1969 Mets: Terrific Imperfection
This article was written by Matthew Silverman
This article was published in 1969 New York Mets essays
George Thomas Seaver and George Herman Ruth shared the same unused first name and the distinction of being the greatest players in the history of their respective New York teams. Shea Stadium opened while Tom Seaver was still in school, so “The House that Seaver Built” was never a suitable sobriquet—but it could have aptly been called “The House that Seaver Filled.”
Even as Shea filled well beyond capacity on the night of July 9, 1969, Seaver was already the greatest Met ever. For a franchise known for its horrible pitching before his debut, Seaver had quickly reversed that view. In 1967, just his second year of professional baseball, Seaver was the first All-Star pitcher in Mets history, the first to win more than 13 games in a season (at a time when starters generally accrued plenty of decisions), and the first National League pitcher in a decade to win the leagues Rookie of the Year Award (needless to say, he was the first Met to win that trophy). He was an All-Star and 16-game winner again in 1968, while increasing his innings (to 277⅔), lowering his ERA by half a run (to 2.20), fanning 200 for the first time, and allowing less than a runner per inning (second only to Bob Gibson). Though another outstanding rookie named Jerry Koosman surpassed him in several Mets categories that year, Seaver had a sensational start in 1969. And for the first time, so had the Mets.
Seaver was 13-3 for the 46-34 Mets as he took his warmups in the bullpen on that Wednesday night in July. Manager Gil Hodges, a Brooklyn icon and an original Met, had already led the Mets to more wins in 80 games than the ’62 Mets had managed in 160. But that loveable loser tag past them now—and their opponent that night could say the same thing.
The Cubs had not a world championship since 1908 or a pennant since 1945. They had finished last five times since then, lost 100 games for the first (and second) time in franchise history, suffered through the humiliation of the laughable College of Coaches regime, and become—in 1966—the first team to ever finish behind the sad-sack Mets. That was ancient history by July 9, 1969. Though they had cooled some after their best start since 1880, the Cubs came in at 53-31 for their three-game Shea showdown with the upstart Mets. Even after a disheartening ninth-inning loss the day before, Chicago still held a 4½ game lead on the Mets. Everyone else in the first-year National League East—including the two-time defending NL champion St. Louis Cardinals—trailed by double digits; only the Baltimore Orioles, playing at a scalding .699 clip in the American League East, had a bigger lead in baseball’s new four-division format.
Leo Durocher, known for running the same players out every day without fail, inserted two left-handed hitters in the outfield against the right-handed Seaver: Al Spangler took over in right field (ex-Met Jim Hickman had started on July 8 against the southpaw Koosman), and rookie Jimmy Qualls took over for Don Young in center. The latter move was not simply a platoon. Young had misplayed two balls in the ninth inning the previous afternoon; both runners wound up scoring on Cleon Jones’s double to tie the game and Ed Kranepool followed with a single to beat Fergie Jenkins. Durocher berated the young center fielder in front of the team after the game. Emotional third baseman Ron Santo, who’d already drawn the ire of Hodges and many others around the league for clicking his heels after Cubs wins at Wrigley Field, told the press, “I know the Dodgers won pennants with just pitching, but this Mets club is ridiculous.”
July 9, 1969 was indeed ridiculous.
Santo called the press that afternoon in the hotel to apologize about remarks he made about Young—not about the Mets comments—but the Cubs clearly seemed like they were still contemplating the previous day’s defeat as the game started. Seaver, 1-1 against the Cubs so far in ’69 (plus a relief appearance), struck out five of the first six Chicago batters. Randy Hundley and Qualls each pulled the ball in the air their first times up in the third inning, but both were caught with relative ease. Seaver completed his third perfect frame by fanning Cubs reliever Ted Abernathy. That Abernathy was in there at all told another side of the story. Ken Holtzman, who’d started the year 10-1, was in line for his fourth loss in a row after the Mets reached him for a run in the first and two in the second—one coming in on a Seaver single—to send the Chicago lefty to the showers after just 10 batters.
That 3-0 lead looked like plenty as Seaver fanned Don Kessinger for the second time and retired Glenn Beckert and Billy Williams on grounders in the fourth. Santo hit a ball to deep center to start the fifth, but Tommie Agee hauled it in. Ernie Banks bounced out and Spangler whiffed to end the inning. Hundley grounded out to third and Qualls hit the ball hard but right at first baseman Donn Clendenon. Abernathy became Seaver’s ninth strikeout victim.
All three Cubs put the ball in play in the seventh, going the opposite way as Seaver continned throwing almost all fastballs. All three were corralled flawlessly. The jammed in crowd of 59,083 (the paid crowd was 50,709 but many others had used coupons from milk cartons for entry) cheered every time Seaver retired a batter. Those at Shea, watching on WOR-TV, or listening on WJRZ 970 were all thinking no-hitter now, even if no one dared speak it. Gil Hodges made his thoughts known by replacing third baseman Ed Charles with Bobby Pfiel, who’d started the game at second, and inserting rookie Wayne Garrett to play second base. Rod Gaspar took over for Ron Swoboda in right field. It had nothing to do with the manager’s myriad platoons because Charles and Swoboda had both batted the previous inning against the righty Abernathy, who had allowed a home run to Cleon Jones during his sixth inning of relief to make it 4-0.
Santo hit the ball well for the second time, but Agee again tracked it down some 400 feet away in center in the eighth. Banks and Spangler both struck out to give Tom Terrific 11 Ks. More importantly, Seaver was through eight. The pitcher received an ovation that lasted nearly two minutes when he stepped up in the bottom of the inning with Al Weis on first base. Seaver sacrificed … perfectly.
He took the mound to start the ninth inning with the crowd reacting on every pitch. Fans gasped as Randy Hundley bunted, but Seaver fielded it and threw to first. Up stepped Qualls. Along with Santo, Qualls had probably hit the ball as well as any Cub in the game. Bob Murphy called it on WOR-TV:
And its hit hard to left field…It’s going to be a base hit… A base hit by Jimmy Qualls and it breaks up the perfect game…Now the applause for Tom Seaver…Eight and one-third innings of perfect baseball by Seaver.
First baseman Donn Clendenon came over and spoke with his pitcher for a moment, reminding him he needed to finish the task at hand. Seaver, always the professional—even at 24—set back to work. He got pinch hitter Willie Smith to pop up and Kessinger to fly to left to finish the 4-0 shutout. The Mets had again beaten the best team in the NL, New York had won its seventh game in a row, Seaver had his eighth win in a row, and a packed house had seen the best pitching performance by a Met at Shea Stadium. It was the first one-hitter by a Met at Shea, but surprisingly, it was the third one-hit game in the club’s ignominious history. Al Jackson had thrown one at the Polo Grounds against Houston on June 22, 1962, and Jack Hamilton had thrown one in St. Louis on May 4, 1966 (the last shutout thrown at old Busch Stadium, a.k.a. Sportsman’s Park). But in both those instances the hits had come the first time through the lineup… and clearly there had been no first-place drama involved in either game.
This game would indelibly be marked in Mets history, a history that would include pitchers like Koosman, Nolan Ryan, Jon Matlack, Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Bobby Ojeda, David Cone, Al Leiter, Pedro Martinez, and Johan Santana, yet none of them—nor even a lesser pitcher having the game of his career—would throw a no-hitter in a Mets uniform. Seaver wound up throwing four more one-hitters as a Met and nine years after his flirt with perfection, he would actually complete a no-hitter…while pitching for the Reds. But even that achievement is overshadowed by what became known as the “Imperfect Game,” the night Seaver showed once and for all that he—and his team— would no longer be part of anybody’s joke.
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
Feldmann, Doug. Miracle Collapse: The 1969 Chicago Cubs. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006.)
“Murphy’s Classic Calls,” http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20040804&content_id=818742&vkey=news_nym&jext=.jspe&__id=nym
Retrosheet, http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B07090NYN1969.htm.
Ryan vs. Seaver
Tom Seaver, 24, and Nolan Ryan, 22, were on the same pitching staff in 1969, the duo must have dominated the opposition, right? Well, half right.
Seaver (25-7) started 35 times in 1969, while Ryan (6-3)started 10 games and relieved in 15. Were the Mets crazy not to use Ryan more in ’69? First of all, Ryan’s military obligation required him to report for duty at various times during the season, including a month between appearances when the Mets were getting things together in late spring. Second, he was the valuable swingman, filling in when an extra starter was needed-half his starts came during doubleheaders. And third, he was wild.
The eventual all-time bases on balls leader (2,795) walked 53 in 89.3 innings in 1969, including seven on July 1 after fanning 10 and walking only one in his previous start. He threw as hard as anyone in the National League, but where the ball would wind up was a mystery. Of the record 215 times he fanned 10 or more in his career, only two came in 1969-including the second game of a doubleheader on September 10, when he K’ed 11 Expos the night the Mets went ahead of the Cubs for good.
The important thing is that Ryan did pitch regularly at the end of the season. While he wasn’t part of the postseason rotation of Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and Gary Gentry, Ryan won as many games as Seaver or Gentry in the postseason. He came in with no one out in the third inning in Game 3 of the NLCS and went the rest of the way for the pennant-clinching victory. He came out of the pen in Gentry’s World Series start and earned the save-with a little help from Tommie Agee’s glove-in what turned out to be his lone Fall Classic appearance.
Beyond ’69, who’s the better pitcher: Tom Terrific or the Ryan Express?
Mets fans don’t need much convincing, but beyond the East Coast-and certainly in the Southwest-Ryan is probably better known than Seaver. Even though Ryan started his career earlier and ended it seven years after Tom Terrific’s last pitch, their numbers are remarkably similar in terms of wins (324 Ryan, 311 Seaver), complete games (231 Seaver, 222 Ryan), and shutouts (61 apiece). Where they differ greatly is ERA (2.86 Seaver, 3.19 Ryan), winning percentage (.603 Seaver, .526 Ryan)—both played much of their careers for teams with paltry offenses-and of course strikeouts, with all-time leader Ryan having 2,074 more than Seaver, who is sixth all-time (3,640). So even with hindsight in full force, that 40-year-old decision to use Seaver full bore and keep Ryan in reserve seems wise indeed. Wiser still would have been keeping Ryan in New York and never trading him for Jim Fregosi.