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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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