1969 Mets: Foreword
This article was written by Jerry Koosman
This article was published in 1969 New York Mets book essays (2021)
With the count one ball and two strikes on Davey Johnson and the crowd so loud that you could hardly hear yourself think, I threw a fastball with all I had in the hopes it would be in the strike zone, and alas, it was. With the mighty swing of the bat by a second baseman who would one day hit 40 home runs in a season, Davey Johnson hit a fly ball to left field that just about made my heart stop. Because the crowd was so loud, I couldn’t judge by the sound of the bat how hard it was hit. I turned around to look at Cleon Jones in left field and he was running back toward the wall. I thought to myself, “Oh, no.” With a Baltimore runner on first, a home run would tie Game Five of the World Series.
Just then, Cleon stopped, raised his glove and caught the ball. I was saying to myself, “Squeeze it, squeeze it, don’t let it drop out.” He went down on one knee as if to say, “Thank you, Lord. The game is over.” I turned to look at my catcher, Jerry Grote and he was running toward me on the mound. I jumped up in the air and he caught me and I gave him a big hug. The negative thoughts of possibly losing the game by making a mistake had left my mind and were replaced instantly with “We are world champs. The game is over. We don’t need to go back to Baltimore!”
Spring training had started seven months earlier in St. Petersburg, Florida. The spring of 1969 had begun with anticipation of having another personally good year and avoiding the sophmore jinx, as was commonly mentioned by the writers. The spring went well under the guiding hands and great mind of Gil Hodges, our second-year manager, who by the way, had a fun time managing us in 1968 in his first year with the Mets. Some trades had been made and we were anxious to meet our new teamates and see what they could do to improve our second-to-last-place record in the league from the year before.
Spring training is hard and you go through some physically stressful times, but it is something that has to be done to get in shape and besides, it’s better than being at home in the cold winter of Minnesota. It was fun seeing your teammates again and certainly under different circumstances from just one year earlier in 1968, when I’d had no idea if I would make the big club or not. This time I was coming to spring training knowing that a job was waiting for me as one of the Mets starting pitchers. All I had to do was get in good shape without hurting my arm.
We left spring training with the feeling that we had a better team, a stricter manager, and we certainly knew our coaches and teamates better. With all the rehearsals of covering first base, pickoff plays, fielding balls hit back at us, rundowns, backing up bases, bunting practice, and everything else that goes into spring training, we felt we were prepared to do much better this season as the plane lifted off the runway on its way to New York. Spring training gets to be long after six or seven weeks of punishing your body in the warm humid air. We were all looking forward to a change of cooler air, a larger ballpark, a nicer locker room, bigger crowds, and hopefully more wins for our team.
It was a fun and relaxing plane ride, but when the suburbs of New York City started to appear out of the plane window during our descent, anticipation of seeing Shea Stadium lingered as we made our way over miles of the great city toward LaGuardia Airport. Finally, there it was, looming outside of the window by my seat, the grass was green, and the colors blue and orange stood out as though it had just been painted. Home at last. This was going to be my home for the next six months and hopefully a happy successful home where all the fans felt like they were your family coming to root you on every night.
This year, 1969, is broken down into minute stories, with detailed biographies of players and coaches and their thoughts from that great season and how it compared with other memorable moments of their careers and lives. This is a book of that remarkable year where the Mets finally made it from last to first place in the National League and went on to win the World Series. Many books have been written about our team that year, but I don’t think any have reached the all inclusive, day-to-day happenings as this wonderful time piece displaying the pages of history. I am truly proud to be a part of this 1969 Mets championship team and to have the privilege of writing this foreword. I hope you enjoy the book as I am sure it will be the closest thing to putting you in our place during that exciting year.
— The Kooz
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