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We welcome another guest post from Bill Schaefer, giving us a first-hand account of his interview Tom Seaver back in 1969, and also his reflections on that memorable season. It’s a great essay…although as a Cub fan, it pains me to remember 1969! -GL
TOM SEAVER INTERVIEW, PRELUDE TO A MIRACLE…AND MORE
It was Monday afternoon, April 14 1969, during the penultimate year of Connie Mack Stadium’s existence. The Mets would lose to the Philadelphia Phillies 5-1. It was the fourth game in a four-game losing streak for the Amazins. By late afternoon they would be 2-5 on the season. It was the same old “you know what” for a losing team.
But about an hour before the first pitch, News Director Phil Hubbard and I had flashed our press passes signifying we were from WOBM-FM in Toms River, NJ. The usher waved us right onto the field, past the field boxes, about halfway between home plate and third base. We were hot stuff, man! Not realizing luck was on our side, and that perhaps it would not be so easy another time. With our tape recorder all set to go, we spotted Tom Seaver doing wind sprints about 50 feet away down the left-field line.
Baseball’s first steel-and-concrete stadium loomed in the background, now a hideous anachronism, with a handful of fans rattling around in the sprawling, rickety lower grandstand. We got a little closer and I shouted, “Hey, Tom, could you spare a minute for a quick interview?” He immediately stopped in mid-sprint and came right over. I was too stunned to be nervous. He was super nice – treated me like I was Vin Scully. I blurted out a few banalities and then asked the Mets’ best pitcher, “Do you think the Mets, with a few breaks, might have the nucleus to be contenders this year?” (I didn’t believe a word of it, the Mets were coming off their best season since their inception in 1962. But they finished 73-89, still 16 games below the breakeven mark). Seaver responded enthusiastically, “Bill, as you say, with a few breaks I really think we have the talent to contend this year.” He pointed out pitching would be the key. I thanked him profusely. And the soon to be National League Cy Young winner went back to his wind sprints. Little did we know…
In 1969, they lowered the pitcher’s mound and the fortunes of the New York Metropolitans soared. It was the first season of the divisional format. For the first 41 games, they looked a tad better than for most of their brief history but were only 18-23 at the start of games on May 28. Then, Tom Seaver’s words about pitching resonated in a big way. In perhaps the best outing of his career, Jerry Koosman dominated the San Diego Padres for 10 innings, yielding no runs on just four hits and striking out 15 Padre batters! The Mets won 1-0 in 11 innings, with Buddy Harrelson driving in the winning run and Tug McGraw getting the W in relief. The victory started an 11 game winning streak and fans knew this was a different team.
A catalytic force in the Mets climb was the acquisition of Donn Clendenon on June 15, in a trade with the Montreal Expos, for pitcher Steve Renko, Kevin Collins, two minor leaguers and a player to be named later. Clendenon was a solid slugger for the Expos but in need of a change of scenery. Manager Gil Hodges platooned the righty power hitter with Ed Kranepool at first base in what proved a brilliant move. In just 202 at-bats, Clendenon clubbed 12 home runs with 37 RBI. Donn would be the World Series MVP with three homers and a .357 batting average.
But the Chicago Cubs got out of the gate 11-1. And before you could blink, they were 41-19 on June 15. On the same day, the Mets were 30-26. On June 30, the Sports Illustrated cover had a picture of rugged Ron Santo leading off first base with the headline, The Raucous New Cubs. Chicago had a nice team: Williams, Santo and Banks would account for 73 HR and 324 RBI. Beckert and Kessinger were a first-class double play combo. And the pitching was solid: Jenkins, Hands and Holtzman combined for 58 wins and Dick Selma could throw 100 mph. Phil Regan anchored the bullpen. The little bears were lapping up every minute of it, as was their fiery manager Leo Durocher. Santo would click his heels after every Wrigley Field win. This antic infuriated some but, what the heck – it was a harmless home crowd pleaser.
The night of July 9 saw the Mets tie the season’s series with the Cubs at five games apiece, winning 4-0. However, the real story was Tom Seaver’s near-perfect game. With one out in the top of the ninth, Jimmy Qualls lined a Tom Terrific off-speed pitch to left-center for a clean hit to spoil the perfect game and no-hitter. Nearly 60,000 at Shea were crushed when the ball fell safely. But they would have much to cheer about before the historic season ended.
It was a mesmerizing Mets baseball season. In January, it was said some casinos were offering 1000-to-1 odds against the Amazins winning the Fall Classic. But quietly a team under the auspices of lovable Gil Hodges was beginning to coalesce. Tommy Agee (26 HR) and Cleon Jones (.340 BA) were having career years. Don Clendenon was rejuvenated. And a starting rotation of Seaver (25-7, 2.21 ERA), Koosman (17-9, 2.28 ERA), Nolan Ryan and Gary Gentry, with Tug McGraw and Ron Taylor in the bullpen, comprised a formidable nucleus. Not to mention the remarkable Ron Swoboda, Art Shamsky, Grote, Garrett, Ed Charles, Al Weiss et al.
So, what happened? The Cubs held a nine-game lead over the Cardinals and Mets on August 17, with a 75-44 record. Then, in September, Chicago wilted under the pressure of the Mets’ relentless winning. They lost 11 of 12, September 3-15, going from 5 games up to 4 ½ games behind New York. From Sept. 6-18, the Mets went 13-1. The Cubs, playing games on the west coast, could see the Mets’ winning final score before they even started play.
On September 9 the Cubs lost the famous “Black Cat” game, in which a black cat walked past Ron Santo, in the on-deck circle at Shea Stadium, and allegedly stopped and stared at Leo Durocher.
Nolan Ryan tossed a three-hitter in the second game of a doubleheader, on September 10, leading the Mets to a victory over the expos and moving them into first place in the National East for the first time in franchise history.
The Cubs said Durocher was intractable and refused to rest anyone. He barely used Dick Selma down the stretch and pitched his top three starters until their arms hung like strings. Leo’s take was a little different, “I never saw anything like it in my life. Our offense went down the toilet. The defense went down the drain. And I’m still looking for the pitching staff. I could have dressed nine broads up as ballplayers and they would have beaten the Cubs.”
Ron Swoboda said this about his team, “We had the innocence of someone who had never been there before. We had that wonderful, clear-minded innocence…of not having to doubt ourselves if we stumbled. That’s a marvelous thing…the Cubs just found they were in a race with a faster horse.”
Ron Santo said, “What’s hard for me to believe is how we were eight games in front and lost by eight games. That just goes to show you that it was the year of the Mets and that God lives in New York.” Santo knew something. How else would you explain the Mets beating Steve Carlton and the Cards 4-3 on Sept. 15, with two 2-run home runs by Ron Swoboda, when Carlton set a major league record with 19 strikeouts? Or, winning both games of a twin bill on September 12, at Pittsburgh, by the identical scores of 1-0, with the winning pitchers Koosman and Cardwell knocking in the lone runs in each game?
The magic continued through the postseason. As Mickey Mantle exclaimed, “I never did see catches like that in a World Series!” Two gems by Tommie Agee that saved multiple runs and the greatest catch ever in a World Series by Ron Swoboda. His impossible grab, robbing Brooks Robinson in Game Four, kept the miracle alive and made sure the mighty Orioles would not likely take the Series back to Baltimore.
The 1969 Mets were the personification of team play. And Gil Hodges was the perfect manager for that group, never allowing his players to “put pressure above the pleasure of playing the game.”
At the end of this COVID 19 short form baseball season, we just might hear Peter Alonso, with champaign soaked hair, paraphrase Tom Seaver in the Mets locker room, 51 years ago, “We’re just a bunch of young kids who love to play this game!”
Bill Schaefer
Sources: Shibe Park, Connie Mack Stadium: History
Sports Illustrated-1969 archives
The Cubs’ collapse of 1969: An oral history-Chicago Tribune
1969 Mets schedule almanac
1969 Cubs schedule almanac
1969 Mets, Cubs rosters and stats
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