THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (49 page)

He was on borrowed time anyway. Frisella
knew that as soon as Tug McGraw returned, he would be headed back
to triple-A Tidewater. McGraw joked that he was stuck in the swamps
on his military stint “with Captain Cook.”

“This game’s the greatest game in the
world,” said Frisella. “I’m young and I’m single and I’m doing
something every kid’s dreamed about since he was six years
old.”

After the game, Bud Harrelson returned from
his Army training.

On July 12, 1962 Sandy Koufax of Los Angeles
shut out the Mets, 3-0. On July 13, 1963 Koufax struck out 13 Mets,
again shutting them out, 6-0. Between 1962 and 1966, Koufax was
17-2 vs. New York. The Mets never scored on July 12 until 1964.

On Saturday, July 12, the Mets were rained
out on a day that Nolan Ryan was scheduled to start. They were
scheduled for NBC’s national
Game of the Week
, with Sandy
Koufax and Jim Simpson behind the microphone. The Cubs beat
Philadelphia 7-4, so New York lost half a game.

On July 13, 1963, Bob L. Miller, an original
Met who won no games as a Met,
beat
the Mets as a member of
the Dodgers, 11-2, stretching New York’s losing streak to 14
games.

The make-up game was played the next day,
now a double-header on Sunday the 13
^th
. Jerry Koosman
started the first game. With New York leading 4-3, the Chicago
score was posted as a final, to the groans of the big Sunday crowd:
6-0, Cubs over Philadelphia. Koosman did not have his sharpest
stuff, but it was enough in a complete game win.

6-2, 195-pound right-hander Nolan Ryan, 22,
pitched the nightcap. As he began heating up in the bullpen, a
small crowd of fans and even Expos players formed to watch him. His
legend as a fastball ace was well on its way. As hard as Seaver
threw, Ryan threw at least as hard. So far in his career, his
incredible potential had not been reached, but Seaver’s influence
on his mechanics was beginning to take.

As Ryan warmed up, a Rheingold beer
commercial resounded throughout Shea Stadium, regaling fans with
tales of young pitchers from “Van Meter, Iowa and Alvin, Texas,
with arms that fire bullets.” The reference was unmistakable. Van
Meter was the hometown of Bob Feller; Alvin that of Nolan Ryan.
Ryan was already being mentioned in the same breath as the immortal
Feller, a one-time Cleveland Indian and easily one of the greatest
pitchers in history.

“The town’s so small,” joked Koosman of his
Alvin roots, “it doesn’t even have a last name.”

In 202 minor league innings, Ryan had
averaged one and a half strikeouts an inning in 1966. When he
pitched at Jacksonville in 1967, a crowd three times its normal
size came out, but he hurt himself and, mainly due to injuries and
a lot of Army service, was an enigma. They started calling him “The
Myth.” He was spectacular, but always had blisters.

Entering the Expos game of July 13, Ryan’s
1969 statistics read 3-1 with 42 strikeouts in 41 innings and a
2.85 ERA. Bob Murphy had already named his legendary fastball the
“Ryan Express,” in reference to a Frank Sinatra film called
Von
Ryan’s Express
.

In the first inning with Montreal, Ryan
struggled with control. Then, just trying to locate home plate, he
grooved one to Rusty Staub, who deposited it over the auxiliary
scoreboard in left field to give the Expos a 2-0 lead. Ryan lasted
only 3 1/3 innings, leaving after having given up five earned runs.
But in the fourth inning of a sloppy game, Gene Mauch replaced
journeyman pitcher Howie Reed with 6-6, 265-pound relief pitcher
Dick Radatz. Radatz had been the best reliever in the American
League with Boston in the mid-1960s, nicknamed “The Monster.” In
Montreal that was changed slightly to
Le Monstre
. By 1969,
Le Monstre
was a shell of his old self. Agee powered a home
run over the right-center field fence to put New York ahead,
7-6.

Midway through the second game, the
scoreboard revealed that “the other New York baseball team,” as
Dick Schaap and Paul Zimmerman referred to them, had lost the
second game of their double-header to fall 21 games back of
Baltimore. Also on the scoreboard was the Cubs’ victory in the
second game of their double-header with the Phillies, by a 6-4
score.

In the seventh Ron Swoboda, whose nicknames
included “Clark Kent” and “Li’l Abner,” but whose batting average
was .222, knocked in the go-ahead, and ultimately winning run in
the 9-7 victory. After the game, Hodges was asked if the Mets were
“a team of destiny.” Hodges said no.

“The Mets have the pitching that should keep
them up there,” Gene Mauch said after the game. “But the Cubs are
too solid to catch. The big problem with the Mets is their
bullpen.”

Montreal’s Mack Jones was asked if the Mets
were “for real?”

“Nope,” replied Jones.

Jones was Kiner’s guest. “Sometimes it was
so bad, I felt numb,” he said of his brutal offensive performance
in 1968.

“He got the most vicious abuse from the
‘bleacher bums’ in Chicago,” Swoboda said of the famed Wrigley
Field faithful, next on the Mets’ schedule. “They just might be the
worst people in the world. ‘Bleacher pigs’ is more like it. They
yell foul stuff. They throw foul stuff. My wife and mother are
pretty sacred to me, but those people get some kind of perverted
kick out of calling them names. Last year during the whole game,
they kept calling Tommie’s wife a streetwalker. They’re so damn
ignorant. Tommie isn’t even married.”

After the long double-header with Montreal,
concluding a successful and, to say the least, consequential
homestand, there was no rest for the weary. It was mid-summer; hot
and humid. The New York Mets had no time to read their press
clippings. They boarded a bus that took them to nearby La Guardia
Airport for a Chartered United Air Lines flight to Chicago, losing
an hour due to the time change, where they would have to get up
early in order to play a day game. Hundreds of fans crowded the
terminal to wish them well. The channel nine news crew was on hand,
as well.

While making their way through the airport,
the Mets passed “the other New York baseball team,” returning from
a long, dreary series in Washington. “You guys are doing just
great,” said former Met Billy Cowan, now with the Yankees.

“Go get ‘em,” shouted Yankees manager Ralph
Houk, an ex-Marine. “Give ‘em hell.”

“We won a double-header today, and it’s
weird, but it doesn’t feel like anything special,” Ron Swoboda told
Schaap and Zimmerman on the plane. “. . .We were just the better
ball club, that’s all, and so we won . . . We have pride now . . .
On this club I feel like a winner.”

To paraphrase the late Robert F. Kennedy’s
last recorded words, “Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win
there.”

The New York Mets never won a baseball game
on July 14 (Bastille Day in France); not in 1962, ’63, ’64, ’65,
’66, ’67 or ’68.

As the Mets’ plane descended into Chicago’s
O’Hare Airport around 11:30 P.M. on Sunday evening, the pilot
jokingly announced that the control tower, when informed the team
had swept a double-header, requested that their landing be put on
hold for 24 hours.

Chicago was swept up in “pennant fever.” The
Cubs had won the 1945 National League championship in the last year
of World War II. In all the years since, they rarely had a decent
club and never had a contender. Durocher’s teams in 1967 and ’68
were promising and talented but did not seriously challenge St.
Louis.

Activity around Wrigley Field began early,
at Ray’s Bleachers, a popular tavern outside the famed park. The
drinking was already beginning, along with chants and songs
reminiscent of a college football weekend, even though it was a
Monday; theoretically a work day in the Windy City. I.C. Haig of
Northbrook, Illinois (his initials, he said, stood for “Incredibly
Creative”), penned lyrics to a drinking tune:

“Hey, hey!

Holy Mackerel!!

No doubt about it!!!

The Cubs are on their way – Hey! Hey!

“The Cubs are gonna HIT today,

They’re gonna PITCH today,

They’re gonna FIELD today

Come what may – the Cubs are gonna WIN
today!”

It was not exactly “Chicago, my kind of
town,” but to the denizens of Ray’s Bleachers it was Grammy
material. The “bleacher bums” were the invention of Ma Barker and
her husband. They created a sign that requested Cubs hitters to
slam a homer and “Hit a Bleacher Bum.”

The 1969 bums had their own uniforms; a
yellow construction hat, designed to keep out the sun, garbage,
flying beer cans and bottles. A man named Don handled their “public
relations,” which needed some work since Ron Swoboda’s assessment
of them was a universal theme around the senior circuit. They were
being blamed with spitting on opponents, among other indecencies.
Their “president” was a fellow named Ron Grousl.

The bums represented a city in need of a
winner. They were called the “Second City,” but even that
appellation, based on their having the second-largest population of
any American town, was in the process of being surpassed during
this time by Los Angeles, which as overall Greater L.A. would even
overtake the Metropolitan New York tri-state area.

New York had everything. Chicago always was
. . . second. The aforementioned Los Angeles had all the glamour
they did not. They were known, aside from being the Windy City
(because of fierce gusts off of Lake Michigan) as the “city with
husky shoulders,” a reference to its reputation for meatpacking
plants, construction workers, and other blue-collar types, often of
Polish, Slavic or Irish Catholic ancestry.

A fire had once burned down half the city.
It was blamed on “Mrs. O’Leary’s cow,” which supposedly knocked
down a lantern or something causing the blaze to spread. By 1969,
the “Cubs’ curse” was not a fully formulated theory, but subsequent
bizarre, losing efforts would focus this premise on a billy goat
denied entrance to Wrigley Field in the 1940s. No more World Series
appearances would follow after the team appeared (and lost) four
times (1932, 1935, 1937, 1945).

New York produced Presidents. Its electorate
was catered to, its media and opinion-makers shaping the nation.
Illinois produced Democrat Governor Adlai Stevenson, twice trounced
by Republican war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower (1952, 1956). If that
was not bad enough, Ike’s running mate was former Senator Richard
Nixon of California. The young Westerner’s selection was indicative
of the growing shift in population and influence away from the
factories of the Midwest to the Sunbelt.

If Chicago could not “produce” Presidents,
then they could . . . well, get John Kennedy elected in 1960
through nefarious means, namely the votes and re-votes of thousands
of Cook County Democrats, dead or alive. It was just enough to give
Illinois to JFK over Nixon in the tightest election up until that
time.

In 1968, Chicago got the ultimate Karmic
black eye when Mayor Richard Daley, who orchestrated the stolen
1960 vote, presided over a riot in the streets, complete with full
force “police brutality” during the Democrat National Convention.
Ironically, Daley’s actions probably did more to elect
Nixon
(that man again) than any single event after Kennedy’s
assassination.

It was a “shot ‘n’ a beer” town. The Rush
Street bar scene was much more Studs Terkel in 1969 than the
current “Viagra triangle” that the post-AIDS sex frenzy of the
2000s has become. Athletically, the Cubs were a joke. The Bulls
were a joke. The Bears were not a joke, but they had never achieved
dynasty status, like that of Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers or
Paul Brown’s Cleveland Browns. Under coach-owner George Halas, the
Bears had competed evenly over the years with the Washington
Redskins, New York Giants and Los Angeles Rams. Just when a
bona
fide
superstar, Gale Sayers out of Kansas, came along, he
injured himself. Then running back Brian Piccolo died tragically of
cancer (
Brian’s Song
). The Black Hawks (Stan Mikita) were
popular but hockey was like a well-kept secret to most of America.
Depaul was a nice little Catholic school with a decent basketball
legacy (George Mikan, Ray Meyer). The University of Chicago, once a
Big 10 powerhouse (Jay Berwanger), no longer played football.

Chicago’s greatest sports pride was reserved
for a college team that was neither in Chicago or even in the state
of Illinois. Notre Dame owned the town, and had ever since Soldier
Field crowds of more than 120,000 (1927) and 112,000 (1929) saw the
Irish beat Southern California by a single point each time. Chicago
was the base of operations for its fans, it “subway alumni,” and
opponents’ supporters, all of whom stayed in the city’s hotels,
patronized its restaurants, and got drunk in its bars the night
before and after Irish football games played in South Bend,
Indiana; a town so small it had virtually no accommodations, not to
mention nightlife.

But by the time the New York Mets arrived in
town on July 14, 1969 Chicago was a
Cubs town
. The upcoming
football season was a question mark. The Bears looked ordinary and
Sayers’s health was an issue. Notre Dame (and hotshot quarterback
Joe Theismann), a football team that always seemed to feature guys
with names like Kuechenberg and Patulski - big white boys, often of
Polish extraction who Chicagoans took to with great fervor - were
no longer the only thing on their minds, or on the sportstalk radio
shows.

At Wrigley Field, 200 ushers and a large
police contingent were on hand to handle the raucous, drunken,
baseball-crazed fans. For sure, the 1968-69 off-season premise that
Our National Pastime was “dead” now was a non-existent synapse in
the air. Throughout both leagues, where either great races or great
teams dominated, attendance and excitement were way up. But no
where was it more fevered than in the National League East: the
ancient towns and rivalries of New York and Chicago; the “Merkle
Boner,” Babe Ruth’s “called shot” off Charlie Root; Gabby
Hartnett’s “homer in the gloaming” and the wars between Bill
Terry’s Giants and Charlie Grimm’s Cubbies.