THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (46 page)

“Do the best you can,” Walker replied.

Outside the stadium, a group of about 50 kids,
described by a policeman as a “raving mob,” managed to sneak into
the park when Jerry Koosman’s wife, Lavonne arrived and the gate
was opened for her. It was a portent of future events. The game was
a sell-out – 59,083 - with standing room only packed shoulder to
shoulder, some fans having waited since 7:30 in the morning.
Outside the stadium, hundreds of fans stood in fruitless lines,
hope against hope that they would catch a break; an extra ticket,
scalpers, some just soaking up the atmosphere, listening to
transistor radios. The excitement was as high as for any
conceivable sporting event: a USC-Notre Dame game at South Bend
with the National Championship on the line; a Final Four in
basketball; or a pro football contest at Shea Stadium. The tension
was as so thick it could be cut with a knife.

Baseball was back!

Finally
Tom Seaver, now stiffness-free and
throwing easily, took the mound. His fast ball simply exploded. The
Cubs’ hitters stared at it, or at what they
heard
of it,
since they could not actually
see
the thing. They went down
like the French Army circa 1940, one-to-two three in the first
inning.

New York then faced Ken Holtzman. Holtzman had gone
9-0 in 1967 but was 11-14 in 1968. With Chicago sprinting out to an
early lead in 1969, Holtzman was their best pitcher, at least as
effective as the redoubtable Jenkins. He won nine straight again,
but entering the game he had lost three straight.

Holtzman was a streaky pitcher. There was no mystery
to him. He threw real hard with little else in his repertoire. He
relied on location, in many ways the baseball version of USC’s
famed “student body right,” or Vince Lombardi’s adage that trick
plays do not win football games, “blocking and tackling does.”

When Holtzman won nine straight, all was right. If
his velocity was off, his fast ball straighter than usual, his
pitches out over the plate, trouble found him, and it did this
night. Tommie Agee lined the first pitch like he knew what was
coming, down the right field line for a triple. Shea was awash in
sound
, and out of that a thunderous chant, “Let’s go,
Mets!”

Bobby Pfeil, who Ron Santo did not think could hit
his way out of paper bag, did his best imitation of Rogers Hornsby:
first pitch, double in the left field corner, 1-0. Seaver’s
admonition for a 9-0 first inning lead so he could “finesse” the
rest of the way looked possible at this point. They were teeing off
on the Cubs’ southpaw.

Durocher, who sat cross-legged while Jenkins battled
nine complete innings the previous day, immediately called for
submariner Ted Abernathy to get loose quickly down in the bullpen.
With Cleon Jones coming to the plate, fans began to climb over the
fence. Park police cleared some away from the “batter’s eye,” the
black background behind center field so hitters did not have fans
blurring the pitch.

“I have been to every ball game here, and I have
never seen anything like this,” broadcaster Lindsey Nelson told the
hundreds of thousands tuned into the television broadcast. “People
are everywhere.”

Then, just like that, Holtzman settled down,
striking out Jones and Donn Clendenon in the process of pitching
out of the jam. But he had no time to gather himself on the bench.
Seaver retired Chicago one-two-three in the second inning, causing
Rube Walker to tell Gil Hodges that he had “no-hit” stuff. Indeed,
Mets fans were seeing something very, very rare.

Many a well-pitched game marks an average baseball
season, but Seaver was out of his shoes, above and beyond even his
best games over the course of his first two-and-a-half years. He
was bringing it in the high 90s, maybe breaking 100 miles per hour,
with perfect control and rhythm. What these fans were seeing was
Koufax on his best night; Gibson in full domination mode; or any of
the all-time legends, whether it be Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove or
Bob Feller. They say “good pitching beats good hitting.” It does,
but it has to be exceptional. Seaver was beyond exceptional. He was
simply unhittable. His stuff could not be touched, merely waved at,
gawked at, stunned by.

Poor Kenny Holtzman, a mere mortal in fruitless
opposition to a god, took the mound in the second. With one out, he
induced Grote to hit a sharp bounder to Santo, who chested it to
the ground with his customary grit, but for some reason could not
pick it up. Grote reached. Then Al Weis’s perfect double-play
ground ball skimmed through Kessinger’s glove. The “god” Seaver now
stepped in against his one-time Alaska Goldpanners teammate. As if
to demonstrate it was no fluke that Seaver had gotten the final
roster spot in 1964, he tomahawked a line drive between first and
second base, scoring Grote. Then Agee doubled off the right field
fence, scoring Weis and moving Seaver to third. Chicago’s Rube
Walker (the brother of Mets pitching coach Rube Walker; some things
had not changed since the days of
Rube
Waddell,
Rube
Marquard and
Rube
Bressler) went to the mound to remove
Holtzman, who was not a rube. Durocher sat in the dugout,
disgusted.

Shea was frantic. With Seaver knocking the eyelashes
off flies from 60 feet, six inches, plus swinging the bat like he
was Bobby Clemente, the outcome of the game was utterly without
doubt. It was full throttle momentum and Chicago was as done as an
overcooked Thanksgiving turkey.

“Break up the Mets!” began to be heard. It was a
strange plea that fans occasionally chanted in Seaver’s rookie
year, when he for the first time demonstrated such unaccustomed
excellence that the people conceived in jest that he had made them
too good for the rest of the league. In past years, fans and
writers had legitimately asked for the Yankees’ dynasty, or Connie
Mack’s greatest A’s teams, to be “broken up.” In Mack’s case they
were, mainly when the Great Depression made it impossible for him
to keep paying his high-salaried stars. But no such luck with the
Bronx Bombers, at least until now. What was going on up at Yankee
Stadium was attrition, a decaying empire.

Abernathy was effective and held New York without
further scoring, but that was immaterial, especially when Seaver
mowed through Chicago in the third, one-two-three. In the stands,
Dick Schaap and Paul Zimmerman were roaming about, looking for fan
reaction, trying to figure out what made these special, lively
baseball fans tick. They approached George Hubela, in his early 20s
from Brooklyn, sitting in the loge section back of home plate with
his brothers, Louis (14), John (13) and friend Ralph Vilardi (14).
Hubela displayed a Mets banner.

“The Mets are the greatest,” said Hubela. “They’re
the team that’s happening, baby. This is it – the ‘new breed.’ Jets
and Mets, Mets and Jets. That’s it. No other teams. The Mets have
already gone all the way. They’re here. They’re going to the Moon,
the next flight to the Moon.” He managed to sound like a famous TV
Brooklynite, Jackie Gleason’s
Honeymooners
character, Ralph
Cramden.

Hubela had already mailed in for World Series
tickets. “Just wait,” he said. “I’ll be here.” Hubela was typical
of the Mets’ fans. Indeed, the team itself was not the only thing
that was “new breed.” Hubela and the other fans, none of whom sat
on their hands like Yankees fans always had, were decidedly
different.

In the fourth inning, Seaver faced the top of the
Cubs’ order - Kessinger, Beckert and Williams – for the second
time. A strikeout and two easy grounders to Ed Charles made quick
work of them. In the fifth, Santo, Banks and Al Spangler went down
– a fly ball, a grounder to shortstop and Seaver’s eighth
strikeout. In the sixth, as he went through the Cubs’ order for the
second time, Ed Kranepool said it: “He’s got a perfect game.” The
tradition in the dugout of a pitcher with a no-hitter, much less a
perfect game, is to say nothing, but it was obvious to every player
and fan in Shea Stadium that evening.

At the offices of the Associated Press in mid-town
Manhattan, baseball writer Ed Schuyler was dispatched to Shea
Stadium in case Seaver pitched a perfect game. Schuyler had done
the same thing in 1968, arriving just as Orlando Cepeda of St.
Louis broke it up.

On Long Island, Nelson Burbrink, the scout who
signed Tom Seaver off of the USC campus a mere three years earlier,
got in his car after scouting a prospect. As the car eased onto the
Long Island Expressway, he heard Lindsey Nelson on WJRZ say, “Tom
Seaver will get quite a hand when he comes up to bat here. He’s
faced 18 Cubs and retired them all.”

Sitting in a box seat near first base, Nancy Seaver
began to cry. Seaver glanced at her and saw the emotions start to
spill out. The atmosphere was utterly electric, almost
indescribable, a buzz of sound and anticipation bubbling to the
surface, threatening to swallow up a stadium, a whole city.

Kessinger led off the seventh; the top of the order
for the third time. Seaver had been pounding fastballs on Chicago
all night, but thinking that he should give them a little wrinkle
he curved the Cubs’ shortstop, who sliced a liner to left field. At
first Seaver thought it was their first hit, but the ball hung and
Jones grabbed it easily. Beckert popped to Swoboda, sweating
bullets of nerves in right. Williams bounced to Charles. Shea
exploded.

With one out on the top of the seventh, Jones lined
a homer, an “insurance” run on a night Tom Seaver did not need it.
The score was 4-0. In the bottom half of the inning Hodges send Rod
Gaspar to right field in place of Swoboda; Wayne Garrett to second;
and Bobby Pfeil moved to third, replacing Charles.

“You go into a game like this, cold and everything,
and you’re just hoping you can do the job if the ball is hit to
you,” Gaspar was quoted saying in
The Year the Mets Lost Last
Place
. “It’s a perfect game. We’re going for first place. All
the people in the park. It’s frightening.”

In the eighth, Seaver induced Santo to fly to Agee.
Then, facing Banks and Spangler, he seemed to jet it up a half a
notch. The middle innings were over, his pitch count low, the game
in hand. There was no holding anything back. Incredibly, he started
throwing
harder
. The Mets’ fans watched; loud, crazy,
boisterous, yes, but by now in
awe
. They were observing a
baseball Michelango, a sculptor of the mound. Seaver, who admired
his brother the sculptor, and wanted to somehow duplicate in
baseball what he could do with clay, was now accomplishing this
task.

Old-timers, who had seen it all over the past 50
years of baseball in the golden age of New York, knew instinctively
that the 24-year old Californian was a new Koufax, a Ford, a
Newcombe; maybe better than any of those guys! A “new breed.” After
Seaver rocketed a heater past Spangler to end the eighth, he walked
off the mound to insane cheering. Announcer Bob Murphy then stated,
“LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, AFTER EIGHT INNINGS, TOM SEAVER IS WALKING
INTO THE DUGOUT WITH A PERFECT BALL GAME.”

Grote grounded out but Weis singled. Seaver donned a
batting helmet, undid the donut from his bat, and gave his warm-up
jacket to the batboy. It was 9:55 P.M., Wednesday, July 9, the Year
of our Lord 1969. The seminal moment in which George Thomas Seaver
entered the pantheon.

Th crowd rose; they had been continuously cheering
all through Seaver’s dominant eighth inning, building to a
crescendo that rocked the five-year old stadium to its very core.
It was the sound Marilyn Monroe
wished
she heard when she
gyrated before the boys in Korea. The sound Joe DiMaggio
had
heard when he was at his heroic best at Yankee Stadium, the
knowledge of which he so contemptuously informed the breathless
Marilyn when she tried to tell him, “Joe, Joe, you never
heard
such cheering.”

It was the rafter of the old Stadium when Gehrig
told them how lucky he felt, or Ruth circled the bases having hit a
towering shot in the Series. It was what Namath heard less than a
year earlier, but according to all the pundits, all the experts and
futurists during this age in which Alvin Toffler’s
Future
Shock
was being taught in schools, it would never be heard
again at a
baseball game!
That was yesterday, passe, old
school. But here it was. Tom’s official entrance and acceptance
into the pantheon of that with which was and remains the rarest of
rare air: the true New York Sports Icon.

The Packers’ fans treated Bart Starr and Vince
Lombardi like pagan idols. In Los Angeles, Sandy Koufax and Magic
Johnson have been given the star treatment. Many cities have their
heroes, and of course they cheer wildly, they are loud, and it gets
electric.

But this was New York.

“If I can make there, I can make it anywhere. .
.”

This was the biggest of the big time, the ultimate
stage, the winning over with the most impressive of all
bravura
performances the most cynical, loud-mouthed,
hardcore, hard-to-please sports aficionados on the face of the
Earth. In this we get to the heart of what made this different,
what made this a
miracle
. The winning over of the crowd, the
total, childlike exuberance of the hard-bitten seen-it-alls, had a
Pentecostal touch to it. They were
children
, all of them.
The middle-aged men, who toiled for big bucks on Wall Street or
union wages in a delivery truck; the grandmothers wondering what
was happening to kids these days – all the drugs and sex and lack
of respect – yet it all came together here, with Seaver a Pied
Piper who did not quite know what was happening himself, so magical
and mystical was it. The young man who old folks related to, the
sex symbol who was faithful to his wife, the sports hero who seven
years earlier was 6-5 pitching for the Fresno High varsity.