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1969 Mets Photo Gallery
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Today Mark Kolier returns with the kind of essay I enjoy the most: personal reflections on the game of baseball from years gone by. Writing in the first person, as Met fan Mark does, adds to the enjoyment. Mark highlights three games from his youth he attended at Shea Stadium that have left a lasting impression on him. We could all probably come up with our own lists. I think you’ll enjoy Mark’s reminiscences. I also hope Mark appreciates the nice little photo tribute I’ve put together to the 1969 Mets…a very generous – and difficult – thing for this Cub fan to do!
The Greatest Games I’ve Ever Seen
I often think about being a baseball fan since at heart that’s what I am. In fact, I like to talk about baseball so much that I’ve recorded nearly 140 episodes of a baseball podcast called Almost Cooperstown with my son Gordon. I’ve also started to write about baseball because I love it so much and there are so many things to write about. As a kid, I was lucky enough and later cursed enough to be a fan of the Mets. Because the Miracle Mets won the World Series when I had not quite turned 10 years old, I became and am a Met fan for life. One World Series win in the past 52 years seems a lot more cursed than blessed if you ask any Met fan.
Fortune has smiled upon me to a significant degree in my personal baseball fandom. I’ve been witness to some of the most famous baseball games in history. That doesn’t mean that any one of those games is the most memorable one I’ve ever seen in my entire life. A game between 10 and 11-year-old boys takes that title for me. But that will be a story for another time.
October 14, 1969, Shea Stadium – Game Three World Series: Mets 5 Orioles 0
My Dad’s company had season tickets in the field level boxes, 15-20 rows behind first base. I was just a kid but even I knew it was special. I had already gone to Game Three of the first NLCS earlier that month and ran onto the field after the Mets clinched. I got out toward second base but was tossed into the outfield by others that were bigger and stronger. I tore up some grass from the infield and brought it home in a plastic bag. It was 1969 so I somehow got off the field back into the stands and was lucky enough to then get to go to the first World Series game ever played at Shea. The grass died in my room a week later.
In that game, Rookie righthander Gary Gentry started, and future legend Nolan Ryan came in to get the save. Centerfielder Tommie Agee had come over to the Mets from the White Sox the year before and was a rising star. He not only led off the game with a home run, but he made two amazing catches in the outfield that fans still talk about today. It would be hard to top this as the greatest game you could possibly attend.
Unless:
October 25, 1986, Shea Stadium – Game 6 World Series – Mets 6 Red Sox 5
When it comes to the most famous major league game I have ever attended, it has to be Game Six of the 1986 World Series. At the time my wife and I had a ‘Sunday’ plan for all games played on Sunday at Shea, but the playoff seats offered were every other game and not in our regular seats. Did you know that Roger Clemens threw 136 pitches in Game Six? When the Red Sox went up 5-3 in the tenth inning, all the fans felt deflated and defeated. From our vantage point in the right field upper deck, we could see the Red Sox players perched on the top step of the third base dugout ready to run out to celebrate. But, in one of the all-time greatest moments in baseball history, we saw the ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs. I started jumping up and down and screaming a few beats before everyone else because I could immediately see from that angle that the Mets were going to win the game. It was pure magic!
A third example of my most memorable moments as a fan also came at Shea Stadium in the 1970s but it did not involve the Mets.
August 25, 1975, Shea Stadium – Angels 4 Yankees 3
Nolan Ryan started this second game of a doubleheader on a warm and dreary Sunday. Yankee Stadium was still undergoing its refurbishing (that stadium was subsequently torn down) and one of my friends was a Yankee fan and we got tickets. The Bronx Bombers were meh that year. The crowd was so sparse that by the time the second game rolled around, we were able to move down to Field Level seats near third base. Seeing Nolan Ryan pitching at Shea again was cool for me but that’s not the memory that sticks out. Future Met manager Bobby Valentine was the DH for the game.
On this day I became a forever fan of Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles. I still think his first name is spelled wrong every time I write it. Nettles has a fair case for the Hall of Fame and we’ve discussed that on our podcast. Were it not for Brooks Robinson, Nettles would probably be in the HOF. A fantastic fielder and feared slugger, he won a couple of gold gloves (Brooks Robinson was done playing) and a home run title albeit with only 32 the following season.
But on this day Nettles forgot to bring his best in the field, making not 1, not 2, but 3 errors! It was unbelievable and one fan sitting in front of us let Nettles have it, inning after inning. ‘Nettles you ‘S..k’!!! Over and over and over. Considering that we were teenagers we thought it was hilarious! We were sitting so close to the field and there were so few people in the ballpark, that all of us including Nettles could clearly hear the guy. Nettles spent a good part of the game kicking the dirt around the base in frustration. But because baseball can be a story of redemption, fate once again intervened. In the eighth inning, Nettles leads off vs. righthander Dick Lange already 0-3 with a strikeout. He crushes a fastball to deep right field for a majestic home run. The Yankees still trailed by 2 but, Nettles, as he runs around the bases, and is heading from second toward third base looks up at the stands, finds the heckler, and clear as day flips him the bird. My friend and I went nuts! It still might be the most memorable moment I’ve been witness to in a major league ballpark!
Mark Kolier
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and now Substack.com.
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Hi Gary. Interesting article by Mr. Kolier, but I would have to disagree with his comment that Buckner’s miscue in the ’86 WS was “one of the all-time greatest moments in baseball history”. Given the abuse he endured by Boston fans in the aftermath, I hardly think it was a “greatest moment”. But I understand his NY Mets bias. My own reflections of all the games I attended @ Comiskey Park as a kid are too numerous to recount here, so I’ll just provide a coupla things I witnessed at the very LAST game I attended there in July, 1990. I decided to take week vacation from work to go see my sister and b-in-law in Kalamazoo, Mich. While in the Midwest, I also wanted to go to Chicago to revisit my old “stomping grounds” and see one last game @ Comiskey before it became victim of the wrecking ball. I called my b-in-law before departing San Diego, and asked him if he wanted to go to a game with me. Knowing he was also a Palehose fanatic {he grew up in South Bend}, I knew he would want to go. But he told me he would NOT go to a night game, only a day game. After the last night game he had gone to, he said when he went to the parking lot, he was dismayed to see that someone had stolen all 4 tires from his car !!! {Gotta love the South-side}. So, we went to a Wednesday day game. Cleveland was in town. Prior to the game, during BP, I noticed an extraordinarily huge crowd of reporters, photographers, writers, coaches, players, etc. converged around the batting cage. So much so, that you couldn’t even see who was in the cage taking their cuts. Only when the player finished his session in the cage could I see that the player that all the attention and commotion was about; was none other than Michael Jordan, who had taken a sabbatical from the Bulls, and had been playing for the AA Birmingham Barons. Sammy Sosa started in RF that day {later to play for your Cubs, Gary}, and HOFer Frank Thomas was a rookie in 1990, but didn’t play that day. And the WSox won !! Having just started umpiring youth baseball myself that year, it was a real treat to watch the late, great Steve Palermo work the plate that day. {Those that don’t know, should Goggle him and read about the tragic turn of events that curtailed his life}.
Thank you and yes Tom the Buckner play is ‘Greatest’ in the context of my Mets fandom. I might have put it better writing one of the most famous moments in baseball history because it still is that. And I enjoyed your stories about Jordan, Sosa, Thomas and the Sox!
And yes Gary the photos are awesome! Love seeing ‘sign man’ Karl Erhardt!
Mark
OK, Mr. Kolier….I’ll give ya “famous” rather than “greatest”. Aside from the jubilance of Mets Nation following Mookie’s misplayed dribbler, I posted my comment regarding Buckner’s miscue from the perspective of all the rest of baseball. Most viewed it not as a “celebration” {as Mets fans did}, but rather as a situation similar to Brooklyn’s Mickey Owen’s failure to catch a potential game-ending 3rd strike against NY’s Tommy Heinrich in Game 4 of the 1941 WS, thus allowing the Yankees to rally, win the game and later the WS title. I admire your work. Keep it going. Thnx.
Right, Tom, Buckner was savaged by Boston fans. So unfair to a fine player. Plus, Mookie Wilson said, “Even if Buckner fields the ball cleanly, I figure my chances of beating the play was 90 percent.” It would have been close.
Thanks for the vivid reminiscences, Mark!
And don’t forget the Mets came into that ’86 classic totally drained, mentally and physically, after the grueling Houston series. And Doc Gooden was just awful (for reasons we learned about later). Plus, Ron Darling lost game one on an unearned run, 1-0.
Being there for game 6 must have been something for you guys. But watching at home, I sat there dumbfounded not believing the Mets trailed by two with two outs and nobody on. When Hernandez flied out to the warning track, that had to be the ballgame, right? Then the camera panned to the Red Sox players poised on the dugout steps, as you said, waiting to explode onto the field. But wait…Oil Can Boyd stood on the top step ready to lead the charge. There was something wrong with that picture. C’mon, Oil Can Boyd?!
The baseball gods just couldn’t allow the Series to end that way, could they?
And they didn’t.
Thanks, Mark, for rekindling those amazing Mets memories! But what can you do for us this year?
Best, Bill
Reminds me of the greatest game that I ever saw was on May 31, 1964. The SF Giants vs the NY Mets. The Giants swept the Mets that day. The doubleheader did not have any significant on field achievements except Willie Mays playing shortstop and that the 2nd game went 23 innings lasting 7 hours and 23 minutes. The combined time for both games was 9 hours and 52 minutes. I was a senior in High School and stuck it out to the end. It was a little rough getting up the next day.
Great story, thanks!
Thanks and such a good point Bill S. about the NLCS and how draining it was due north teams. The Red Sox also had a dramatic series win in the ALCS vs the Angels.
Of course r Mets fans there’s 2006 & 2007 both of which ended badly. Oops 2008 too. Can’t help with this year’s bunch as they appear to be better at finding ways to lose than ways to win !
Hi Ken,
I didn’t get to attend that DH but my mother and father did and my Mom never went to an MLB game again. 9 hours was her limit!
The two big Mets’ wins remembered so fondly by Mark, 1969 and ’86, correspond with those teams’ world championships, which isn’t terribly surprising. But the “1969 Mets” photograph here, showing five ecstatic ballplayers (Hodges, Thomas and Neal among them), was actually taken in 1962, a year most Mets fans would probably like to forget.
It’s sort of “Amazin'” those guys are so darn happy! Could they have known what lay ahead?
Thanks, Mark,
Michael
Our man Mark Kolier was probably too young to know or care, but on Ladies Day at the Polo Grounds, April 28, 1962, his beloved and first-year Metropolitans came back from five runs down in the late innings against Philadelphia, winning 8-6 on the strength of homers from Gil Hodges (giving him the most of any right-hander in NL history), Charley Neal (2), Jim Hickman (his first ever) and Frank Thomas, not to mention spirited base-running by Rod Kanehl. Those are the five grinning guys whose big picture, featured in Mark’s post here, was taken during post-game celebrating.
Mystery solved. You may have been a toddler, Mark, but it’s never too late to enjoy a moment like that!
Best regards,
Michael
Every time a team approaches the futility of the’62 Mets as the moribund A’s were on pace for earlier this season, I hope the team wins its way past 40 wins. It is also interesting that those ’62 Mets didn’t bother to play 2 games.
Jim Hickman was one of the earliest guys I rooted for on the Mets. Liked Ron Hunt also who had a talent for getting hit by the baseball much like the team does the past few seasons.
My favorite quote from 1962’s team came unsurprisingly from the Old Professor himself Casey Stengel who when asked about that team”s execution he quipped ‘I’m all for it!’. Thanks Michael!
Those two Mets games are tough to top Mark. I enjoyed the Graig Nettles story too. Hilarious!
I can clumsily tie the two together. I met my wife in 1988 at work, and on October 15 I learned it was her birthday. “How old are you today?” She was 19. It took 1/10th of a second for me to realize she was either born on the day the Mets won the World Series or damn well near it. “Where you born the day the Mets won the World Series?” I asked. “I don’t know, I’m a Yankees fan”. This was pre-internet, so as soon as I got home I dug into my Mets yearbooks and discovered she not only was born the day of Game 4, I Iater learned she was born during the game itself. Before Swoboda’s catch, but after Earl Weaver’s ejection. So despite our “mixed” NY baseball fandom, I had to marry a girl who like it or not was part of the Miracle Mets saga.
Back to Nettles. I was with her at a bar in Morristown NJ some years ago, and we met him. Since Nettles and I share a birthday (We all studied the backs of baseball cards in the 70’s and knew which MLB player shared our birthday if there was one) I blurt out to Mr. Nettles “Your birthday is August 20th! I know that because we have the same birthday”Perhaps I had one more beer than I should have because my wife still teases me about how Graig Nettles thought I was some weirdo, shouting out his birthday.
I told you it was a clumsy tie-in.
Great stories, Robert…thanks for checking in. Please stay in touch!
Those are some great Shea Staduim stories. A very special place for me throughout my life. The best game I ever went to was Game 3 of the 1973 playoffs. I was sitting in the right field upper deck in fair territory. Pete Rose was on first when the next batter hit a double play ball. My eyes followed the out at second and the throw to first. A moment later there’s a cloud of dust at second base and players streaming to the middle of the diamond from both dugouts and both bullpens. A fight between Rose and Bud Harrelson started a brawl.
An inning later, fans started pelting the Hit King with debris when he took his position in left field. Play was stopped while Tom Seaver, Yogi Berra, Rusty Staub and Willie Mays went out to the left field corner to petition the fans to cool it. After all the Mets were holding a comfortable lead. The fans backed down and the lead held.
I am confident that Steve Cohen and David Stearns will bring us back to the promised land soon so we can have more games like these at Citi Field.