranepool and Harry Parker, who were hampered by pulled muscles around the same time. “Medical Chart: Prognosis Sickly,” New York Daily News, June 6, 1973: C22; Dick Young, “Mets to Lose Milner; Krane Hurt, Too,” New York Daily News, April 27, 1973: C22.

7  John Saccoman, “Willie Mays,” SABR Biography Project, accessed October 27, 2022; “Medical Chart: Prognosis Sickly.”

8  In another measure of his struggles in 1973, Mays ended the season with a Wins Above Replacement total of 0.0. For context, Mays posted double-digit WAR in six seasons, led the NL nine times, and accumulated a career WAR total of 156.1, fifth-best in history as of 2022.

9  Associated Press, “Rally Makes Soothsayer of Shepard,” Springfield (Ohio) Daily News, August 18, 1973: 8.

10 Gullett made 18 relief appearances for the 1970 Reds prior to making his first start. Although he spent most of his big-league career as a starter, Gullett made only two starts in 44 appearances with the Reds in his rookie season. Unusually for him, he had more saves (six) than wins (five) in 1970.

11 Joseph Durso, “Homer in 10th by Hal King Decides It,” New York Times, August 18, 1973: Sports: 15; Associated Press, “Rally Makes Soothsayer of Shepard.” Coincidentally, Frank Robinson of the California Angels hit his 545th homer that same night, moving him ahead of Harmon Killebrew into fourth place at the time. Steve Wilstein (United Press International), “Nolan Ryan’s Arm Causing Problems,” Mansfield (Ohio) News Journal, August 18, 1973: 9. For reference, Japanese home-run king Sadaharu Oh, who began his career eight seasons after Mays in 1959, reached 660 home runs during the 1975 season. He finished with 868.

12 Photo and caption, New York Daily News, August 18, 1973: 36.

13 Playing a catcher in the outfield or at first base is a common strategy to lighten the workload on the catcher’s legs while keeping his bat in the lineup. In 1973 Bench made 23 appearances in right field, 4 at first base, and 1 at third. At the end of his career in 1982-83, the Reds shifted Bench almost exclusively to third and first base.

14 Bob Hertzel, “Reds Win in ‘Kingly’ Fashion,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 18, 1973: 17. Wirephotos of the collision also ran in various newspapers, including the Sidney (Ohio) Daily News, August 18, 1973: 8.

15 Red Foley, “Reds Pinch Mets with a HR in 10th,” New York Daily News, August 18, 1973: 28.

16 Hertzel, “Reds Win in ‘Kingly’ Fashion”; Foley.

17 Foley.

18 Following a brawl between the Reds and Mets in Game Three of the NLCS that fall, Borbón famously picked up a Mets cap left behind in the scuffle and tried to take a bite out of it. Jorge Iber, “Pedro Borbón,” SABR Biography Project, accessed October 27, 2022. In “Mets Redux,” his essay summarizing the 1973 season, legendary baseball writer Roger Angell of The New Yorker reported that the cap belonged to pitcher Buzz Capra. Roger Angell, Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 134.

19 Durso, “Homer in 10th by Hal King Decides It.”

20 King hit pinch-hit round-trippers against the Dodgers on July 1 and the Expos on July 9. He had also hit a homer in a game he started on June 20 against San Francisco.

21 Hertzel, “Reds Win in ‘Kingly’ Fashion.”