1969 Mets: A Season of Streaks, Shocks, and Shutouts

Meanwhile, a few subtle hints of impending greatness were sprinkled amidst the mostly empty seats at Shea the next two afternoons. After Jim McAndrew was knocked out in the second inning of the second game, Tug McGraw came in and threw 6⅓ innings of relief—portending his future in the bullpen—while Nolan Ryan got the first save in Mets history (the save became an official statistic in 1969). The next afternoon, rookie Gary Gentry won his first career game and Tommie Agee, coming off a monumentally disappointing first year as a Met in 1968, sent a Larry Jaster pitch into Shea’s upper deck for a home run. It was the first ball hit fair into that deck in either left or right field—and the only one that would be hit in the 45 seasons of Shea Stadium’s life. The scant fair territory and the height of the deck made the feat practically impossible, yet Agee did it and the Mets went on to win the game and that first series against the Expos.

The Mets could breathe the rarified air of winning. It marked only the second time in club history that the Mets had been on the good side of .500. Just like in 1966, the ’69 Mets stood at 2-1. The Mets were just one game behind the Cubs in the newly-christened National League East. The Mets would not get that close to first place again for five months.

New York was swept three straight at Shea Stadium by the two-time defending NL champion Cardinals and wound up dropping six of seven. In the club’s first 10 games, rookie Gary Gentry (2-0) was the only starter to have earned a win. The Mets were already six games out, the fastest they’d reached that deficit since they’d called the Polo Grounds home in 1963. Gil Hodges’s preseason prediction of 85 wins looked like the stuff of utter nonsense.

Tom Seaver finally won his first game of the year, winning in St. Louis, and the Mets won the next day as Ryan gained his first victory. A packed April schedule that was to have seen the Mets play the first 20 dates on the schedule without rest—with a scheduled doubleheader tossed in—instead saw the Mets get three days off in a week due to rain. No matter how often the tarp was dragged across the field or how many times Gil Hodges tinkered with his lineup, the results seemed the same: All wet.

After dropping three-straight to the fast-starting Cubs at the end of April, the Mets were 6-11. They salvaged the nightcap of the Sunday doubleheader when Cleon Jones broke a scoreless tie with a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth. The teams had drawn just 16,252 as Bill Hands beat Don Cardwell the previous afternoon—a slightly bigger crowd had come Friday night to see Fergie Jenkins top Seaver—but Sunday brought more than 37,000, the biggest gathering at Shea since Opening Day Still, the Cubs left town with a six-game lead over the Mets, who were tied for last place. Not much new to see here.

The first venture by the Mets into Canada was not televised, and poor luck continued to plague the Mets—in any language. Though they won the opener on a pair of home runs by Ed Kranepool, the club lost Jerry Koosman for nearly a month with what was termed a dead arm. The Mets looked dead themselves, losing three straight after starting the trip with a pair of wins at Jarry Park. Dropping consecutive games at Wrigley Field gave the Mets a 1-5 record against the Cubs to begin 1969. Chicago held an eight-game lead on the 9-14 Mets in the first weekend in May. The next day, in front of 40,484 looking for the their red-hot Cubs to wring out the same old results from the same old Mets, New York instead rolled out a pair of complete-game, 3-2 wins by Seaver and McGraw, the latter making his first start of the year. The deficit stood at six games, the same as it had been when the Mets arrived in Chicago—and the same as it had been a week earlier when the teams had met at Shea—but the Cubs had won every previous series of three games or more in 1969. The Cubs responded by winning five of the last seven games on their homestand.

The Mets had a 4-4 homestand in their first foray against the clubs now constituting the National League West. It was their best homestand to date in 1969 and produced the only two wins of the year the Mets would manage against the Astros, their brothers in expansion in 1962, who were clearly the more mature sibling to that point. The Mets split two with Cincinnati and lost two of three to the Braves. The Mets took to the road to face the same clubs, winning the first three and reaching .500 for the first time since the opening week of the season. Prompted by the press to celebrate their newfound mediocrity, the Mets shrugged, saying they had bigger goals in mind. Conventional wisdom said the Mets should have made merry when they could, as the club dropped the last four games of the trip, including three straight at the Astrodome. The Mets were 18-22 and nine games behind the Cubs on Memorial Day weekend.

The Mets got their first look at the expansion San Diego Padres, who had just one fewer win than the Mets, though they’d racked up seven more losses because they didn’t have to fret about rainouts in sunny San Diego. The Padres got to experience one firsthand as the teams were washed out on Memorial Day. The Padres won the first game ever played between the two franchises, but the Mets won the next day when Bud Harrelson broke a scoreless tie with a single in the 11th inning. The Mets won every remaining game on the homestand and the first four of the ensuing road trip. The 11-game winning streak—all against West Coast teams—was not only unprecedented for the club, it was achieved with pitching and timely hitting. The Mets plated more than five runs only once during the streak—a 9-4 win in San Francisco the night before Gaylord Perry finally stopped them—and twice New York won 1-0 games in extra innings. Six of the wins were by one run and three victories belonged to Seaver (Koosman—his arm now alive and well—along with Gentry and Ron Taylor won twice apiece during the streak). Still, their 29-23 mark kept them a full seven games behind the unblinking Cubs juggernaut—the Mets gained just two games in the standings during the streak while the Cubs went 8-1 in that span and improved to 20 games over .500. The consolation was that the Mets were the only NL East team within double-digits of Chicago.

The Mets dropped three of their last four on the coast after the streak ended (briefly dropping to nine back), but they concluded their 12-game trip by winning three of four in Philadelphia. The last game showed the Mets were made of something stronger than past versions of the club. After Taylor blew a save for Seaver on a two-out, two-run single in the bottom the eighth, the Mets were down to their last out at Connie Mack Stadium in the top of the ninth. Ken Boswell singled in the tying and go-ahead runs against Turk Farrell; McGraw made the lead stand up by setting down the Phils in the bottom of the ninth. The Mets not only returned from an 8-4 road trip as a true contender, they also brought with them the bat they had long craved.

On June 15, general manager Johnny Murphy acquired Donn Clendenon from the Expos. A longtime Pirate, the Expos had selected Clendenon and traded him to the Astros for Rusty Staub. Clendenon retired rather than play in Houston, unretired when Montreal offered more money, and in the end new commissioner Bowie Kuhn made the Expos send two players to the Astros to complete the deal. The trade with the Mets was relatively simple—and one-sided. The Mets sent backup third baseman Kevin Collins, pitcher Steve Renko, and two minor leaguers that never made it, to Montreal in exchange for Clendenon, who had driven in 87 runs the previous year (the Mets hadn’t had anyone exceed 76 RBIs since their inaugural year). Because the new acquisition batted right-handed, Ed Kranepool started the majority of the time at first base in Hodges’s platoon system, but Clendenon saw right-handers on occasion and was one of the league’s biggest threats off the bench when he wasn’t starting. It took until July 6 for Clendenon to hit his first home run as a Met. The homer came at his old stomping grounds in Pittsburgh, where the failure to protect him in the expansion draft the previous autumn had precipitated his eight-month, three-state, two-country odyssey. His three-run blast at Forbes Field wiped out a Pirates lead and was the difference in an 8-7 win that culminated a three-game sweep for Clendenon’s newest team. That gave Clendenon 11 RBIs in his last five games. The new guy was paying off.

And the Mets were on another streak. An 11-game homestand to end June against St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh had seen the Mets win one, lose one, win four, lose four, and finish on a winning note by beating the Bucs behind Tom Seaver. The Mets were 8½ back after they’d cut the deficit to five games just a few days earlier.

After dropping two of their first three in St. Louis, the Mets won in 14 innings against the Cardinals thanks to Boswell’s deciding hit and six scoreless innings of relief from McGraw, whom Hodges leaned on during those rare games when his starters faltered. The Mets followed by winning the next four games on the trip. The Cubs came into Shea with a 5½-game lead, still sizeable to say the least, but the Mets had a chance to cut their deficit to its smallest margin since April 23. And they got there behind two unforgettable ninth innings at rollicking Shea. The first game saw fly balls falling when they should have been caught in the final inning as the Mets rallied to take the opener. The next night’s ninth inning had even more tension… and the score was never in question. An opposite-field single in the ninth by Jimmy Qualls broke up Tom Seaver’s perfect game with two outs to go. The Mets had won seven straight and had cut the lead to 3½ games, but the joy was short-lived as the Cubs stymied the Mets the next day 6-2. When Cubs manager Leo Durocher was asked after the game if “those were the real Cubs,” the Lip chimed, “No, those were the real Mets.”

After taking two of three from Montreal, the New York-Chicago set-to resumed. Wrigley Field was packed on a Monday afternoon and the Cubs handed Seaver his first loss since May. Seaver, in his first start since his one-hitter, was again brilliant. The game’s lone run came on a Don Kessinger bunt single and a two-out, opposite-field hit by Billy Williams in the sixth. The lead was back to six games, more than what it had been before the teams met at Shea a week earlier, but the Mets had a couple of surprises in store. With Bud Harrelson in military duty for close to a month, light-hitting Al Weis became a regular shortstop. He homered in each of the next two games—his only two home runs of the regular season—and the Mets left Chicago trailing by four games, almost the same margin it had been after Seaver’s near-perfecto.

In front of big crowds at little Jarry Park, the Mets split four with Montreal—and were lucky to get that. In the second game of the Sunday doubleheader, the Mets blew leads in the eighth and ninth before Bobby Pfeil’s bunt brought in the go-ahead run and another unsung hero from the minors, Jack DiLauro, got the last three outs. On the day that man first landed on the moon, the Mets disembarked for the All-Star break with 53 wins, a total they did not surpass in any of their first four seasons of existence. Now these Mets, watching the lunar landing from the Montreal airport, stood five games behind the team with the best record in the National League… and there were 70 games to play.

CURTAIN

Act II opened with the Mets facing their NL West foes again at Shea Stadium. The Reds scored three times to take the lead in the top of an inning— including both the eighth and ninth—only to see the Mets tie it. This pattern was broken in the 12th, when Tony Perez broke the tie with a home run in the top of the inning and Boswell was tagged out at third in the bottom of the inning. The Mets won the next two, but proceeded to drop four straight. A rainout necessitated a doubleheader against the Astros, and a perceived lack of effort chasing a ball by Cleon Jones—the starting left fielder in the All-Star Game and a .346 hitter—necessitated Gil Hodges to pay a visit.

“Everyone expected him to stop at the mound and change pitchers,” longtime Mets beat writer Jack Lang wrote. “But Hodges walked past the mound, past the shortstop, and on to left field. There he confronted Jones, inquired of his physical condition, then did a complete turnabout and walked just as slowly back to the dugout. Behind Hodges by a few steps, walking just as slowly and with head hung low, Jones followed …. No other manager had ever walked to the outfield so deliberately to remove a player.”

The Mets were outscored in that day’s doubleheader by an astonishing 27-8. They were shut out the next day as Jones sat—the “concocted” story was that he had a pulled muscle—but he played sparingly over the next week for a player whose average hovered at .350. The Mets rebounded by sweeping the Braves and they would take three of four in Atlanta on the ensuing road trip, but the Mets again had trouble with the Reds and could not beat the Astros to save their life.

The Cardinals were pushing the Mets in the standings and the Cubs seemed poised to pull away once and for all. St. Louis jumped ahead of the Mets in the standings and stood nine games back on August 13. The Mets were an even 10 behind Chicago. It seemed the Mets had been a nice story, but they were experiencing the classic August fade that many had suffered before them. Divisional play had done strange things to the records and to the teams—only three of a dozen NL teams had losing records (and two of those clubs were brand new). Maybe the Mets were just moving up a little in line, good summer drama, and all that sort.

Leonard Koppett, beat writer for the New York Times, looked back on things as they seemed at the time. “On August 15, back from a depressing series at the Astrodome, the Mets had no reason to consider themselves anything special, not being blessed with the gift of foreknowledge.” But it was fate, luck, and no doubt skill that propelled the Mets to the top. And the first stroke of fate was that the schedule maker handed the Mets the Padres.

One of the reasons that nine of the NL’s now dozen teams were playing winning baseball was the presence of the expansion clubs. Someone had to absorb those losses. The pitiful, porous Padres arrived in New York to kick off the Mets’ 10-game homestand. The Mets scored two runs in each game of the Saturday doubleheader and won both. The Mets scored three apiece in the Banner Day twin bill the next day…and again swept a doubleheader. In their next game, the Mets did not score at all for 13 innings against the Giants, and they won in the 14th. In fact, the only game they lost on the 9-1 home-stand was an 11-inning defeat to San Francisco, and even then the Mets rallied from 6-2 to force extra innings, with Ron Swoboda’s two-out hit tying the game in the ninth. The Mets took three straight from the NL West-leading Dodgers, winning in the ninth on Saturday on Jerry Grote’s double and rallying from behind on Sunday behind Swoboda’s bases-clearing double as Shea shook. The Mets had drawn more than 300,000 to the last seven dates on the homestand, but more importantly to the people who packed Shea was this: Their team was back to within 5½ games of first place.

The Cubs, meanwhile, were starting to stumble. Coming off a 22-12 stretch, the Cubs—like the Mets earlier in the month—had trouble with the western clubs, going 4-7 against Atlanta, Houston, and Cincinnati. Though one of those games was a Ken Holtzman no-hitter against the Braves, it was a little disquieting in Chicago that the tough patch had come at Wrigley Field. The Mets hit the road and remained hot. They swept in San Diego to pull within 2½ games of the Cubs, but Juan Marichal cooled off New York with a four-hit shutout at Candlestick Park. The Mets bounced back the next day with Donn Clendenon homering off Gaylord Perry in the 10th inning after the Mets had escaped the bottom of the ninth thanks to a 7-2-3-5 double play that had begun as a seemingly game-winning hit. The clubs split a Sunday twin bill.

The Mets moved on to Los Angeles and lost the series there, giving New York three losses in four games. They trailed by 5½ games, a half-game closer than they’d been when they embarked on the 6-4 trip. The Cubs had seemed to right the ship with five straight wins—four of them on the road—but they lost the final game of the trip to Jim Maloney in Cincinnati and then dropped three straight to the Pirates at Wrigley with Willie Stargell’s two-out home run tying the series finale in the ninth. The Bucs won in 11. The Mets, meanwhile, shook off their California doldrums and won three of four from the Phillies, putting the New York and Chicago just 2½ games apart as the clubs played for the final time at Shea Stadium in 1969.

The battle began with Tommie Agee hitting the deck when Bill Hands came in tight in the bottom of the first. Ron Santo, whose celebratory heel clicks after Wrigley wins had irritated many Mets and other National Leaguers, took a pitch from Jerry Koosman on the arm leading off the second inning. Agee and the Mets got the last laugh. Agee homered his next time up with a man on and the Mets center fielder slid just under Randy Hundley’s tag in the sixth inning to snap a 2-2 tie. Hundley snapped as well, jumping high in the air and arguing vehemently with umpire Satch Davidson. After the game, with Santo’s arm encased in ace and the third baseman still in discomfort, Kooz admitted, “I threw at him…they threw at Tommie. I had to do it to end it right there. If I don’t, they keep doing it, and they keep getting away with it.” At this point, the Cubs weren’t getting away with anything. The lead was 1½.

The next night is remembered for the appearance of black cat in front of the Cubs dugout, plus fans serenading Leo Durocher with handkerchiefs, but what is often overlooked is the dominating performance by Tom Seaver. Pitching against Cubs ace Fergie Jenkins in the biggest game of his career to that point, Seaver was staked to an early lead on a Ken Boswell double and cruised to his 21st win of the season in front of 58,436 (counting all admissions).

The next night brought a doubleheader with Montreal. Boswell’s hit handed the Expos their 12th consecutive extra-inning loss to start their existence and pushed the Mets a percentage point ahead of the Cubs, who’d endured their seventh loss in a row. Nolan Ryan threw a three-hitter in the nightcap and the Mets—hold on to your hat—had a one-game lead. After the Cubs controlled first place for 129 days, the National League East had a new leader. Future vintner Seaver, who’d led the deadpan routine when the press wanted the club to bubble over for being .500 in May, doled out champagne in paper cups for all in the clubhouse.

The party continued. Gary Gentry threw a shutout the next day and the Mets were two games up. Friday brought the third doubleheader in a week for the Mets. Cleon Jones was unable to play with a pulled muscle in his back and Art Shamsky sat out in observance of Rosh Hashanah. All right, the pitchers just had to work harder. Jerry Koosman knocked in the only run of the first game in Pittsburgh and threw a shutout. Don Cardwell followed suit and singled in the only run in the nightcap, though Tug McGraw helped out by tossing the final inning. The twin 1 -0 wins with the pitchers doing it all pushed the Mets beyond Amazin’. It was time to go back in history, to the 1914 Boston Braves—a sad sack franchise that had been in last place and 15 games out on July 4—who wound up winning the pennant going away before sweeping the mighty Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series. If the Miracle Braves could do it…

This was uncharted territory for the Mets. And their response was—don’t let the other team score. The Mets reeled off 36 consecutive scoreless innings. Even though Seaver allowed a run in the third inning the next day in Pittsburgh, Ron Swoboda crushed a grand slam over the 406-foot sign at Forbes Field in the eighth against right-hander Chuck Hartenstein to give the Mets had their 10th straight win. The Cubs, who’d ended an eight-game losing streak the night before, lost in St. Louis. The Mets were up by 3½.

The Mets finally lost on Sunday in Pittsburgh, but made up for it the next night with another win of the miraculous variety. In St. Louis, where the Cardinals had just taken two of three from the Cubs, Steve Carlton set the nine-inning major league record with 19 strikeouts in a game. And lost. Rocky Swoboda hit two two-run homers in between striking out his other two times up. After a rainout the next night, Koosman and Seaver went to Montreal and kept the Expos off the scoreboard in a two-game sweep. The Mets had 13 wins in 14 games and a five-game lead.

Back in New York the next day, they had another doubleheader. This time, the Pirates were ready. They pummeled the Mets 8-2 and 8-0. The lead dropped to four, but it could have been more had the Cardinals and Cubs not split their twin bill. The next afternoon, Bob Moose threw a no-hitter against the Mets at Shea—and New York lost no ground as the Cards topped the Cubs again. Chicago won on Sunday to gain a split in St. Louis—and they lost a game. The Mets swept a twin bill from the Pirates. Again, amazingly, the wins went to Koosman and Cardwell. Though this time they went a combined 0-for-7 at the plate, they both went the distance.

The Mets picked up a home game the next day—the rainout in St. Louis was transferred to Shea—and a half game in the standings as Seaver won his 24th. The Mets won in 11 innings the next night as Bud Harrelson’s opposite-field single off Bob Gibson brought in Swoboda. The Mets now led by six. The magic number was one.

The suspense was over quickly. Steve Carlton, who’d struck out 19 Mets yet lost two starts earlier, and whose previous start had helped the Mets by beating the Cubs, got the party started early for the Mets. Lefty retired just one batter. He allowed a hit to Harrelson, a walk to Agee, and a home run to Donn Clendenon. He walked Ron Swoboda—a wise move after Carlton’s last start against the Mets—and then served up a two-run home run to Ed Charles. That was the last pitch Carlton threw in 1969. Gary Gentry took the lead and ran with it. He allowed only two singles through eight innings before surrendering two hits to start the ninth. Gentry then fanned Vada Pinson. Up stepped Joe Torre, a hitter the Mets had tried to trade for in March (and an eventual manager at Shea). Bob Murphy, who along with Lindsey Nelson and Ralph Kiner had called every season of Mets baseball since their inception was at the mic.

The crowd is chanting, “We’re number one!’ The Mets made up fifteen-and-a-half games since the 13th of August. Lou Brock is on second, and Vic Davalillo, the runner on first with one man out…ninth inning, 6-0, New York. Gentry pitching, working hard here against Joe Torre. Now in the set position, here’s the pitch…ground ball hit to shortstop…Harrelson to Weis, there’s one, first base…Double play…The Mets win! It’s all over! Ohhhh, the roar going up from this crowd! An unbelievable scene on the field… fans are pouring out on the field.

And they kept on pouring. New York Times beat writer Leonard Koppett, who watched the scene from the Shea press box, later wrote. “Just 2,724 days after Stengel exposed his ‘Metsies’ to the Cardinals in their first National League game. The seven-year famine had ended.”

The celebration was long, hard, and wet in the clubhouse, but still the Mets kept on winning. They went to Philadelphia and did not allow a run all weekend—breaking their club record of two weeks earlier with 42 straight scoreless innings. The Mets kept winning even as the games were meaningless: winning the Mayor’s Trophy Game against the Yankees and then defeating the Cubs at Wrigley for their ninth straight win and making it an even 100 victories. The team that Las Vegas had as a 100-1 shot in March to reach the World Series was in the postseason as the calendar flipped to October. All bets were off.

MATTHEW SILVERMAN has written several books on the Mets, including 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, Mets Essential, Shea Goodbye (with Keith Hernandez), and Mets by the Numbers (with Jon Springer). He works as editor with Greg Spira on the Maple Street Press Mets Annual. He served as managing editor for Total Baseball, Total Football, The ESPN Football Encyclopedia, and as associate editor for The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia. A former associate publisher at Total Sports Publishing, he was lead editor for Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. He lives in High Falls, New York.

 

SOURCES

1969 Official Mets Yearbook.

Baseball-Reference.com

Amazin’ Mets: The Miracle of ’69, The Daily News Legend Series (Sports Publishing, 1999)

Koppett, Leonard, The New York Mets (Macmillan, 1974)

Lang, Jack, The New York Mets: Twenty-Five Years of Baseball Magic (Henry Holt & Co., 1986)