June 18, 1966: Mets, Yankees share an old Friend

Bob Friend’s place in baseball history is firmly linked to his 15 seasons as a Pittsburgh Pirate. Pitching in the Smoky City from 1951 through 1965, the right-hander won 191 games, made four All-Star Game appearances, won the 1955 National League ERA title, and was a workhorse starter for the Pirates team that won the 1960 World Series. As of 2023, Friend had started more games, faced more batters, pitched more innings, and collected more strikeouts than any other Pirates pitcher.1

In his final big-league season, Friend also achieved a unique distinction in New York City. The New York Yankees acquired him in a trade in December 1965,2 and Friend pitched in 12 games with the Yankees in 1966 before they sold him to the New York Mets on June 15 for the $20,000 waiver price. It was reported as the first transaction between the teams,3 and it bridged two wildly diverse histories. The Yankees, while fallen on hard times in 1966, had long been baseball’s dominant franchise, with 29 pennants and 20 World Series championships since 1920.4 The expansion Mets, in contrast, had been lovable NL doormats throughout their four-season existence.5

When Friend took the mound on June 18 at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, he became the first player to appear for the Yankees and Mets in the same season.6 While that story line was new, the ending of the game was dismally familiar to fans of the early Mets. Four outs away from victory, a series of relievers handed over the tying and winning runs on a pair of bases-loaded walks. The Reds won, 5-4. Friend, yanked in the fifth inning, did not factor into the decision.

Friend went just 1-4 with a 4.84 ERA for the Yankees, whose manager, Ralph Houk, observed, “He can’t put the ball where he wants to.” But Dick Young of the New York Daily News reported that the Mets hoped Friend’s strong work ethic could help him rediscover success. Young also pointed out that Friend had a 14-2 lifetime record against the Mets, so the team had snapped him up before one of their NL rivals could do so.7

Only 4,059 fans came to Crosley Field to see the 35-year-old Friend’s first game in Mets blue and orange. The Reds and Mets were jockeying for eighth place in the NL. Cincinnati held a half-game advantage: With a 26-34 record, they were 12½ games out of first place, while the Mets’ 24-33 record put them 13 games out. The New Yorkers, however, had swept a doubleheader from Cincinnati the previous day.

Opposing Friend was the Reds’ ace, Jim Maloney, who had won 20 games and made his only All-Star team the previous season. He’d kept up his strong pitching in 1966, entering with a 7-2 record and a 2.07 ERA. He’d beaten the Mets with a two-hit shutout on May 17, then lost to them on June 10, giving up eight hits and four earned runs in seven innings.8

The Mets advanced runners to third base in each of the first two innings, but inning-ending strikeouts by Ed Kranepool in the first and Friend in the second stifled both threats.

The Reds fared better in the second inning, which began with a leadoff single to second base by Gordy Coleman. One out later, Deron Johnson’s single to right field moved Coleman to second, and Johnny Edwards’ single into left field scored Coleman for a 1-0 lead. Groundouts by Leo Cardenas and Maloney ended the frame.

Friend almost handed the Reds another run in the third inning. He dropped Vada Pinson’s two-out grounder, then picked it up and threw the ball away, allowing Pinson to reach second base.9 Then Friend’s balk moved Pinson to third. Coleman couldn’t capitalize on the gifts, popping out to second.

Mets left fielder and leadoff hitter Johnny Lewis had a history with Maloney. On June 14, 1965, he’d broken up Maloney’s no-hitter in the 11th inning with a solo home run that handed the Mets an unlikely 1-0 win. Just over a year later, Lewis victimized Maloney again. With two out in the fifth, Lewis hit another solo home run to center field that tied the game, 1-1.10 It was Lewis’s fifth homer of the season.

Friend’s day ended in the bottom half. With one out, he gave up a single to Maloney, a walk to Tommy Harper, and another single to Pete Rose that scored Maloney. Lefty Bill Hepler, in his only major-league season, came on and walked Pinson.11 Mets manager Wes Westrum went back to his bullpen, calling in Jack Hamilton for the fifth time in six days. Hamilton retired Tony Pérez, batting for Coleman, and future Met Art Shamsky to keep the score at 2-1, Cincinnati.

The Mets tied the game in the sixth. Cleon Jones and Ken Boyer led off with singles, and one out later, Eddie Bressoud drew a bases-filling walk. Ron Swoboda’s foul sacrifice fly to right scored Jones and moved up the other runners.12 Maloney intentionally walked Jerry Grote to get to pitcher Hamilton, who struck out.

The back-and-forth continued in the seventh inning, when the Mets claimed their first lead of the day. Ron Hunt hit a one-out single to left off Maloney. After Jones’s fly out, Boyer doubled to right-center field13 – his third hit and second double of the day – to score Hunt for a 3-2 Mets advantage. It was one of Boyer’s team-leading 61 RBIs in 1966.

Matters stayed there until the eighth. Hamilton retired Pérez and Shamsky to put the Mets four outs away from a win. Then Johnson hit his seventh home run of the season, just over the center-field fence,14 to tie the game at 3-3. Edwards followed with a single and Cardenas beat out a bunt down the third-base line to put runners on first and second.15

Hamilton threw two balls to opposing pitcher Maloney, leading Westrum to summon rookie righty Dick Selma in the middle of the at-bat. Selma completed the walk on a 3-and-2 count, which was charged to Hamilton; it loaded the bases. Selma then walked Harper, again on a full count, forcing in a run to give the Reds a 4-3 lead. When Selma threw two balls to Rose, Westrum made his second mid-batter substitution of the inning, beckoning righty Dave Eilers. Eilers followed in Selma’s footsteps: He completed his predecessor’s walk to Rose, forcing in another Cincinnati run for a 5-3 lead. The ninth hitter of the inning, Pinson, grounded out to end the rally.16

Maloney came out to pitch the ninth. With one out, Lewis walked and Hunt singled him to second. Maloney threw a wild pitch that moved Lewis and Hunt up a base. Jones’s sacrifice fly to center field made the score 5-4 and sent Hunt to third base, with the red-hot Boyer up next. Cincinnati manager Don Heffner beckoned veteran righty Don Nottebart from the bullpen. Nottebart threw a single pitch,17 which Boyer grounded to Cardenas at short to end the game in 2 hours and 55 minutes.

Maloney got the win, bringing his record to 8-2; he ended the season at 16-8. Hamilton fell to 4-8 with the loss. Nottebart earned his second save of the season.18 The Reds ended the season in seventh place with a 76-84 record, while the Mets closed in ninth at 66-95.

Leonard Koppett of the New York Times put a positive face on Friend’s outing, noting that three of the six singles he surrendered were groundballs and his only walk came when he was clearly losing steam. Friend “gave promise of being helpful to the team,” Koppett wrote.19

But Friend’s usefulness to the Mets was limited. He went 5-8 with a 4.40 ERA in 22 games, splitting his time between starting and relieving. The Mets released him on October 17, 1966, ending a distinguished career that was packed with worthy achievements in Pittsburgh – and a tiny bit of trivia immortality in New York.

Acknowledgments

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

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the 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.

www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CIN/CIN196606180.shtml

www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1966/B06180CIN1966.htm

Photo of 1966 Topps card #519 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Friend’s longevity and durability meant that he also ranked as the Pirates’ all-time leader in some less desirable pitching categories, including bases on balls, hits surrendered, home runs surrendered, and losses. His 191 wins placed him fourth on Pittsburgh’s all-time list behind Wilbur Cooper, with 202 wins, and Babe Adams and Sam Leever, with 194 apiece.

2 Full terms: Friend to the Yankees, Pete Mikkelsen and cash to the Pirates.

3 Dick Young, “Mets Buy Yanks’ Friend; Waivers Asked on Stuart,” New York Daily News, June 16, 1966: C22. Young specifically described it as “the first Yankee-Mets deal ever.” The teams had executed a different type of transaction at least once before: The Yankees drafted outfielder Duke Carmel from the Mets in the Rule 5 draft on November 30, 1964. Carmel, a Met in 1963, played briefly for the Yanks in 1965.  

4 After winning the AL pennant in 1964, the Yankees slumped to sixth place (77-85) in 1965, then fell all the way to 10th and last place in 1966 (70-89 with one tie.) They didn’t reach the postseason again until 1976, when they won the AL pennant but lost the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. At the time the Yankees sold Friend to the Mets on June 15, they were in seventh place, with a 24-30 record and one tie, 12 games behind the first-place Baltimore Orioles.

5 The expansion Mets had a few connections with the Yankees: George Weiss and Casey Stengel, formerly the Yankees’ general manager and manager, filled the same roles with the early Mets. Stengel had retired by 1966; while Weiss remained with the Mets that season, Bing Devine was performing many of the general manager’s duties. Daniel R. Leavitt, “George Weiss,” SABR Biography Project, accessed August 2023.

6 Other players had appeared for both teams before Friend, but never in the same season. Two members of the first-year 1962 Mets – Marv Throneberry and Gene Woodling – had previously been Yankees. Throneberry became the first player to appear for both the Yankees and Mets when he made his Mets debut on May 11, 1962; Woodling played his first game as a Met on June 17.

7 Young, “Mets Buy Yanks’ Friend; Waivers Asked on Stuart.”

8 The June 10 game was more noteworthy for the performance of the Mets’ starter, 24-year-old Dick Rusteck. In his big-league debut, Rusteck pitched a four-hit shutout. He appeared in only seven more games, all in 1966, and this was his only win.

9 Lou Smith, “Heffner Status: O.K.,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 19, 1966: 2D.

10 Dick Young, “Overconfident Mets Bow, 5-4,” New York Daily News, June 19, 1966: 120.

11 In 69 innings, the 20-year-old Hepler walked 51 hitters – six intentionally – while striking out only 25. He also threw nine wild pitches.

12 Leonard Koppett, “Cincinnati Victor on 3 Runs in 8th,” New York Times, June 19, 1966: 5:1.

13 Koppett.

14 Koppett. In contrast, the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Lou Smith described Johnson’s homer as “an explosive shot.”

15 Lou Smith, “Reds ‘Walk’ Over Mets 5-4,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 19, 1966: 1D. Retrosheet lists the play as a bunt to the pitcher.

16 Young, Koppett, and Si Burick of the Dayton Daily News reported the pitching changes and ball-and-strike counts identically. Burick, “Reds Literally Walk Over Met Tormentors, 5-4,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, June 19, 1966: D1.

17 Young; Koppett.

18 The major leagues did not officially recognize saves as a statistic until 1969. That said, Burick wrote, “Maloney admitted he was tired, and did not object to having Nottebart come in to get an official ‘save.’”

19 Koppett, “Cincinnati Victor on 3 Runs in 8th.”