In early 1970, when I was a freshman at St.John’s University, I went to Shea Stadium to purchase tickets for Opening Day. As I walked toward the ticket office, I noticed a lot of refuse strewn around the parking lot, including one large piece of green plywood sheeting lying face down on the ground. It was pretty dirty and stained and appeared to have been lying there for quite some time. Since the color had a familiar look, I decided to lift it up and look at the underside. As I suspected, it was a section of Shea Stadium’s outfield wall. I knew this for certain because this wall fragment had a white numeral “3” on it, indicating that it had once been part of either the 396 or 371 distance markers from either left-center or right-center field.

Upon closer examination, I noticed graffiti written in both ballpoint pen and magic marker on the white background of the numeral “3.” One inscription said “Joan & Bill and the Mets are #1.” Another marking read, “Joe, Byron and Rich,” and below it said, “10/16/69.” That was the very date the Mets won their first world championship! I broke the large sheet into a small enough piece to fit into my friend’s car, all the while keeping the numeral “3” intact. I brought it home and stored it in my parents’ garage in Queens.

A few years ago, I decided that I would finally give that piece its rightful treatment by having it mounted and framed. When I found it in the garage, I noticed it had inexplicably been cut into four pieces. No one was around to explain. Fortunately, the pieces fit together neatly, leaving the numeral “3” intact. I’d always been almost certain that it was a piece of the Shea wall and time had not dimmed my belief. While doing some research, I found proof beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I stumbled across a photograph taken an hour or so after the last out of the 1969 World Series. The photo portrayed Tom Seaver and Gary Gentry, walking around the pitching mound, surrounded by huge divots of grassy turf liberally lying all over the field. When I looked beyond the main subjects, in the background, I could clearly see that where the right-field wall stood 371 feet from home plate, but only the numerals “71” were visible. As I looked closer … the section of the wall bearing the numeral “3” was clearly missing. After all this time, I finally knew exactly from where and when that piece of wall came from. It actually was, and still is, a tangible link back to that magical moment in Mets history.

From that point, came the next step, getting the participants to sign my little—or maybe not so little—piece of the Miracle Mets. It has been a labor of love acquiring autographs on the Wall from as many of the surviving ’69 Mets as I could get. Soon after rediscovering the Wall in March 2006, I realized the first chance I would get to have it autographed would be the following December, when a Mets Mania autograph show was to take place in New Jersey.

The experience of meeting each of those ’69 Mets was filled with all kinds of emotion: Al Weis had some funny stories to relate about still living in the Chicago area, where the word “Mets” remains a four-letter because the Miracle ruined what had been a dream season for the Cubs. Jerry Koosman, one of the greatest Mets pitchers, used the Wall to make fun of his well-known lack of hitting prowess. Jim McAndrew seemed to just to have a huge smile on his face throughout his entire appearance time, and I’ll never forget the warm country gentleman presence of Don Cardwell. Ed Kranepool, Swoboda, The Glider—Ed Charles, Wayne Garrett, Cleon Jones, Bud Harrelson and all the rest were equally friendly, spirited, humorous, and approachable and seemed just as genuinely appreciative of our continued interest in them, as we are for the thrills that they gave us. What an Amazin’ event it was for me.

By the time that New Jersey show ended, I had secured all of the autographs that now appear on the Wall, except for Tom Seaver, Yogi Berra, and Nolan Ryan, Hall of Famers, all!

Yogi was scheduled to appear at a Yankees-themed show in February 2007. Despite what I knew would be an “adversarial” Yankees atmosphere at that event, I decided I could not pass up the opportunity to personally meet Yogi, a coach on the ’69 team and the manager of the “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets that took the pennant in ’73. So with a single-minded purpose, I purchased my tickets to the show, had Yogi sign the Wall, and took the requisite photos. I left that event immediately after getting his signature, dutifully ignoring the sullying effect which that Yankees-themed atmosphere evoked. It was my intent to leave with an image of Yogi as a 1969 Mets coach … not as a Yankee. Fortunately, I made it work.

Two weeks earlier, it had been Seaver time. Tom had a scheduled appearance in Baltimore. My wife and I took the 200-mile trek down I-95 on Friday night. Saturday morning, we went to the convention center, bought our tickets and soon after, saw Tom enter the building a bit earlier than his scheduled appearance time. As I waited my turn, things seemed under control. But then rumors began to circulate that Seaver had finished early and was actually on his way out of the building. That’s when the panic set in. I grabbed the Wall and rushed down to the area where I had seen him arrive, hoping that I could at least get him to stop and quickly sign the Wall on his way out. All that expenditure of emotion and energy turned out to be unnecessary, as the rumors of a premature exit were not quite accurate. Tom had merely left the first room he was in to move down the corridor to another signing room. We breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

When we finally got up to Tom, not only did he sign the top segment of the Wall which I had reserved for him, but he marveled at the entire two-by-three foot section, showing the entire numeral “3.” He repeatedly referred to it as “a great piece of history” and offered to help me get in touch with people in the Mets organization if I were so inclined. I thanked him and exchanged contact information. We said our goodbyes and left the building with the autograph that, with all due respect to any and all of the others on that Wall, most fittingly belonged: Tom Seaver, the Franchise.

Ironically, on that very morning, it had been reported that Nolan Ryan had been hospitalized for some “tests.” Fortunately, as was reported a few days later, all turned out to be okay. Nolan Ryan spent most of his long and remarkable career in uniforms that did not say “Mets,” but he will forever be remembered by Mets fans of that era as the fireballing hurler who won the clinching game of the 1969 NLCS and whose lone career World Series appearance resulted in a save in Game Three of the ’69 Series against Baltimore, that magical afternoon where Tommie Agee made his two miraculous catches. True, Ryan’s infamous 1971 trade to the Angels still lives in the annals of Mets history, but also, it was his brief arrival on the scene in the summer of 1966—a year before Seaver’s debut—that was the harbinger of things to come, pitching-wise, in the summers that followed. And it was power pitching from extraordinary young arms that would finally cause the worm to turn in 1969.

Nolan Ryan does not do many public autograph shows. I contacted his foundation, and while they said he would sign my “artifact” if I mailed it to them, I wasn’t of a mind to entrust this, in the words of Tom Seaver, “great piece of history” to the mail or any other delivery service. His foundation appreciated my willingness to fly to Houston personally whenever he would be in, but they said they rarely received much advanced notice of his office visits. I had noticed a private signing he was scheduled to do with a Houston-based memorabilia dealer in early July. So I contacted that outfit and said I’d be willing to fly down if I could get the Wall signed without letting it far from my possession. They suggested I wait, indicating that he might do a public signing in the upcoming fall. I thanked them for the information and resolved to contact them in a few months.

In early September, I noticed Ryan’s name on an autograph-signing website. I clicked on it only to find a scheduled public signing scheduled for Sunday, September 30, 2007, at 1 p.m. I assumed it was going to be in Texas, but when I clicked further, I saw it was scheduled to occur on Long Island, in Deer Park, not a 20-minute drive from my home! I couldn’t believe it! I immediately bought tickets for the event and waited with keen anticipation. It was a long, long couple of weeks building up to that Sunday. Sadly, every Mets fan should remember September 30, 2007. For those who need a hint: last game of the regular season, the Mets needing a win to force a one-game playoff, Tom Glavine on the mound, seven-run first inning …you know how that came out. Well, I spent those minutes during that first inning on line, listening to the game, waiting to meet Nolan Ryan. By the time I got up to him, those seven runs had crossed the plate. Meeting him was as good an antidote to that first inning as I could ever imagine. He was wonderful. And, getting back to my car, I said there was still time for a comeback, right? No Miracle that day.

In any event, I was thrilled meeting Nolan Ryan and he was fascinated not only by the Wall, but by the album of photos I had brought of his former teammates signing it, nostalgically smiling as he perused each photo. Nolan Ryan was a Met. He always will be a Met to me.

The author of seven no-hitters (none as a Met, of course) he has completed the Wall, my Wall. And he joined a pretty select company missing only Tommie Agee, Donn Clendenon, Tug McGraw, Rube Walker, Cal Koonce, and Gil Hodges, among the deceased.

On August 23, 2009, the day after the Citi Field celebration of the 1969 Mets, I got the last three signatures I needed on the wall: Eddie Yost, Bobby Pfeil, and Gary Gentry. The roll call for the Wall, my piece of the ’69 Mets reads as follows:

• Ed Kranepool
• Al Weis
• Ed Charles
• Jerry Grote
• J.C. Martin
• Rod Gaspar
• Ron Swoboda
• Jack DiLauro
• Joe Pignatano
• Jim McAndrew
• Jerry Koosman
• Tom Seaver
• Bobby Pfeil
• Gary Gentry
• Ken Boswell
• Bud Harrelson
• Wayne Garrett
• Duffy Dyer
• Cleon Jones
• Art Shamsky
• Amos Otis
• Yogi Berra
• Ron Taylor
• Don Cardwell
• Nolan Ryan
• Ralph Kiner
• Eddie Yost

LOU LONGOBARDI is an accountant from Long Island. Besides owning a piece of the original Shea Stadium wall, he is a Beatles aficionado and once sang for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

A passion for baseball, like all passions, is a webwork of connections. It is a network comprised of moments and memories, of personalities, situations and serendipity. It is a pattern of connections and of circuits completed. If our reactions to and interactions with events help to refine our definitions of ourselves, our reflections on such events help to deepen such convictions. Through theses processes we learn who we are, who we have been, who we yet may be.

Two events, one in the fall of 1969 and the other in the spring of 1970, have served such purpose for me. I have revisited (and likely revised) these memories often.

Two days before my 13th birthday I found myself with my mother and father in the upper deck of Memorial Stadium awaiting the start of the second game of the 1969 World Series. I had been born in Baltimore just after the summer that saw both Brooks and Frank Robinson complete their rookie seasons (one in Baltimore and one in Cincinnati), though neither of them was on my radar for a few years. I do remember with perfect clarity the moment that they did flash onto my screen. It was an early April afternoon in 1966 when I opened a local paper (we had been living for six years in South Jersey by then) and saw a photo of a ballplayer sliding into third base. The photo was captioned: “Frank Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles slides into third with a triple. Robinson later scored the winning run in Baltimore’s 3-2 victory over the Cleveland Indians.”

Serendipity. I decided on the spot that Baltimore would be my favorite team and that Frank Robinson would be my favorite player. Few choices in my life have ever been more timely or more fortuitous. Frank went on to win the Triple Crown and an MVP. The Orioles went on to a World Series sweep against a heavily favored Los Angeles club that included both Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. And I had the good fortune of watching a young right-hander named Jim Palmer become, at 20, the youngest pitcher to ever throw a shutout in the World Series at the outset of what was to be a stellar career. My fate was sealed.

What a delicious fate it seemed on the afternoon of October 12, 1969. That summer my family had moved back to Baltimore, the Orioles had won 109 regular season games and topped it off with a three-game sweep of a strong Minnesota club in the first ever American League Championship Series. That was followed by winning the opening game of the World Series against the New York Mets and their outstanding ace Tom Seaver. The stage was set for an easy Series victory and another world championship. Heck, the Series might not even make it back to Baltimore for Game Six. The atmosphere was positively electric. Then came Jerry Koosman.

‘The 25-year-old lefty had just won 17 games in his second season—following a 19-win season as a rookie in ’68—and he proceeded to show everyone how he had done it. After six innings he was pitching no-hit ball and looked as if he might be able to make Donn Clendenon’s fourth inning home run hold up for a 1-0 victory In the seventh, however, the O’s reached him for two hits and tied the score. I thought that we were back in the game, but he shut us down again and when three of his teammates singled with two out in the top of the ninth, the Mets again had a one-run lead, and Koosman was back on the mound needing just three outs.

One thing you need to know about Orioles fans of that particular era is that we were raised on the radio and television broadcasts of Chuck Thompson and Bill O’Donnell. Neither of these men were “homers.” They were true fans of the game. Listening to them helped one appreciate the fine play of the opponents as well as that of the hometown heroes. We searched for and applauded excellence when we saw it on either side, because we had been taught to recognize it as such. A gutsy pitch selection by the opposing battery might be responsible for one of our heroes striking out in the clutch. A line defensive play might retire our side without a run. They did not look to blame our own when they failed, unless they truly deserved such blame. Truth be told, there were not a lot of flaws to point out on the 1969 O’s. Usually when we lost it was due to superior performance by our opponents. Chuck and Bill had recognized this fact, and had taught all Orioles fans to be alert to just such possibilities.

After the Mets took a 2-1 lead in the top of the ninth, Koosman retired the first two batters in the bottom of the inning. I honestly don’t remember if the O’s had managed to get someone on base, or even who was due to bat next, but I do remember Gil Hodges, the New York manager, stepping out of the dugout and walking slowly toward the mound. I remember watching Jerry Koosman awaiting him, head bowed, spikes scraping along the dirt of the mound.

More than 50,000 people waited with a hushed expectancy. No one was certain what the manager would do. No one was even certain what they wanted him to do. Koosman had been magnificent. Was he tiring? Would we have a better chance against their bullpen?

Hodges reached the mound and it began to seem that even he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. They talked. We watched and waited. Finally Hodges reached his hand out for the ball. Head downcast, Koosman handed it to him respectfully, and then began his own long slow march back to the New York dugout. He looked, for all the world, like a man who’d just been fired from his job. It started then.

It seemed to build gradually, but it came to fullness rapidly enough that Koosman was only half way back to the dugout by the time that 50,850 fans had risen to give him a rousing standing ovation.

Koosman’s stride faltered a little. He raised his eyes from the ground and looked up into the seats above the Mets dugout. He stopped completely. He looked higher. He turned his head to the right very slowly. He kept on turning his head until he had to shuffle his feet and turn his body. Now he took in the seats behind home plate. Now he took in the seats in the upper deck above the plate. Now the seats along the third base line and above.

His eyes swept back, taking in the scene again. His posture evinced his disbelief at the suddenness and incongruity of receiving such an ovation in the oppositions ballpark.

When his face came back again so that he was looking in my direction…well, maybe it was some trick of distance and light, maybe it was the sheen of sweat from his exertions on a warm October day, and maybe it is just the way my memory has overwritten the truth over nearly 40 years of telling and retelling of the moment; but it seemed to me that his cheeks were wet with tears.

Koosman raised a hand in acknowledgment, as respectfully and emotionally as he had moved when handing the game ball to his manager, and continued his walk to the dugout. His stride seemed more confident. His pace was quicker, his posture more proud.

It was one of the finest moments that I have ever experienced in a ballpark. I was aware of its import even as it occurred. I think all 50,850 of us were proud to be there.

Some months later my father asked if I wanted to attend the Baltimore premier of the Official Major League Baseball World Series film for 1969. I was, of course, elated, though I had no hope that the Series would turn out any differently than it had the first time.

The film was shown in the auditorium of Eastern High School, right across the street from Memorial Stadium. As I had feared, the Mets still won in five.

After the film there was a panel discussion with three or four Orioles and a like number of Mets available to take questions from the audience. Jerry Koosman was one of the Mets who had taken the time to be with us on that day. You must remember that by now I had passed my 13th birthday and so was worldly wise and knowledgeable in all things, even if I was too shy to raise my hand and offer my own questions.

I was thrilled, however, when Jerry Koosman stepped up to the microphone. I desperately hoped that someone would ask him a question that would get him to talk about that intimate moment that he and I had shared with nearly 51,000 other people that previous October.

I winced when I heard the first question he was asked: “Mr. Koosman, could you tell us what your worst moment ever was on a ballfield, and what was your best?”

Stupid question, I thought, the guy is barely 26 years old and has only played two full seasons. It was a question best asked of a grizzled veteran, or a wily manager who had a long-playing career before stepping up. What a wasted opportunity. But Kooz, once again, came through.

“That’s easy,” he said, “because they happened almost simultaneously. Right across the street from here, not too long ago.

“I never felt worse on a ballfield than I did when Gil Hodges asked me to give him the ball when I was one out away from completing my first World Series start. I wanted to keep pitching. I felt that I’d let the team down. I didn’t want to come out. I’ve never felt lower.

“Half way back to the dugout I heard a noise. I didn’t know what it was. I looked up and realized that the Baltimore fans were giving me a standing ovation. I couldn’t believe it. It really lifted me up. It was the best feeling that I’ve ever had on a ballfield.”

Grand slam answer. I swear I cried. A circuit had been completed for me. I’m sure I tried not to let my tears show, but my father wasn’t a man who missed much. He kept looking up at the stage. He wasn’t a man who would easily breach such a confidence either.

I guess this little essay is about him too. About what I learned from him as much as what I learned while at his side. My father was never a baseball fan until I was, so my fondness for the game and for the Orioles was never inherited. Once I became a fan he was eager to take me to games and events that met and increased my growing fascination with the sport.

Because of him, and Kooz, and Chuck Thompson, and more than 50,000 other attendees who also rose to a particular occasion, my memory of that World Series doesn’t key on the disappointment of loss.

That memory is not articulated by the incredible acrobatics of Swoboda and Agee, the heroic offense of Donn Clendenon, a blown interference call or a pair of shady hit-batsmen calls each going the way of the Mets in Game Five.

For me, that Series has always been defined by the circuit completed. Pole one was Jerry Koosman deserving and receiving our ovation with style and grace. Pole two was when he recognized and thanked us for it.

Such moments are rare in any endeavor. Such moments are why I love this silly little game of ball and bat and glove and guile.

GLEN VASEY grew up rooting for the incredible Oriole teams of the 1960s through the early 1980s, became fascinated with the history and personalities in the game, and is currently working on an alternative history novel that examines a different road to the integration of baseball than the one Robinson and Rickey took. By day he is a mild-mannered parking meter technician and town friendly guy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

I didn’t even know that it would be so at the time, but looking back recently at my extensive 2,000-plus Cubs game scorecard collection, the very first one (it wasn’t my first game, but it’s the oldest surviving card) is from one of the saddest games in Cubs history

Not quite 13 years old and not yet beaten down by the ways of the world or baseball, I was taken to Wrigley Field by my dad on Sunday, September 7, 1969, the year the heroes of my childhood were supposed to, going to, absolutely had to, break the Cubs’ pennantless drought which at the time, stretched “only” 24 years—long, but not to the absurd extremes it now reaches, 40 years later.

It was nearing the end of what had been, and what was supposed to continue to be, a special season. The Cubs ran out to an 11-1 start after an incredible Opening Day in which they’d blown a 5-2 lead and trailed 6-5 in the 11th inning, only to see Willie Smith hit a two-run walkoff home run (even though we had never heard the term “walkoff” back then). The party continued for five months; on June 29, the Cubs honored Billy Williams with a “day” between games of a doubleheader, in which he tied and then broke Stan Musial’s record of 895 consecutive games played. Billy got a car, a boat, various appliances, and the adulation of 41,060 fans, the place packed to the rafters and tens of thousands turned away. He went 5-for-9 in the twinbill and drove in three runs as the Cubs swept their hated rivals, the defending NL champion Cardinals, and extended their record to 50-26 and their lead to 8½ games.

By mid-August, the lead had been stretched to nine games over St. Louis—the Cubs led by 10 over the Mets—and postseason play seemed inevitable. My dad promised he’d find me playoff tickets.

There had been fun early on, too: Pitcher Dick Selma, acquired from the Padres in May, started and relieved and when in the bullpen, led cheers with yellow-helmeted fans who dubbed themselves the “Bleacher Bums.” As George Langford described the scene in the Chicago Tribune, Selma would stand in the Cubs bullpen next to the left-field stands and …

jab his right hand in the air and spin it around like an airport ground crewman giving the signal for the pilot to rev up his engines. Taking their cue, the left field bleacher bums follow Selma’s lead, all circling their arms in the air. Then the Cubs pitcher jumps straight up and down, and slams his arm toward the ground and the irrepressible bleacherites burst into song. “Don’t keep kicking my dog around,” they sing.

Fun was tempered in July when the Cubs, in front of a raucous Shea Stadium crowd, blew a 3-1 ninth-inning lead and lost, 4-3, because Chicago’s rookie center fielder Don Young mishandled two easily catchable fly balls. Third baseman Ron Santo ripped him in public and was forced to apologize the next day; Young, having lost manager Leo Durocher’s confidence, was benched. Young’s replacement the next night, Jim Qualls, got the ninth-inning hit that spoiled Tom Seaver’s bid for a perfect game. Seaver won anyway, but the Cubs won the next day and were 4½ games up in the standings.

On August 28, a Thursday afternoon throng of 29,092—a very large weekday crowd for that era—attended a 3-1 win over Cincinnati; that crowd brought the season attendance to 1,502,222, breaking a record that had stood since 1929. Four wins later, the Cubs’ record stood at 84-52, 32 games over .500—the most it had been over .500 since the last pennant season in 1945 (and it wouldn’t get that far over .500 again until 2008).

Still, even with the Mets getting hot and the Cubs cooling off, the lead remained at 4½ games as August turned into September. I can recall playing in my back yard, bouncing a ball off the brick wall of my house, the day the Cubs lost 2-0 to the Reds in Cincinnati (September 3), thinking, “Well, they lost—but they’re still up five games, it’s OK!”

When Sunday, September 7 dawned—the day my father took me to Wrigley and I got (and kept) the scorecard—the Cubs had dropped three straight and the lead was down to 3½ games. It was nervous time. They lost the first two games of a series against the Pirates, and gingerly took a 5-4 lead into the ninth inning of the Sunday finale, having overcome 2-1 and 4-2 deficits. Ace reliever (they weren’t modern “closers” yet) Phil Regan was in the game to nail down the win—he had pitched the eighth, too, so he was in line for the victory, as the Cubs had taken the lead in the last of the eighth.

The first two batters went out on a popup and a groundout, and Regan got two strikes on the dangerous Willie Stargell. One more strike …

It never happened. Stargell sent a 1-2 pitch onto Sheffield Avenue, tying the game. A funereal silence dropped onto Wrigley Field. Even this 12-year-old felt the gloom. Still, the game was only tied, right? Sure, but when you blow a lead like that, jitters take over. An 11th-inning error by the usually sure-handed Don Kessinger led to two unearned runs, and the 7-5 loss sent the Cubs on a nine-game road trip only 2½ games ahead.

The first two games of the trip were in New York, where the Mets fans could sense something good coming for their team. They were right. In the first game, with the score tied in the sixth, Tommie Agee doubled and, on a Wayne Garrett single, tried to score ahead of Jim Hickman’s frantic throw.

Catcher Randy Hundley and tens of thousands of Cubs fans, this 12-year-old included, will tell you to this day that Agee was out. But plate umpire Satch Davidson didn’t see it that way. He ruled Agee safe; the normally mild-mannered Hundley jumped what seemed like a dozen feet in the air in anger, but to no avail. The call stood, and the Mets won, 3-2.

We didn’t know it then, but it was over. The Mets—and that damned black cat—jumped all over Fergie Jenkins the next night, and although the Cubs left New York still clinging to first place by half a game, we knew the fall was going to get worse.

It did. The losing streak reached eight. The last of these was lost to the awful Phillies in Philadelphia when Selma tried to pick a runner off third base— only there was no fielder there. Ron Santo hadn’t gotten the message, and the ball wound up in the left-field corner.

The Cubs, who once led the Mets by double digits, finished eight games out of first place. Give the Mets credit: they went 38-11 to finish the year, and…well, I don’t want to use that “A” word that Mets fans use to describe that year’s team, but it was an incredible run. The Cubs finished the year at home with a 5-3 win over the eventual world champions (otherwise, the Cubs would have finished 10 games out instead of eight) in front of 9,981, extending the attendance record to 1,674,993, a mark that would stand till the Cubs won the NL East in yet another star-crossed year, 1984. Although that year, it was the Cubs who passed the Mets in August and cruised to the NL East title.

But in 1969, the dreams of kids like me—and Cubs fans of every age—were crushed. We kept hoping our heroes, Jenkins, Kessinger, Beckert, Santo, Hundley, and Williams, among others who came and went, would somehow “put it together” over the next few years, but it never happened. Eventually, all of them were shipped to other baseball destinations, while we were left with bittersweet memories of the team that never won anything.

Today, those Cubs are revered, perversely, perhaps because they didn’t win anything. And, of course, 40 years later, no Cubs team has won it all.

The 12-year-old in me still yearns for that. Someday…

Editor’s note: The author and all Cubs fans finally got their wish in 2016.

AL YELLON began his life as a Cubs fan in what could have, should have, been a golden era for his team— watching Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, and the guy who should be in the Hall, Ron Santo. He’s seen many thrills over the years, but not the ultimate one, winning a championship. A television director at ABC-7 in Chicago by day, he is also the editor of the Maple Street Press Cubs Annual and co -author of Cubs By The Numbers from Skyhorse Publishing: stories of every Cub who has worn a uniform number since the Cubs first donned digits in 1932. He lives two and a half miles from Wrigley Field and can be found in the left-field bleachers for virtually every home game.

If you had asked fans prior to the 1969 baseball season which scenario was more likely—man landing on the moon or the New York Mets wining the world championship—they would probably have been hard-pressed to choose, both being equally improbable. Casey Stengel, original Mets manager and overseer of the ugliest launching of a franchise in the 20th century, often made the correlation between a champion in Flushing and a man on the moon. Who would’ve thought Casey would be right?

When Gil Hodges was named manager in 1968, he made it clear that the team’s legendary ineptitude would no longer be acceptable. He then led them to the best season in their short history: 73-89 and a ninth-place finish (although just one game above the last-place Houston Astros). With a cadre of young stars including Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Jerry Grote, Tommie Agee, Cleon Jones, and Bud Harrelson, backed by a strong bench, Mets fans looked forward to a promising future. They just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.

The 1969 season didn’t get off to a great start: the Mets lost to the expansion Montreal Expos, 11-10 on Opening Day. (By contrast to the nouveau Expos, it took the Mets 10 tries before they won their first game in their first year as a franchise.) By the end of April, New York was 9-11, good by Mets standards, but not good enough for their skipper. On May 31, they were still below .500, but they had embarked on the 11-game winning streak that turned everything around. The Mets won 19 of 28 games in June, though they were still 7½ games behind Chicago. The Mets won two series against the Cubs in July— including Tom Seaver’s “Imperfect Game” at Shea Stadium, but still stood 6½ games out at the end of the month. Though they slipped all the way to 10 games back, the Mets flourished in the dog days of August and on into September, winning 37 of their final 48 games.

Mets pitchers were dominant, but the offense was less potent. Agee led the team with 26 home runs and 76 RBIs while his boyhood friend Cleon Jones finished third in the league with a .340 batting average, the highest to that time in Mets history…by 37 points.

If their remarkable achievement had come a year earlier, the Mets would have advanced directly to the World Series. But the addition of two teams to each league inaugurated a new round of playoffs: the League Championship Series. For the Mets to advance to the fall classic, they would have beat the veteran-filled Atlanta Braves of Hank Aaron, Phil Niekro, Orlando Cepeda, Rico Carty, and company.

Because the focus fell on the Mets’ unlikely success, fans tend to forget how well the Braves did in 1969. They had not appeared in the postseason since losing to the Yankees in the 1958 World Series, when they called Milwaukee home. The 93-win Braves were third in the league with 141 home runs (led by Aaron’s 44) and fifth in runs per game. Their pitching was also strong, Niekro was second to in the NL to Tom Seaver in wins (23), and Ron Reed, a 6-foot-6 former Detroit Pistons forward, chipped in 18 victories. Pat Jarvis and George Stone won 13 apiece.

Hodges was relatively modest, picking his team to take the playoff to the five-game limit. The oddsmakers didn’t even give the Mets that much credit. The Braves were made 13-10 favorites in Las Vegas, despite going 4-8 against the Mets during the regular season. Only Jones and Art Shamsky batted over .300 for the year on a team that only hit .242, a mark the Braves bettered by 16 points. The Braves bettered the Mets in virtually every offensive category and slugger Hank Aaron led the league in total bases and extra-base hits while finishing one behind Willie McCovey for the NL lead with 44 homers. Pitching was the Mets’ strong suit: first in shutouts (28) and fewest hits allowed (1,217), second in the league in ERA (2.99), and third in saves (35).

The Braves were to host the first two games of the best-of-five National League Championship Series. Many sports pundits expected the bubble to burst on the Miracle Mets.

Game One, October 4

For a Change, the Hitters Cover for Seaver

If the Mets were nervous, it wasn’t evident. In the second inning, Art Shamsky singled off Phil Niekro, who then walked second baseman Ken Boswell. Ed Kranepool, the last of the original Mets from 1962, struck out, but Jerry Grote, the team’s All-Star catcher, singled in Shamsky with the first postseason run in Mets history. With Boswell on third, Niekro’s knuckler eluded rookie catcher Bob Didier for a passed ball as the Mets took a 2-0 lead.

In Atlanta’s half of the inning, Rico Carty, a perennial .300 hitter, doubled to left and moved to third as Boswell misplayed Orlando Cepeda’s grounder. Former Yankee Clete Boyer drove in the Braves’ first run with a sacrifice fly. Atlanta took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the third on consecutive doubles by Felix Millan, Tony Gonzalez (a mid-season pickup from the San Diego Padres), and Hank Aaron.

But the Mets answered immediately with a single by Kranepool, a Grote walk, and a Bud Harrelson triple to right, putting them back on top, 4-3. Gonzalez led off the bottom of the fifth with a home run to deadlock the contest and Aaron homered two innings later to give Atlanta a 5-4 lead. Their elation was short-lived.

In the top of the eighth, third baseman Wayne Garrett, a “Howdy Doody” look-alike plucked from Atlanta’s farm system by the Mets in the Rule 5 draft, doubled to left field. He came in on a single by Cleon Jones. Shamsky’s third hit on the afternoon moved Jones to second. After he stole third, Boswell hit a sharp grounder to the veteran Cepeda, who foolishly tried to nab the speedy Jones at the plate, but the throw was wild and Jones scored New York’s sixth run. Gil Hodges sent in Al Weis to run for Shamsky, and the slow-footed Kranepool managed to keep out of a double play, setting the stage for an improbable hero.

J.C. Martin, a left-handed hitting catcher, had come over to the Mets from the Chicago White Sox in November 1967 as the player to be named later in the Ken Boyer trade. With Grote firmly in place as the number one backstop—and rookie Duffy Dyer working his way into a backup catching role—Martin started just 44 games in 1969. Hodges sent Martin up to bat for Seaver, who hadn’t enjoyed a Cy Young-type day. Martin delivered a bases-clearing hit—abetted by a Gonzalez error—to ice the game, 9-5. Ron Taylor came on in relief for the final two innings, yielding two hits in the bottom of the ninth before getting Cepeda to pop up to second for the final out.

Game Two, October 5

Leaving Atlanta and Laughing

Tommie Agee, who had gone hitless in the NLCS opener, singled against Ron Reed to begin the festivities on day two. He continued his tour of the bases with a walk to Wayne Garrett, taking second on a steal of third, another Reed walk, and a clutch single by Ed Kranepool with two out.

Bud Harrelson lined out to open the second, but Jerry Koosman—who batted an anemic .048 in 84 at-bats—worked out a walk, to the disgust of Braves fans. That came back to haunt Reed as Agee followed with a home run, the first postseason homer in Mets history. After Garrett grounded back to the pitcher, Cleon Jones doubled and Art Shamsky drove him in with a single to right; he ended up on third base after Tony Gonzalez’s error in center field. That was it for Reed, who was charged with four earned runs in 1⅔ innings. Reliever Paul Doyle didn’t fare much better; the Mets added two more runs off the 30-year-old lefty in the third inning. After Kranepool struck out, Orlando Cepeda booted Jerry Grote’s ground ball for another miscue. Harrelson drove in the catcher with a double to left. Koosman followed with a strikeout and the Braves decided to walk Agee intentionally, but the strategy backfired when Garrett singled to center, plating Harrelson. Out with Doyle, in with veteran Milt Pappas. The Mets added two more in the fourth when Shamsky single was followed by Ken Boswell home run.

The Braves, however, didn’t get this far because they were quitters. They had rallied from fourth place and three games back in early September to win the NL West by that same margin. Rico Carty doubled to right and came in on a Cepeda single against Koosman in the fourth inning for Atlanta’s first run of the game. The next inning, after the Mets made it 9-1, the Braves exploded for four tallies, all after two were out. After a Millan single and a walk to Gonzalez, Hank Aaron blasted a three-run home run; Koosman was starting to lose steam. He walked Carty and gave up a double to Cepeda; both came around on Clete Boyer’s single. Gil Hodges replaced Koosman with Ron Taylor, the only Met with previous postseason experience (as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1964 World Series).

The Mets weren’t finished either. Facing Cecil Upshaw in the top of the seventh, Agee walked, stole second, and advanced to third on a fly ball by Garrett. Jones came up to the plate now and Agee had the idea of trying to steal home. Unfortunately, no one told the batter, who swung and hit a vicious line drive at the head of the oncoming runner, who miraculously avoided the ball. After a collective sigh of relief, Jones made things much easier a minute later when he hit a home run to put the game on ice, 11-6. Tug McGraw picked up a three-inning save in what would be his only postseason action of 1969. Taylor was credited with the victory.

Game Three, October 6

A Pennant in Three Easy Steps

In his 2004 memoir, The Magnificent Seasons, Art Shamsky recalled the emotions he and his teammates felt when they arrived in Atlanta. “It’s men against boys,” he wrote. Even with the first game in the bag, Shamsky said the Mets were still worried. But once back in New York, amidst the familiar surroundings and loving fans—they relaxed, and when they won, “It was pandemonium.” Again. The year had begun with the Jets winning a Super Bowl and shocking the establishment almost as much as the Mets would during the baseball season—by the following spring, the Knicks would also be world champions for the first time. All those championships culminating in a short period were important to New York City and a nation still reeling from the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as fiscal difficulties and social unrest of the end of the 1960s.

With no time off in the NLCS in 1969, the series resumed in New York the next day. A Monday afternoon crowd of 54,195 squeezed into Shea Stadium for the third game, which pitted Gary Gentry, the Mets’ unheralded rookie third starter, against Pat Jarvis. Both righties had won 13 games for their respective teams, but Jarvis, at 28, already had four major league campaigns under his belt.

Despite being the second-youngest pitcher on the staff after Nolan Ryan, Gentry—who was making the start on his 23rd birthday—was no greenhorn. He had allowed just 192 hits in 234 innings, which would prove to be his career-best. In fact, he had just one more season in which he pitched more than 200 innings; he was out of the majors by 1975, finishing his career with—of all teams—the Atlanta Braves.

Gentry erased Felix Millan on a fly ball to lead off the game, but Tony Gonzalez singled and Hank Aaron followed with his third homer of the NLCS, giving the Braves a 2-0 lead. Gentry made it through the second inning with just a walk, but he didn’t retire a batter in the third. That inning started with another hit by Gonzalez, but this time Aaron merely doubled, moving the runner to third. When Rico Carty drove a liner that was just foul of the left-field foul pole, Hodges decided he’d seen enough, lifting Gentry with a one-ball, two-strike count on the batter and calling in the fireballing but erratic Nolan Ryan.

The future Hall of Famer had a 6-3 record in 25 games, 15 of which came as a reliever. He struck out 92 batters in 89 innings, allowing just 60 hits while walking 53. In Peter Golenbock’s Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team, Ron Swoboda recalled the team’s surprise at the manager’s move. “When he brought him in I thought, ‘This is interesting.’” Jerry Koosman went further: “The whole bench said, ‘If he’s bringing in Ryan, Gil has given up.’”

But, in fact, Ryan was superb. He blew a third strike past Carty, walked Orlando Cepeda intentionally to load the bases, caught Clete Boyer on a called strikeout, and finally retired Bob Didier on a fly ball. Ryan had kept the Braves off the scoreboard in the third and the Mets responded quickly when Tommie Agee hit his second NLCS homer in the bottom of the inning.

Shamsky started a rally in the fourth with his series-high seventh single. He crossed the plate on Ken Boswell’s second playoff home run to give the Mets a 3-2 lead. Though the Braves regained the lead on a two-run Cepeda home run in the top of the fifth, Hodges left Ryan in to bat and the pitcher led off the bottom of the inning with a single. He scored on Wayne Garrett’s just-fair four-bagger for a 5-4 lead. Jones singled and scored on another hit by Boswell, his third RBI of the game. They added their final run in the sixth on a double by Jerry Grote and a single by Agee.

The Braves never mounted another serious threat. Ryan’s third inning heroics had proved the turning point. Gonzalez ended Atlanta’s suffering by grounding to third for the final out of the playoffs. In seven innings, Ryan allowed just three hits, walked two, and struck out seven to pick up the victory that propelled the Mets into their first World Series.

In the three-game sweep, the Mets outscored the Braves 27-15, batting an improbable .327, led by Shamsky’s .538; Jones, Garrett, Agee, and Boswell all batted .333 or better. Koosman told Golenbock, “The tension of the world was on us. Everybody wanted to be on the bandwagon. [Governor Nelson] Rockefeller and [NewYork Mayor John V.] Lindsay and numerous big names were suddenly appearing in the clubhouse.”

Despite public address pleas, Mets fans stormed the field for the second time in three weeks, threatening to destroy the diamond in their frenzied joy, wanting a fistful or grass or dirt as a souvenir to mark this most amazing season. “The management might just have well have spared the voltage for the speaker system,” wrote Norm Miller in the New York Daily News. Yet the excitement didn’t seem to match that of the NL East pennant-clincher against the St. Louis Cardinals. “The main difference was that the first time we had done something nobody believed we could do,” Shamsky said during the locker room celebration. What thrilled him the most were the contributions from players like Boswell and Garrett, who were now receiving overdue recognition for their work. “We’ve been that way all year,” he said. “If one guy didn’t [come through], another did.”

The 66th World Series

While the Mets were marching for their league’s pennant, the Baltimore Orioles were doing the same. The Orioles, who had upset the Los Angeles Dodgers by sweeping them in the 1966 fall classic, finished sixth in 1967 and in second place in 1968. They roared back in 1969, winning 109 games and finishing 19 ahead of second-place Detroit in Earl Weaver’s first full season as a major league manager.

Baltimore’s squad boasted the AL Cy Young Award co-winner, Mike Cuellar, one of three Orioles who finished in the top 10 in AL MVP voting (Boog Powell and Frank Robinson were second and third, respectively, to Minnesota Twin Harmon Killebrew for MVP). Six players—Powell, Frank and Brooks Robinson, Paul Blair, Davey Johnson, and Dave McNally—appeared in the All-Star Game that summer. As a team, they were second only to the Minnesota Twins in batting average and third to the Red Sox in home runs. Yet they were a disciplined lot, striking out a league-low 806 times and working out 634 walks (second most).

Defensively, the Orioles were without peer, finishing first in fielding percentage and committing the fewest errors (101) of any team in the game. The pitching staff—led by McNally Mike Cuellar, and Jim Palmer—had the only ERA under 3.00 and gave up the fewest home runs (117) and walks (498).

The Orioles faced the American League West champion Twins in the ALCS and, like the Mets, swept the series. The first two games, played in Baltimore, were tight affairs: 4-3 in 12 innings and 1-0 in 11. In the Metropolitan Stadium finale, the brawny Orioles busted loose, with Jim Palmer scattering 10 hits in an 11-2 romp.

So it was no surprise that the Orioles were the favorites in the 66th World Series. Maybe it was a sense of bravado, but some of the Mets and the New York media predicted a sweep for the home team, including Cleon Jones and Casey Stengel, the original Mets skipper, who was penning a guest column. Phil Pepe of the New York Daily News wrote, “The Mets are behind. They’re behind in hitting, fielding, pitching, running, and betting. But they haven’t lost yet. Not yet they haven’t.”

Earl Weaver, Baltimore’s Napoleonic manager, told reporters the Mets had “two pitchers, some slap hitters, and a little speed. They say the Mets have desire. The Orioles have just as much desire and a lot more talent.”

After watching Rod Gaspar, a bench player reveling in the NLCS victory glow, predict a sweep, Frank Robinson challenged, “Bring on Ron Gaspar.” A teammate corrected him, “Not Ron, Rod, stupid.”

“Okay, bring on Ron Stupid,” Robinson responded.

He would come to regret that remark.

Game One, October 11

Not the Way to Start Things Off

The two eventual Cy Young winners faced off in the first game at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore on a brilliant fall Saturday afternoon in front of 50,429 fans, shy of a full house. The World Series was indeed a showcase, not just for players, but celebrity fans as well. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn threw out the first two pitches, one to each starting catcher. Several members of the First Family, including Pat Nixon, daughters Julie and Tricia, and Tricia’s husband, David Eisenhower, were in attendance.

Tom Seaver had become the first pitcher in National League history to defeat 11 different clubs in a season—a mark made possible by expansion and Chicago’s Ferguson Jenkins also beat all 11 clubs in 1969—but Seaver was not his usual polished self in his first game against an American League foe. After the Mets went down in the top of the first, Don Buford, Baltimore’s leadoff hitter, took a Seaver pitch over the right-field fence for a home run. That lone tally held up until the fourth inning when Seaver— as he had done in the NLCS opener Atlanta—had an uncharacteristic inning. He retired Boog Powell and Brooks Robinson, but he had trouble finding that third out. Catcher Elrod Hendricks singled to right, followed by a walk to Davey Johnson. Mark Belanger, one of the Orioles unsung heroes, singled to right, driving in Hendricks and moving Johnson to third.

Pitcher Mike Cuellar, who batted .117 with a double and two triples during the season, blooped a single to left-center to score Johnson. With runners now on first and second, Buford came through again, lining a double down the right field line to score Belanger to the Orioles up, 4-0.

In the meantime, Brooks Robinson, one of four Birds who would win a Gold Glove that season, was making his reputation on the national scene with several sparkling plays at third base behind a cruising Cuellar. Seaver set the Orioles down without a hit in the fifth, but he was due to lead off in the sixth. Hodges batted rookie Duffy Dyer for him and the veteran Don Cardwell came in to pitch the bottom of the inning. Cardwell and Ron Taylor kept the Orioles off the scoreboard the rest of the game, but it proved too late.

The Mets had an opportunity to do some damage in the seventh. Donn Clendenon, who came over from the Expos in a June trade, and hit 12 home runs, and drove in 37 as a Met, singled to center and Ron Swoboda walked. After Ed Charles flied out to right, Grote lined a single to left to load the bases. (Clendenon, Swoboda, and Charles had not appeared in a single game of the NLCS because Atlanta had thrown all right-handed pitchers and Hodges adhered to his platoon system.) Al Weis’s sacrifice fly to left scored Clendenon but Gaspar, batting for Cardwell, hit a slow roller to third that Robinson turned into one of his patented bare-handed-pickup, throw-on-the-run plays to end the threat.

The Mets had one more chance in the ninth, but with two out and two on, Shamsky grounded out to Johnson to end the game “I had a chance to be a hero, but it didn’t work out that way,” he told Stanley Cohen in A Magic Summer. Shamsky had also made the final out in the September 20 no-hitter by Bob Moose of the Pittsburgh Pirates, one of the few blotches on an otherwise fantastic season.

After the game, Earl Weaver shared his impressions with the media. “They’re about what we expected,” he said. “Of course, they have to have more than they showed us today. They must have something because they did win 100 games in that big beautiful National League, didn’t they?” Weaver admitted his comments could be construed as sarcastic.

The media played up disparaging remarks made by Weaver, Frank Robinson, and others. Brooks Robinson recalled beating a Los Angeles Dodgers team led by Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, “and [Seaver and Koosman] can’t be as good as them.” He also suggested that “New York ballplayers are built up more than they are.”

A scout for the team scoffed, “Team of destiny? I think they’re destined to be beaten by the Orioles.” But Paul Blair, Baltimore’s fleet center fielder (and a former Mets farmhand) had some nice things to say, even as he expressed confidence in his mates. He told reporters he respected Seaver, Koosman, and Gentry, as well as Jones and Agee, “Bad ballclubs don’t win 100 games, sweep three from Atlanta, and get to the Series. But we have a better ballclub.”

Yes, on paper the Orioles were stronger at just about every position and so were made the “logical favorites” over the Mets. As Leonard Koppett of the New York Times opined, “‘Logic’ is another name for past performance. But in the four-of-seven game competition that will be watched so intently by millions of television viewers in this country and abroad, history won’t count.”

Game Two, October 12

Kooz’s Gem

Jerry Koosman had a reputation of coming up big in clutch situations. He was the first Met to win a home opener, a 3-0 blanking of the San Francisco Giants in the second start of his rookie year in 1968. The second game of the World Series meant a lot more and Kooz kept the powerful Orioles hitters in check over the first six innings, nursing a one-run lead, courtesy of Donn Clendenon’s fourth-inning solo home run. He also hadn’t allowed a hit.

In the bottom of the seventh, Paul Blair broke up the no-hit bid with a single to left to start the inning. After outs by Frank Robinson and Boog Powell, Blair stole second and crossed the plate moments later on a single by Brooks Robinson to tie the game.

With two outs in the top of the ninth, Ed Charles, the proclaimed “soul” of the team, singled to left and moved to third on Grote’s second hit of the afternoon. With Koosman waiting on deck, McNally pitched to Al Weis. The second baseman’s single to left drove in Charles for the slim lead. Rather than put up a pinch hitter, Gil Hodges let Koosman bat for himself, and he made the third out.

The lefty recorded two quick outs in the bottom of the inning before walking Frank Robinson and Powell. Hodges signaled to the bullpen and brought in Ron Taylor, who induced Brooks Robinson to ground out to third for the final out and the first World Series victory in Mets history.

After the game, Mets owner Joan Payson told the press she had covered her eyes when Brooksie hit the final ball. As the media is wont to do, they looked for some angle to spice things up a bit. They found it in a “war of words” between Hodges, the Mets no-nonsense manager, and the equally intense Frank Robinson.

After the game, Robby said he had been surprised by the Mets’ low profile on the bench. “I thought it was very strange that they didn’t show any enthusiasm when they loaded the bases in the seventh inning [the game before],” he said. Appraised of the ballplayer’s remarks, Hodges countered, “I’m glad that Frank is watching our bench, but I’m not concerned with what he says.”

So the reporters ran back to Robinson for his comments. “Tell Hodges he should manage his club and I’ll play right field.” But he had one more parting shot at winning pitcher Jerry Koosman. “He didn’t exactly dazzle us with his stuff. We hit the ball well 10 or 12 times, but they went right to somebody If three balls fell in, we could have scored three or four runs.”

Game Three, October 14

Two for the Price of One

After a day off, the scene shifted to New York for the third game. The atmosphere, to say the least, was different as the World Series returned to the Big Apple for the first time since 1964, and the first time a National League team had hosted a Series in New York since the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956.

Gary Gentry, who hadn’t made it out of the third inning against the Braves in the NLCS, was on the mound for the Mets. Jim Palmer, who threw the AL’s only no-hitter that season, an 8-0 gem against the Oakland A’s on August 13, took the hill in Game Three of the Series for Baltimore. This time the rookie shut down the opposition, allowing just three hits (but five walks) in 6⅔ innings. Just as happened in the NLCS, he was relieved by Nolan Ryan, who got out of a jam that threatened to change the complexion of the game. Ryan struck out three, walked two, and gave up just one hit for the rest of the game to pick up the save. Unlike his brief NLCS outing, Gentry did more than his share with both his arm and his bat.

In the second inning, with runners on first and second and two outs, Gentry, who had batted .081 during the regular season, doubled over a drawn-in Blair in center field to drive in both runners and give the Mets a 3-0 lead. Palmer said after the game that Baltimore’s scouting reports had “underestimated” Gentry’s hitting and pitching abilities.

The real story, however, was not the sparkling contributions of Gentry or Ryan. In fact, most fans might have a hard time remembering who pitched that day. They would not forget Tommie Agee’s contributions. Agee and Al Weis had come to the Mets in a trade with the White Sox in December 1967 for former batting champion Tommy Davis, pitcher “Fat Jack” Fisher, and two other players. Agee was just two years removed from winning the AL Rookie of the Year Award and finishing in the top 10 for MVP, but he hit an anemic .217 with just 17 RBIs in his inaugural season with the Mets. The 1969 season was far better to him… and the Mets.

Just as Don Buford had done against Tom Seaver in the first game in Baltimore, Agee greeted Palmer with a leadoff home run in the home first. Agee’s blast to center field was his only offensive contribution, but he did more with soft leather than hard wood.

Sandy Amoros, Al Gionfriddo, Kirby Puckett, Willie Mays. All of these made eye-popping catchers in their World Series. Agee did it twice … and in the same game. The first came in the fourth inning. With one out, Frank Robinson and Boog Powell singled. Brooks Robinson struck out to bring up Elrod Hendricks. Agee shaded the left-handed hitter to pull, but Hendricks lined a shot to the gap in left-center. Agee took off and snow-coned the gapper for the third out at the 396-foot mark. He put his hand up against the wall with the ball to stop himself. The man who hit the ball missed one of the great catches in World Series history. “I didn’t see him catch it,” Hendricks told reporters. “I look up and I see the white of the ball in his glove and I figured he still might drop it. Then he holds his glove up and I just said, ‘Damn.’”

After Jerry Grote doubled to drive in the fourth run for the Mets in the home sixth, Agee came to the rescue once more in the top of the seventh. The Orioles mounted a two-out threat as Gentry walked Belanger, Dave May (pinch-hitting for Palmer), and Buford to load the bases. Hodges brought in Ryan, who was known to walk a batter or two himself.

Blair smacked a Ryan fastball to right-center. Agee sprinted, dove, and came up with the sinking liner on his belly on the warning track. Blair said later that the catch saved four runs, confident that he would have had an inside-the-park homer to tie the game had the ball gotten past Agee. Hodges, who had played in seven Word Series as a member of the Dodgers, assessed Agee’s work that afternoon. “I’d have to say the second [catch] was number one of any World Series I’ve seen.” Agee downplayed his performance, calling the first one the tougher of the two. “It was away from my glove and it almost went through my webbing.”

The Mets got their final run in the eighth inning when Ed Kranepool homered off Dave Leonhard. By then the Orioles were a little stunned, having been hit head-on by a Miracle.

Game Four, October 15

Victory Most ‘Fair

Tom Seaver had shaken off the leg injury that hampered him against Atlanta and in the World Series opener. He revealed he had strained a left calf muscle while shagging fly balls during batting practice in Atlanta and that kept him from following his normal workout routine, leaving him more fatigued. But this time Tom Terrific was on top of his game.

In the bottom of the second, with Mike Cuellar once again his opponent, Donn Clendenon hit his second solo shot of the World Series. The Orioles had a good chance to score in the third inning, when Mark Belanger and Cuellar opened the frame with singles. Belanger moved to third on Don Buford’s forceout to second. Paul Blair bunted back to Seaver, who threw him out for the second out while holding Belanger at third. Frank Robinson fouled out to Clendenon to end the inning.

The score remained 1-0 until the top of the ninth. After Blair filed out to right, Frank Robinson singled to left and scampered to third on Boog Powell’s single to right. Brooks Robinson hit a rocket to right that turned into another Amazin’ play by a Mets outfielder. This time it was Ron Swoboda to the rescue. “Rocky” was not known for his smooth defense, but he made a running, flat-out dive to his right on the sinking drive. Frank Robinson tagged up and scored on the play to tie the game, but if Swoboda had missed the ball, it would have given the Orioles the lead and potentially changed the Series. Instead, momentum stayed with the Mets.

New York had an opportunity to finish things off in regulation. With Eddie Watt on the mound for the Orioles, Jones singled with one out. After Clendenon struck out, Swoboda singled to move Jones to third. Gil Hodges called on Art Shamsky, one of the heroes of the NLCS, to pinch-hit for Charles, but Watt got him on a grounder to second to move the contest into extra innings.

In the top of the 10th with Seaver still on the hill, Johnson reached first on Wayne Garrett’s bobble. Belanger fouled out to Grote to bring up Clay Dalrymple to bat for Watt. His single moved Johnson to second and a fly ball out by Buford put him on third base. Seaver ended his afternoon’s work by striking out Blair.

In the bottom of the frame, Grote greeted new pitcher Dick Hall with a fly to left that Buford misjudged and turned into a double. After Rod— not Ron—Gaspar came on to run for Grote, the Orioles walked Al Weis—normally a weak batter but he had two hits in the game and had won Game 2 with a late-inning single—to set up the possible double play. With lefty-swinging J.C. Martin out to bat for Seaver, the Orioles went with southpaw Pete Richert. The moves were made by coach Billy Hunter, managing in place of Weaver, who had been ejected by home plate umpire Shag Crawford for arguing balls and strikes. Weaver became the first manager to be so ignominiously treated since Cubs manager Charlie Grimm was booted in the 1935 Series.

What would be Martin’s only appearance in a World Series was the latest installment in the Mets’ Miracle Motif. Martin laid down a bunt on the first-base side of the mound. Richert and Hendricks converged and the pitcher came up with the ball. Richert turned and fired to first, but the throw hit Martin in the left wrist and caromed away. Gaspar, meanwhile, came all the way around to score, perhaps answering Frank Robinson’s earlier jibes.

Photographs later revealed that Martin had been just inside the runner’s lane and could have been called out for interference. Richert had witnessed it first hand and continued arguing as the Mets celebrated. The call stood and more than 57,000 at Shea Stadium roared. What else could possibly happen at Shea to top this?

Game Five, October 16

Man Steps on the Moon… Leaving a Shoe Polish Mark

The fifth game featured Jerry Koosman and Dave McNally in a rematch of Game 2. There was a lack of offensive action until the third inning, and it came from an unlikely source. After Mark Belanger, the number eight batter, led off with a single, Koosman committed a cardinal sin: he served up a home run to the opposing pitcher. McNally had batted just .085 in 1969, but one of his eight hits was a home run—and he’d hit three in 1968. Two outs later after McNally’s blast, Frank Robinson launched a home run of his own, his only extra base hit of the Series, to make the score 3-0. In one inning the Orioles had scored more runs than they had in three games. Could this be the turnaround of the Series?

The answer came in the bottom of the sixth inning. Cleon Jones led off by dancing away from a pitch in the dirt. It rolled over to the Mets dugout and moments later manager Gil Hodges picked it up and calmly walked out to home plate umpire Lou DiMuro. (See Jerry Koosman biography for his account of what happened during the few seconds after the ball caromed into the dugout.)

Hodges pointed out a dark smudge on the ball from Jones’s shoe polish, apparent proof that he had been hit by the pitch. DiMuro waved Jones to first base. Donn Clendenon followed the lucky break with this third home run—a shot over the left-field wall—to bring the Mets to within one.

In the top of that very inning, Frank Robinson thought he had been nicked in the thigh by a Koosman pitch and trotted down to first before he was called back by DiMuro. He argued long and hard, but the umpire denied the claim. To no one’s surprise, Earl Weaver popped out for a chat, but since he was still smarting from the previous day’s ejection, he kept the conversation accordingly civil. He was more animated after Jones was sent to first in the bottom of the inning, but it just wasn’t his day.

The Shoe Polish Incident reminded old-timers of another situation involving a Jones—in this case “Nippy” of the Milwaukee Braves. In Game Four of the 1957 World Series, with the Braves trailing the New York Yankees 5-4 in the bottom of the 10th inning, shoe polish again served as proof that a batter had been hit by a pitch after the home plate umpire had initially ruled differently. Jones was replaced by a pinch runner who scored on a double by Johnny Logan and Eddie Mathews hit a game-winning two-run homer. The Braves would go on to beat the Yankees in seven games.

The 1969 Mets were not done with unlikely plot twists. During the regular season, Al Weis had batted a measly .215 with only two home runs, both of which came in consecutive games at Wrigley Field against the Cubs. But on this day, Weis came through big time, to the wonderment of all, with a blast into the left-field seats to tie the game. He had never before homered at Shea Stadium. And he never would again.

His home run not only tied the game, but it also kept Koosman in the game. Eddie Watt, meanwhile, replaced McNally, who had been lifted in the top of the eighth for a pinch hitter. Jones welcomed him with a double off the fence in left-center field. Hodges had been faithful with his platoons to the point that Ed Charles, Ron Swoboda, and Clendenon did not play at all in the NLCS. Now, in a tied World Series, with a chance to take the lead and perhaps end it, he stayed with the right-handed bats against the right-handed pitcher. Though Clendenon grounded out to third, Swoboda followed with a double down the left-field line to give the Mets the lead. After Charles filed out, Grote hit a grounder to first. Powell had difficulty corralling the ball and Watt dropped the throw as he covered first base—each received an error on the play—as Swoboda never stopped running and crossed home plate to make it a 5-3 game.

Koosman faced the heart of the Baltimore lineup for the top of the ninth. Frank Robinson led off with a walk, but Powell forced him at second and left for a pinch runner. Brooks Robinson filed out to Swoboda in right which left it up to future Mets manager Davey Johnson. He gave Mets fans a thrill of a lifetime as his fly ball descended gently into the waiting glove of Cleon Jones. He almost bent to a knee to catch it and when he got up, the Mets were world champions.

The celebration at Shea and through the city was instantaneous and unbridled. The Mets, listed as 100-1 odds to win the World Series back in the spring, did just that in the fall. Clendenon, who batted .357 with three home runs, a double, and four runs batted in, was named the Series MVP. The Babe Ruth Award, voted after the Series by sportswriters, went to the Mets’ Bambino of the World Series: Al Weis.

The postseason winners share for the Mets were just over $18,300 for each player. In contrast to today’s marathons, none of the five games lasted longer than a snappy two hours and thirty-three minutes—including the 10-inning classic Game 4.

The Amazin’ Mets had cast off the mantle of lovable losers. “This is the summit,” said Ed Charles, who retired after the World Series. “We’re number one in the world and just can’t get any bigger than this.”

“Some people still might not believe in us,” said Jones. “But then, some people still believe the world is flat.”

RON KAPLAN is the sports and features editor for the New Jersey Jewish News. He also hosts a blog on baseball literature and other media at RKsBaseballBookShelf.wordpress.com and another on Jews and sports at njjewishnews.com/kaplanskorner.

The platoon system that became legend for the 1969 Mets was not in place when the team broke camp. The team’s offense was porous enough—and personnel and needs shifted often enough—that manager Gil Hodges essentially used a different lineup combination every other day.

Rule 5 pick Wayne Garrett was the 25th man on the roster and the fourth option at third base to incumbent Ed Charles. “The Glider,” coming off a year in which he led the club with 15 home runs, played every inning of the first seven games of the year at third base and batted .154 before Amos Otis started a couple of games there. Otis’s uninspired play at the position inspired Hodges to put him in the outfield where he belonged, though he did not play there regularly. Kevin Collins got the next try at third base, but his batting average was down to .150 in early May when he was sent down (and eventually sent north to Montreal in the Donn Clendenon deal). Garrett made the team mainly because if he were demoted, the Mets would have had to offer him back to the Atlanta, the team they drafted him from (as per the rules of the Rule 5). He did not start at third base until May 4—he had started twice at second and once at shortstop. Red became the 40th Met to man the hot corner in the club’s brief existence, a fraternity that would add almost 100 new members over the ensuing 40 years.

Ed Kranepool, on the other hand, was coming off a so-so season, yet he earned increased playing time at first base by hitting well over .300 for the first month. Cleon Jones began the season playing first base against lefties, with Ron Swoboda taking Jones’s spot in left field. Rod Gaspar, who made the ’69 club after just two years in the minor leagues, saw a lot of playing time in the early going. Art Shamsky’s bad back helped Gaspar make the team out of spring training, and 23-year-old switch hitter wound up starting each of the team’s first 10 games. Shamsky reclaimed his playing time upon his return in mid-May and platooned in right field with Swoboda. Gaspar remained with the team all season, however, and often entered games in eighth or ninth innings for defense or to pinch run. The acquisition of the much needed power bat of right-handed slugger Donn Clendenon on June 15 made him the first baseman…but only against lefties.

It was a system of trial and error. Though the mound had been lowered in response to the major league wide pitching dominance that crested in 1968, offense was still hard to come by for the Mets. They raised their batting average 14 points from ’68, but it was still only .242 (league average was .250) and good for eighth place in a league that added two new teams in ’69. Hodges squeezed every drop he could out of the team’s offense and relied on the pitching. Mets pitchers held the league to a league-best .227 average and no other team in the league could match their miniscule 1.18 baserunners allowed per inning. The team’s 2.99 ERA was second only to the Cardinals’ 2.94.

Part of Hodges’s lineup tinkering was the result of injuries and part was predicated by Bud Harrelson missing three weeks because of military commitments (during the Vietnam era the major leagues did not want to appear to be shielding players from service and many spent time at stateside bases during both the season and off-season). As a result, Ken Boswell, Bobby Pfeil, Al Weis, and Garrett moved around the infield and lineup as the need arose.

Hodges used 98 different batting orders during the 1969 regular season. Though the lineups were more stable in the postseason, the platoons were still strictly adhered to, and to good effect. The player used most often in the same spot in the batting order during the season was Tommie Agee in the leadoff spot. Hodges wrote his name there 93 times, yet seven other players took shots in the opening spot; including Harrelson 32 times. Though not part of a regular platoon, Pfeil still batted second more often than any other Met (32 times). Jones was the most oft-used hitter in both the third hole (54) and cleanup slot (73) in the batting order. Kranepool was the most frequently used batter in the fifth spot (40). Swoboda hit sixth 59 times, a half-dozen more times than Kranepool. The seventh spot saw more men used (14) than any other spot in the lineup; with Jerry Grote’s name written there 81 times. Weis usually found himself in the eighth spot against lefties (69 times); while Harrelson often batted there against right-handers (61).

The pitcher’s spot was one place where those scoring at home could find blessed regularity. Only eight pitchers started for the Mets all season. Tom Seaver and Gary Gentry made 35 turns of the rotation apiece, Jerry Koosman had 32 starts, while Don Cardwell and Jim McAndrew had 21 apiece in Rube Walker’s novel five-man rotation. Nolan Ryan, who also had to pitch around military commitments that summer, made 10 starts. Tug McGraw and Jack DiLauro started four times each.

Critics of the Cubs—including some of the teams players—blamed Leo Durocher’s penchant for running out the same lineup every day for wearing down the club and costing Chicago a lead that had stood at 10 games in mid-August. The Mets did not have the star power the Cubs could provide in an everyday lineup; but the Mets were certainly rested. While Randy Hundley caught the first 68 games of the year for the Cubs—including both games of a doubleheader seven times in that span (he would do double duty a dozen times in ’69)— only outfielder Cleon Jones played anywhere close to 60 consecutive games to start the season for the Mets. The most frequently-used Hodges lineup in 1969 (not taking the pitcher into account) was used just five times and included J.C. Martin behind the plate as opposed to regular catcher Jerry Grote:

1. Agee

2. Garrett

3. Boswell

4. Jones

5. Shamsky

6. Kranepool

7. Martin

8. Harrelson

9. Pitcher

Pennant.

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.

As great a season as the Mets crafted in 1969, New York’s offense sometimes struggled to score runs—or even collect hits. That was never more evident than on September 20 that season, when the Mets faced a promising young right-hander for the rival Pittsburgh Pirates. When healthy Bob Moose possessed an overpowering repertoire: a moving fastball, an effective curve, and an occasional knuckleball mixed in to throw hitters off balance.

In 1969, Moose was in the midst of his finest season as a major leaguer. After a rough stretch in May and June, Moose had enjoyed a terrific run in July and August, pitching at first in the bullpen before earning a promotion to the starting rotation. He entered the Saturday matinee with a record of 11-3 and an ERA of 3.18, facing Mets rookie Gary Gentry. The Mets had been swept by the Pirates in a doubleheader the previous night after having lost only once over a 14-game span. Things did not get any better for the Mets at Shea Stadium on a cool Saturday afternoon against Pittsburgh’s 21-year-old right-hander.

Moose set down the first four Mets in order, all on groundouts. He experienced little trouble through the first five innings, allowing only a pair of walks, one to Ed Kranepool and the other to Ron Swoboda. Then came a watershed moment in the sixth inning. After striking out pinch hitter Jim Gosger (who was batting for Gentry) and retiring Tommie Agee on a groundout, Moose faced rookie third baseman Wayne Garrett. The left-handed hitting Garrett lofted a deep fly ball toward right field. The drive had all the earmarks of a an extra-base hit (a double at the least, and possibly a home run), but right fielder Roberto Clemente tracked the ball down before running into the Shea Stadium wall. It was vintage Clemente, allowing Moose to finish off the sixth inning with his no-hitter intact.

Energized by Clemente’s effort and uplifted by a 3-0 lead (the Pirates scored three times in the third inning on one hit, one hit batter, two walks, and two wild pitches), Moose continued sailing. He picked up two more groundouts in the seventh, though he did breathe a sigh of relief when Ken Boswell hit a line drive right at Pirates second baseman Dave Cash. Then came the eighth, when Moose forged his strongest inning. He struck out the side, fanning Swoboda, J.C. Martin, and Bud Harrelson in succession. That gave Moose six strikeouts, his final total for the afternoon.

Thanks to an insurance run in the top of the ninth inning, Moose returned to the mound with a 4-0 lead (the same score Tom Seaver took to the ninth in his “Imperfect Game” at Shea in July). He prepared to face a pinch hitter in the pitcher’s spot, followed by the top of the order, still a considerable task at hand needed to finish his masterpiece. Utilityman Rod Gaspar, called on to bat for reliever Tug McGraw, did not cooperate with Moose, drawing a leadoff walk. Having allowed his third base on balls of the afternoon, Moose then stiffened. He over-powered Agee, who popped up meekly to first base. Moose now faced Garrett, who had threatened the no-hitter with his sixth-inning drive that Clemente snagged. Pitching Garrett away, Moose induced a ground ball to third, with Richie Hebner taking the sure out at first base. That brought up Art Shamsky, one of the Mets’ toughest outs against right-handed pitching. On his way to a career-best .300 season at the plate, Shamsky managed only a ground ball to second base. Cash flipped the ball to first baseman Al Oliver to finish the game—and the no-hitter.

For the 38,784 fans who had come out on Ladies Day for the chilly Saturday matinee, they had seen history. It would also mark the last no-hitter at Shea Stadium during the final 39 seasons at the pitcher-friendly ballpark. The only other no-hitter pitched there was Jim Sunning’s perfect game during Shea’s inaugural season, the first game of a Father’s Day doubleheader with the Phillies on June 21, 1964. No Met ever pitched one at Shea Stadium or has thrown one any place else, for that matter. They are the longest tenured franchise to not have a no-hitter.

Moose’s gem, however, barely paused the Mets on their road to destiny. The Mets swept the Pirates in a doubleheader the next day—returning the favor the Pirates had done in Friday night’s twin bill—and starting a nine-game winning streak that included the NL East clincher in New York against St. Louis. The Mets did not lose again at Shea in 1969 after Moose’s no-hitter, winning the last five regular-season games there, the NLCS clincher against Atlanta, and all three games against the Orioles in the World Series to cap the Miracle.

The 1969 no-hitter also represented the pinnacle of Moose’s career. He would win his final two starts that season, sandwiched around a scoreless three-inning relief stint, to finish with a record of 14-3 and an ERA of 2.91. His .824 winning percentage led the league—43 points ahead of runner-up Seaver.

Seemingly born to be a Pirate, Robert Ralph Moose Jr. grew up just 15 miles from Forbes Field, throwing six no-hitters in high school and American Legion ball. He was drafted by his hometown club in the 18th round of the first major league draft in 1965 and made his pro debut in 1965 at age 17 with a 1.95 ERA that summer in Salem, Virginia. He moved right up the ladder and debuted while still a teen in 1967. While Moose possessed a live repertoire when healthy, he made more of an impression on his teammates with his workmanlike approach. The gritty pitching style of Moose, who never shied from taking the ball—either as a starter or a reliever—drew the admiration of other Pirates pitchers. “Bob came from the old school and was a hard worker,” says former Pirates closer Dave Giusti, who played with Moose in Pittsburgh from 1970 until 1976. “When he had a sore arm, you’d never know it, because he still wanted to go out there and pitch.”

Moose’s willingness to pitch through pain might have cost him. Plagued by arm troubles in his later years with the Pirates, Moose’s effectiveness fell into quick decline. He matched his 1969 ERA (2.91) while going 13-10 in 1972, but the everlasting image of him that year was his wild pitch in Cincinnati that ended the NLCS. After struggling through a 1-5 season in 1974 Moose evened his record at 2-2 the next year. After going 3-9 and lowering his ERA for the third straigh year in 1976, Moose’s life would end suddenly. He died in a car accident on October 9, just a few days after the conclusion of the 1976 regular season. Moose perished on the day of his 29th birthday.

Giusti remembers hearing the news of Moose’s passing. “In fact, we were down at Bill Mazeroski’s golf tournament,” says Giusti. “It was myself and [Pirates pitcher Jim] Rooker, and a few other guys on the ballclub who were down there. Yeah, I remember that. In fact, I got a call from Rooker. He had found out that Bob Moose was in an accident, so we went down and identified the body. It was an awful time.”

Though still a young man, Moose had left a defined impression with the Pirates teammates. “He was a nice guy to be around,” Giusti says. “He was kind of a maverick, too. He would be one of those guys that would start some stuff in the clubhouse, also. He had the Afro-type hairdo, and he would curl it, just to get on Dock Ellis’s case. He’d try to find ways to get under people’s skins, also.”

For one day in 1969, Bob Moose found a way to imbed himself deeply in the skins of the eventual world champion Mets.

BRUCE MARKUSEN is the author of seven books on baseball, including the award-winning A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s, the recipient of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research. He has also written The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, Tales From The Mets Dugout, and The Orlando Cepeda Story. He currently works as a museum teacher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Farmers’ Museum, and the Fenimore Art Museum, all located in Cooperstown, New York. In addition to writing for The Hardball Times website, he also contributes articles to Bronx Banter. Bruce, his wife Sue, and their daughter Madeline reside in Cooperstown.

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.

E

April 27, 1969: Mets 3, Cubs 0

The first time that the Mets and Cubs convened in 1969 came at the end of April and didn’t exactly serve as a foreshadowing for what was to come that season. The Mets opened the weekend four-game series with a pedestrian 6-8 mark, while the Cubs held first place with a surprising 11-5 start.

The Cubs won the first two games of the series as Ferguson Jenkins edged Tom Seaver, 3-1, and Bill Hands followed by going the distance in a 9-3 pasting of Don Cardwell. Chicago made it three straight wins by taking the opener of a Sunday doubleheader, 8-6, thanks to a four-run ninth. The way that things broke, it looked like this was going to be a special year in Chicago. There was no reason to believe that anything special was going to happen for the floundering Mets. Until the nightcap.

Tug McGraw, in relief of Jim McAndrew, danced around jams to keep the score tied into the last of the ninth when the Mets worked a little magic. Hall of Famer Billy Williams muffed Rod Gaspar’s line drive to open the inning, giving the Mets a leadoff base-runner in scoring position. After an intentional walk to Ken Boswell, Rich Nye got Ed Charles to pop up for the first out.

This brought up Cleon Jones, whose whiff concluded the first game of the day, but whose torrid start made him a feared hitter at this juncture of the season. He finished off this contest as well, only in a much more positive manner, with a three-run walk-off home run that raised his batting average to .443.

The win gave the Mets a little bit of satisfaction, though the Cubs still left Flushing smiling, with a 14-6 mark. It didn’t strike anyone at the time that Chicago had just beaten the rival who would become most important to them within a few short months.

May 28, 1969: Mets 1, Padres 0 (11)

On April 29, Jerry Koosman suffered a shoulder injury while pitching against the Montreal Expos, noting to reporters afterward that something snapped like a piece of elastic.1

The resulting tenderness sidelined Koosman for nearly a full month, but the good news was that he returned as good, if not better, than ever. In his first start back, on May 24, against the Houston Astros, he allowed two runs and three hits over seven innings, in what turned into an eventual 5-1 defeat.

In that era, there was no hesitation, once a pitcher was healed, to throw him fully into the fire. Koosman’s next start came on three days’ rest, on May 28, against the Padres. The Mets had lost five straight and while there were promising signs of progress, there were also indications that this was going to be a troublesome season.

If there was any concern over whether Koosman could handle the physical and mental pressure, it was erased with this game, perhaps his finest as a Met to that point. Gil Hodges permitted him to work 10 innings, as he yielded only four hits and struck out a club-record and career-high 15.

The Mets squandered their share of opportunities by hitting into three double plays. It took until the 11th inning (and Koosman’s subsequent departure for Tug McGraw) for the Mets to plate their first and only run.

Cleon Jones led off, reaching when he beat out a grounder up the middle, judged to be an error on Padres shortstop Tommy Dean. After Ed Kranepool whiffed, Ron Swoboda advanced Jones to third with a single, putting the Mets within 90 feet of triumph. The Padres walked Jerry Grote to load the bases in the hopes that Bud Harrelson would hit into a double play. No such luck. Harrelson singled down the left-field line, scoring Jones with the winning run. It was the first of nine 1-0 wins for the Mets in 1969—and the first of three that came in walk-off fashion.

The win might have been the story of the day, but the real key to come out of this was Koosman’s effort on short rest. Now fully healed, Koosman got on a roll that helped propel the Mets to great things the rest of the season. In his first 60 innings back from the DL, Koosman allowed only four earned runs as the Mets went on an 18-7 spurt that turned their season around.

June 1, 1969: Mets 5, Giants 4

Some batters are masters of the walk-off home run. Ron Swoboda was the master of the walk-off walk. Of the first 15 walk-off walks in Mets history, Swoboda was the only player to have more than one. He had four.

The third of them came on June 1, completing a three-game sweep of the Giants, part of an 11-game win streak in which the Mets went from five games under .500 to six-over at 29-23.

The Giants held early leads of 2-0 and 3-2, but on both occasions, the Mets rallied quickly, and the Giants had to rally from a 4-3 deficit to even the score in the sixth against Don Cardwell, who pitched 6⅓ game innings in relief of Jim McAndrew, who left with a finger blister.

Ron Taylor dodged trouble in the top of the ninth, surviving a Willie McCovey double to escape with the score still even. In the bottom of the frame, the Mets were able to win without hitting the ball out of the infield. Giants reliever Joe Gibbon walked Bud Harrelson, Cleon Jones (intentionally), and Amos Otis, sandwiched around two outs. That brought up Swoboda, who was 2 for 4 with an RBI already and Gibbon couldn’t find the plate against him either. Swoboda’s walk brought home the winning run.

Alas, being the master of the walk-off walk doesn’t quite bring the glory of the other kinds of walk-off scenarios. When we interviewed Swoboda in 2005, he admitted having nary a recollection of any of his “walk”-offs.

“That’s odd, isn’t it?” said Swoboda, who couldn’t come up with a reason for his success in that department. “I was a bit of a free swinger. Sometimes you walk because you’re swinging the bat well, and sometimes you’ll walk because you’ll miss a pitch that you should have hit. Those [walk-offs] aren’t the ones you remember.”2

June 4, 1969: Mets 1, Dodgers 0 (15)

The Mets and Dodgers played an extra-inning classic, featuring a great pitchers’ duel between Bill Singer and Mets rookie Jack DiLauro. The two teams matched zeroes as Singer flirted with a perfect game for six innings and DiLauro escaped a couple of early jams. The contest went into extra-innings and both teams went to their bullpens.

In the top of the 15th, the Dodgers threatened, putting runners at the corners with one out. Willie Davis was the hitter and he hit a grounder off pitcher Ron Taylor that caromed towards second base. Al Weis charged the ball, made a barehand play and threw home just in time for catcher Jerry Grote to get incoming baserunner Billy Grabarkewitz at home plate. On the Mets highlight album that season, Miracle Mets, that moment is re-created by Bob Murphy, who states “Oh, what a play by Al Weis! I’ve never seen a better one by an infielder.” (As an aside, the real play took about three seconds to unfold. The recreated version takes about 30 seconds, allowing Murph to provide every detail.)

The Mets stole the game in the bottom of the 15th, when with one out, Tommie Agee scored all the way from first when Davis misplayed Wayne Garrett’s single to center. That gave the Mets a sweep of the Dodgers and matched a team record with their seventh straight win.

July 8, 1969: Mets 4, Cubs 3

The Mets win over the Cubs on July 8 may be a little underappreciated in comparison to Tom Seaver’s near-perfect game of the following day, but the impact it had was extremely significant.

Trailing 3-1 in the ninth inning against future Hall of Tamer Ferguson Jenkins, the Mets rallied, with the aid of a couple misplays by Cubs center fielder Don Young, who incurred significant wrath from Cubs manager Leo Durocher (plus third baseman Ron Santo).

Cleon Jones followed the miscues by getting the game-tying double, then scored the winning run on a single by Ed Kranepool. This was the biggest win in franchise history, at least for a few hours, as it moved the Mets to within 4½ games of the first-place Cubs. It was the first Mets win to be reported on the front page of the New York Times since 1962.

“We’ve got the momentum now,” Jones told the media afterwards. “We beat their big man. Now we’ve got our big man. Were in command. Now we can relax.”3

Durocher was anything but relaxed. “That kid in center field. Two little fly balls. He just stands there watching one, and he gives up on the other… .If a man cant catch a fly ball, you don’t deserve to win. Look at [Jenkins]. He threw his heart out. You won’t see a better-pitched game. And that kid in center field gives it away on him. It’s a disgrace.“4

Is it any surprise that Seaver followed that game up the way that he did, given the moods of the two teams? And is it a surprise that a rookie named Jim Qualls was in Center field that night?

August 3, 1969: Mets 6, Braves 5 (11)

The 1969 Mets had not yet reached their turning point on August 3, 1969, when they faced the Braves in the finale of a three-game series. It was evident that the team was closing in on something special though, having taken two straight one-run affairs from the NL West leaders to stand at 57-44 and in second place in the NL East. The Mets had succeeded in making their opponents nervous, because they were a squad capable of doing anything. This contest was another example.

The Mets were shorthanded, with a couple of pitchers out on military duty, so when the Braves tallied four sixth-inning runs against Gary Gentry, extending their lead to 5-0, the outcome for the day looked rather bleak. The Mets hadn’t managed a hit in the previous three innings against veteran hurler Milt Pappas, and with the Braves needing the game to maintain sole possession of the top spot in their division, it seemed like this one was all but in the books.

Or maybe not. Tommie Agee doubled to lead off the sixth inning and scored on a one-out single by Wayne Garrett. Atlanta felt it had gotten enough from Pappas, who was pitching on three days’ rest, and replaced him at that juncture with Cecil Upshaw. That move didn’t work.

The Mets loaded the bases on singles by pinch hitter Art Shamsky and Rod Gaspar, then caught a break when Jerry Grote reached after Braves second baseman Felix Millan dropped a throw while trying to get a force play. That brought home a run, making it 5-2. Cleon Jones, who was out with an injury (and was only a few days removed from being pulled in mid-game against the Astros for lack of hustle), pinch-hit and drove in two more runs with a single. That made it a 5-4 game.

The Braves went to the pen again, choosing rookie Paul Doyle. Bud Harrelson greeted Doyle by plating the tying run with a sacrifice fly. Doyle got out of the inning without further damage, but the score was now even, 5-5.

Jack DiLauro and Ron Taylor did great work out of the Mets bullpen, combining to shut out the Braves over the next five innings.

This was a game that was looking for a hero and the choice of the moment happened to be the first batter in the 11th inning: Jerry Grote. The catcher had homered off Phil Niekro earlier in the series, his first homer in Flushing that season and only his third round-tripper of the year. Raymond ran the count to 2-0 and made the mistake of grooving his next pitch, right over the heart of the plate. Grote’s opposite-field drive cleared the right-field fence for a walk-off home run.

“If it had been anywhere else [but over the middle of the plate], I’d have taken it,” Grote told reporters afterward, acknowledging that he was just trying to get on base.5

You would have presumed that this was a pretty big win. However, it was not the one that tipped the season in the Mets favor. It would seem logical that this victory set off a big win streak, but it didn’t. The Mets lost their next two contests, and within a week, they were in third place, facing a nearly insurmountable deficit of 10 games after getting swept by the Astros. The chances of the Mets and Braves meeting in the postseason that autumn seemed rather bleak. It would take a miracle.

August 19, 1969: Mets 1, Giants 0 (14)

If you were going to rank the best pitchers’ duels in Mets history, this game might go at the top of the list. Rookie Gary Gentry went toe-to-toe with future Hall of Famer Juan Marichal for the first 10 innings, matching zeroes and avoiding damage of any significance. Marichal was 19-2 against the Mets to that point in his career and not surprisingly, he was sensational in this game. Gentry also threw one of his best games. It was a game that lived up to the cliche: “Neither team deserved to loose.”

The Mets had one threat in regulation, but their best chance to score came in the 12th when Marichal’s throw to nail Tug McGraw on a bunt attempt rolled away from ex-Met Ron Hunt after a collision between the former teammates at first base. Cleon Jones tried to score, but he was thrown out at the plate when Hunt recovered.

Jones redeemed himself in the top of the 13th when the Mets went to a four-man outfield against Willie McCovey. The subsequent smash to left-center was caught by a perfectly positioned Jones, who made a leaping catch at the fence to take away a home run.

The night’s only extra-base hit concluded this contest, a home run by Tommie Agee, good for his 500th career major league hit. There were some nights in which the Mets were willing to play forever to win and this was one of them. Whatever it took.

August 23, 1969: Mets 3, Dodgers 2

Sometimes the 1969 Mets got a little lucky. Their win over the Dodgers on this date was one of those times. Tied in the bottom of the ninth, the Mets pulled out the unusual victory when Jerry Grote’s two-out pop fly fell between three Dodgers players, plopping on the grass for a game-ending double.

The Mets had bungled a 2-0 lead in the eighth inning. The Dodgers tied the game on Willie Davis’s RBI triple, and a subsequent throwing error by Cleon Jones, who put himself in danger of being the game’s goat when then hit into a rally-killing double play in the home eighth.

The Mets picked up for their teammate in the bottom of the ninth, getting a win on a day when the opposing starter was Mets killer Jim Bunning, who didn’t have perfect-game kind of stuff but held the Mets to only two runs in his seven innings.

“That ball has to be caught if we’re to win the pennant,” Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills said of the game-ending blunder.6 And it has to drop for the Mets to win it.

September 10, 1969: Mets 3, Expos 2 (12)

The Mets entered September 10, 1969 on the precipice of great things, just a half game behind after beating the first-place Cubs twice at Shea Stadium. Chicago then traveled to Philadelphia while the Mets caught a scheduling break: a doubleheader against the expansion Expos. The Expos had spoiled Opening Day at Shea by winning in their first game. That seemed like an awfully long time ago. The Expos had lost 97 times since then and would leave New York with an even 100 following the short three-game set.

The first game started in twilight and the Mets, winners of four straight, put Jim McAndrew on the mound against rookie Mike Wegener. Neither a first nor second inning run by the Expos dampened spirits, as the Mets responded with unearned runs in the first and fifth to knot the game at 2-2.

The game evolved into a pitchers’ duel. Wegener, who never reached double digits in strikeouts before or again in his two-year career, whiffed 15 and walked seven. McAndrew walked five, but yielded only four hits. Both starters went deep into the contest, deeper than most managers nowadays would allow. Mets manager Gil Hodges stuck with McAndrew, even letting him bat with the score still tied, a man on base and two outs in the ninth. He lasted 11 innings and Expos manager Gene Mauch left Wegener alone for 11 as well.

Hodges finally relented and sent up a pinch hitter for McAndrew with two on and two out in the 11th. Jim Gosger struck out to end the scoring chance.

In the 12th inning, with Ron Taylor pitching, the Expos failed in an effort to take the lead, though they came close. With two outs, Angel Hermoso singled, as did ex-Met Kevin Collins, who was batting for Wegener. Hermoso tried to take third on that hit, and was successful as Tommie Agee’s throw got away. However, the fundamentally sound Taylor backed up the plate, and when Hermoso tried to score, Taylor pegged the ball to catcher Jerry Grote for the third out.

Bill Stoneman, who had thrown a no-hitter earlier that year and would no-hit the Mets in 1972, was Mauch’s choice to take the ball in the 12th, an odd choice considering Stoneman had pitched a shutout just three days previous (he would toss another two days later). Mauch had a full slate of relievers to choose from yet went with his top starter.

Stoneman got the first two Mets out in the 12th, but then magic struck. A single to center by Cleon Jones was followed by a walk by Rod Gaspar. Ken Boswell had the game-winning single to center despite a desperate dive by Expos second baseman Gary Sutherland (captured in a marvelous photo the next day in the New York Times).

The Cubs game against the Phillies was still going, and was close through the middle innings, but the win gave the Mets a piece of first place for the first time in their eight seasons of existence. Philadelphia extended its cooperation, snapping a 2-2 tie with a run in the seventh and three insurance tallies in the eighth, sending the Cubs to a 6-2 defeat, their seventh straight loss. The news came through on the Shea Stadium scoreboard after the third inning of the nightcap, just before 10:15 p.m., with a peek at the standings and the words, “Look who’s number one.” Nolan Ryan pitched a complete-game win in the nightcap and the Mets were on their way.

The rest of the world noticed. “Mets March to Head of Class” read the Washington Post headline the next day. “Hysteria Rocks Shea” said the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times told a fine story, of how Hodges had received a stuffed rabbit from a fan who “deemed a rabbit’s foot not enough.” The Mets had won six straight since Hodges put the rabbit on his desk.7

September 23, 1969: Mets 3, Cardinals 2

The Mets have never cinched a division championship in walk-off fashion, though their first such celebration came a day after such an event. The game of September 24, 1969 is well remembered for its conclusion, with Joe Torre hitting into a 6-4-3 double play, assuring the Mets of their first NL East crown (and the first such crown in league history). The contest of the previous day isn’t as easily recalled.

The Mets entered September 23 with a magic number of three, and when Bill Stoneman and the Expos topped the Cubs that afternoon, that was sliced to just two. In order to reduce it to one and guarantee at worst, a tie for the title, the Mets would have to topple nemesis Bob Gibson.

Jim McAndrew was up to the challenge and kept the Cardinals off the board for three innings. Wayne Garrett put the Mets ahead with a two-out single in the last of the third. It was not McAndrew’s fault that he surrendered the lead in the fifth, as a two-out error by Ken Boswell allowed the tying run to score, and then Torre’s RBI single put the Cardinals up, 2-1.

McAndrew held the Cardinals, but he left after seven frames with a one-run deficit. Gibson had ramped up his performance, retiring the Mets in order in the fifth and sixth, then escaping trouble in the seventh. Gibson had a chance to add to his lead in the eighth, but the hard-hitting hurler flew out with the bases loaded against reliever Tug McGraw. This was no ordinary fly out—it required a terrific diving catch by Ron Swoboda, something that Mets fans would see again.

In the home eighth, the Mets evened things up. Tommie Agee started with a single, went to second on Garrett’s bunt, and scored on Art Shamsky’s game-tying hit. Gil Hodges decided that the Mets fortunes were best served with McGraw pitching. The lefty weaved out of a jam in the top of the 10th, getting Phil Gagliano to ground out with two on. Gibson stayed in, even though he must have been fatigued by the 11th. With one out in that inning, Ron Swoboda and Jerry Grote got aboard on singles with light-hitting Bud Harrelson coming up.

Now normally, this would figure to be a mismatch, but for whatever reason, throughout their careers, Harrelson had Gibson’s number. They would face each other many times and Harrelson was extremely successful with 20 hits in 60 at-bats (as well as 14 walks and just three strikeouts).

In this instance, Gibson got ahead two strikes before Harrelson dropped a single into left-center field, plating Swoboda with the winning run and setting the stage for the Metmorable events of the following day.

METS WALK-OFFS AND OTHER MINUTIAE began in 2005 as a blog devoted to chronicling Mets history, with an emphasis on their walk-off wins. It can be found at http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com.

SOURCES

The New York Times

www.retrosheet.org

www.baseball-reference.com

Blatt, Howard, Amazin Met Memories. Albion Press, Tampa Fla. 2002.

Bock Duncan & Jordan, John, The Complete Year-By-Year N.Y. Mets Fan’s Almanac. (New York: Crown Publishers, NY. 1992.)

Cohen, Stanley, A Magic Sammer: The ’69 Mets. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988.)

Koppett, Leonard, The New York Mets, The Whole Story. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970.)

Zimmerman, Paul D. and Dick Schaap. The Year The Mets Lost Last Place. (New York: World Publishing, 1969.)

NOTES

1. Durso, Joseph; “Kranepool Hits 2 Homers as Mets Top Expos.” New York Times, April 30, 1969, p. 50.

2. Interview with Ron Swoboda, June 2005

3. Vecsey, George; “55,096 Watch Mets Shock Cubs With 3-Run Rally in Ninth for 4-3 Triumph.” New York Times, July 9, 1969: 47.

4. Zimmerman, Paul D. and Dick Schaap. The Year The Mets Lost Last Place. (New York: World Publishing, 1929): 30-31.

5. Durso, Joseph “Mets Beat Braves, 6-5, on Grote’s HR in 11th,” New York Times. August 4, 1969: 42.

6. Durso, Joseph “Mets Defeat Dodgers, 3-2. Pop Fly Hit Wins,” New York Times, August 24, 1969: S1.

7. Author uncredited. “For The Players, No Heady Stuff,” New York Times. September 11, 1969. p. 56

One of the key elements of drama for a baseball miracle is that the team in question should walk out on stage for the first time as if nothing has changed, as if nothing ever will change. So the 1969 Mets lost to the brand-new Montreal Expos with their star pitcher on the mound on Opening Day. Duffy Dyer’s home run in the ninth made the score 11-10. It also put the Mets into the category of scoring double-digits against a team that had never played before…and losing. The loss made it eight straight Opening Day losses, dating back to the franchise’s first game in 1962. The first scene of the play had gone off flawlessly.

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)

Spring training in 1969 was one of the most disjointed preseasons in major league history. There was much being seen for the first time. New franchises were added, new divisions created new rivalries, the pitcher’s working environment was irretrievably altered, and for the first time a work stoppage threatened training camps. The Mets had to deal with these issues like any other team, but heading into spring training 1969 their chief concern was about the health of their manager.

Gil Hodges was a quiet leader. Beloved as a player in Brooklyn, his slump was the cause of prayers throughout the borough during the early 1950s, and he had returned home to join the fledgling Mets when they took the place of the departed Dodgers and Giants in 1962. Even when Hodges was traded to Washington the following year, fans were happy because he was getting the chance to manage. The Mets traded to get him back after the 1967 season, and the love affair between fans and Gil Hodges, which had never extinguished, burned hot again. He immediately worked with the Mets front office to acquire players he was familiar with from the American League, yet he let his young players learn on the field. He showed patience and stressed hard work. There was no miracle in 1968, but there was marked improvement at Shea Stadium. Besides battling the Astros to stay out of the basement, the Mets had exceeded their manager’s preseason goal of 70 wins when they arrived in Atlanta for the last road stop of the year on September 24.

Hodges had thrown batting practice despite suffering from a cold for a few days. Early in that night’s game, Hodges left the dugout and told pitching coach Rube Walker that he was going to lie down. Walker, his pitching coach in Washington before coming with him to New York, had never known Hodges to do any such thing during a game. Trainer Gus Mauch called for a doctor and Hodges was soon on his way to Henry Grady Hospital, not a mile from Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The hospital confirmed that Hodges had suffered a heart attack and he was placed in the intensive care unit. He missed the rest of the season and was still in the Atlanta hospital a month later. The question whether he would manage the team in 1969, according to Mets beat writer Jack Lang, “went unanswered for months.”

Time eventually provided the answer. A three-pack a day smoker, Hodges gave up cigarettes, went on a strict diet, and spent the offseason relaxing and recuperating with his wife, Joan. From the time Hodges went to the hospital until spring training in February, the manager was virtually unseen and unheard as the team kept the press and public in a veil of secrecy that, in Lang’s words, “would have made the Kremlin proud.” So spring training in St. Petersburg was the first time many reporters got to see the Mets manager since his heart attack. By then, there were a lot of other developments to follow.

The astonishing dominance of pitching in 1968 had been a few years in coming. The 1960s had been a decade of remarkable achievements, but many of them had come from the mound. The major leagues, under pressure for the first time due to the burgeoning popularity of professional football, adopted changes that the powers that be in baseball would have once resisted with every fiber of their being.

The strike zone was changed. Umpires were required to call strikes as they had before the broadening of the zone in 1962. After six seasons with umpires calling strikes all the way to the shoulders, the strike zone returned to the earlier definition as “that space over home plate between the batter’s armpits and the top of his knees when he assumes a natural stance.” The pitching mound was lowered from 15 to 10 inches to try to bring pitchers down to size and not have a repeat of a 31-game winner in Detroit (Denny McLain of the world champion Tigers) or a .301 batting champion in Boston (Carl Yastrzemski of the Red Sox). It was hoped these changes would also bring Bob Gibson back to the earthly strata after his 1.12 ERA for the National League champion Cardinals, the lowest ERA for a qualifying pitcher since Mordecai “Three Finger” Browns 1.04 in 1906. In case those changes didn’t work, an idea first flouted by Connie Mack in that 1906 season was given a spring trial 63 years later. Both leagues agreed to test out a rule where a “designated pinch hitter” would bat for the pitcher every time up in a game. The NL didn’t take as much of a shine to it as the AL, but both leagues shelved the idea at the end of spring training.

Divisional play, approved by owners in July 1968, became a reality for the first time in major league history in 1969. Two teams the Mets considered close rivals and major draws because of history—the Giants and Dodgers—would now be in the Western Division and oppose them only 12 times a year (six home and six away). The Braves, Astros, Reds, and the brand-new San Diego Padres would make up the rest of the division. The geographically-challenged realignment would put the Midwestern Cubs and Cardinals in the East with the Mets. They would be joined by the two Pennsylvania clubs—the Pirates and Phillies—plus Canada’s first entry into the major leagues: the Montreal Expos. Division opponents played one another 18 times per season. The American League also split into two divisions, with the expansion Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots in the Western Division along with the Angels, Twins, White Sox, and recently relocated Oakland A’s—making Chicago the only team in that division not relocated or created since 1961. The AL East had the majority of the old-line junior circuit clubs as well as eight of the last nine pennant winners: the Tigers, Red Sox, Orioles, and Yankees, plus the long-languishing Indians and the Senators, the latter a ’61 expansion creation (the 765 Senators games managed by Hodges would remain the franchise record in Washington; Bobby Valentine would surpass it after the club relocated to Texas).

The two division winners in each league would now play a best-of-five postseason series to determine the pennant winner. Season-ending ties for the National League pennant had previously been decided by best-of-three series; any ties for a division title would now be settled by a one-game playoff, as had always been the case in the American League.

Presiding over the two leagues was a new commissioner, Bowie Kuhn. Formerly the attorney for the National League, he had been hired as commissioner to replace the ineffective William Eckert, who did nothing to try to stem the coming labor unrest in the game. Kuhn beat out challenges from Yankees president Mike Burke and Giants head of baseball operations Chub Feeney, the latter was soon named NL president. Kuhn was hired in February for one year at a rate of $100,000, at a time when the average salary was $10,000 and the highest-paid Met, Tom Seaver, made $35,000. Kuhn was thrown right into the fire. The Major League Players Association called for players to not sign their 1969 contracts until a dispute regarding the pension fund and benefits was resolved. Kuhn and MLBPA head Marvin Miller settled the situation with a three-year deal on February 25, exactly three weeks after Kuhn had been elected to office.

Mets players had kept busy during the brief stoppage, working out and joking with the press at “Camp Seaver.” Though informal in nature, the player-run camp gave Mets pitchers a leg up on teams that passively waited out the stoppage. With a little over a week between the delayed start of spring training and first exhibition games, Mets pitchers were young and limber. It was the hitting that was the bigger problem.

The Mets still lacked a big bat. Despite the presence of Ed Kranepool—the union rep and last original Met still in the team colors—first base was the obvious spot for an upgrade. With third-year pro Rod Gaspar hitting .333 in his first 36 at-bats in Florida, the temptation was to start the kid in right, move Ron Swoboda to left field and put career outfielder Cleon Jones at first base. Hodges, a three-time Gold Glove winner at the position, opined, “Anybody can play first base.”

Joe Torre, a catcher by trade, was poised for a move to first base and Atlanta was looking to deal him. Atlanta general manager Paul Richards talked with the Mets and wanted its top two young players: Nolan Ryan and Amos Otis. Though Torre was just 28 and already a five-time All-Star, the price was too steep for GM Johnny Murphy or the Mets. The Mets had gone to West Palm Beach to face the Braves on St. Patrick’s Day hoping to return to St. Petersburg with Torre. Otis was considered a better prospect than Ryan by the Mets, who had drafted “Famous Amos” from the Red Sox and converted him from shortstop to center fielder. (A Hodges spring experiment to convert him to a third baseman did not work.) Ryan would have given the Braves the league’s fastest pitcher to go along with the slowest (knuckleballer Phil Niekro). Both Otis and Ryan remained Mets while Torre was indeed sent to the St. Pete training facility on March 17, only it was to the Cardinals’ side of the complex. Orlando Cepeda went from the Cardinals to the Braves as compensation.

As spring training started to wind down, the annual prognostications started rolling in. Las Vegas had the Mets at 100-to-l odds to win the World Series. The sportswriters were going with conventional wisdom as well. After feeding statistics into a computer and coming up with a “Strength Ratio” to determine where a team would finish, Bud Goode of the New York Daily News reported the results. “Detroit and St. Louis figure to repeat as [league] champs,” he wrote. “The Mets have some great young hurlers. However, the Mets need to score 100 more runs to challenge. The computer pinpoints their inability to win close games as a major factor in their ninth-place finish last year.” (The computer turned out to be wrong, the Mets would score 159 more runs in 1969 than the previous year, raising their per game offensive total from 2.90 to 3.90—even in a year of enhanced offense, that was the fourth-highest increase in the NL, and the best in the Eastern division.)

The Mets finished the spring with an exhibition doubleheader against the Twins in New Orleans, a chance for that city to display its major league readiness should any club decide to make the Big Easy the 15th city to land a team since the Braves first shifted locations in 1953. The Mets and Minnesota—two of those aforementioned 14—played an Easter Day doubleheader after the Saturday game was rained out. Each game was to be seven innings, but the Mets won the first and took off with the lead in the fifth inning of the nightcap to catch a plane. The Mets finished the spring at 14-10, tying them with the 1966 Mets for the best percentage in spring training.

The ’66 club, under Wes Westrum, had been the first Mets team not to lose 100 games. As the Mets left for New York on April 7, 1969, no one would have imagined that the team could actually match their .583 spring mark in the regular season… much less better it by 34 points and win 100 games. It was beyond the unthinkable, it was impossible, it was destiny.

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

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

Koppett, Leonard. The New York Mets (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974).

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

“The Strike Zone: A Historical Timeline” http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/umpires/strike_zone.jsp