THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (50 page)

In Henry’s Hamburgers before the game, a man
wearing a Mets cap walked in, met by a group of “bleacher bums.”
“Two bits, four bits, six bits, a comet, all for the Mets stand up
and vomit,” a helmeted Shakespeare belched as he removed the cap
from the man’s head, threatening to use lighter fluid on it if he
saw it again.

Tom Seaver was scheduled to pitch; a return
appearance against the team he so thoroughly dominated five days
earlier. “With his blond hair and boyish good looks, he might have
stepped out of an
Esquire
shirt ad or off a Peace Corps
poster,” wrote Schaap. It was around this time that the national
media began to recognize that Seaver was the next great superstar
in sports; a man who, with Joe Namath, was emerging to replace the
icons of the past decade-plus: Willie Mays, Johnny Unitas, Bart
Starr, Bill Russell. The descriptions of Seaver resembled Schaap’s:
fictionally perfect sports heroes like Frank Merriweather, Hobey
Baker and Jack Armstrong, or real-life heroes whose images glowed
in Halo-like memory, such as Christy Mathewson or Lou Gehrig.

Looking back at Seaver’s life and career
through the prism of all he was and all he became, it appears
slightly ridiculous. His image would be tarnished here and there,
although never seriously. But he would become
human
. The Tom
Seaver of 1969 was not a real-life figure; he was a comic book
superhero, perhaps an anti-dote for the times with his clean-cut
appearance during this age of hippies, drugs and protest. The media
was building him up like nobody else was ever built up.

Unitas and Starr were certainly heroic,
albeit in an “aw, shucks” kind of way. Mays was the greatest player
of his generation, but seemed to stick his foot in his mouth,
saying something stupid or self-serving, always coming out wrong
somehow. Russell was a militant, never popular in semi-racist
Boston. Even Namath was an anti-hero, something out of a Robert
Altman movie. But Seaver was this extraordinary figure. He and his
wife were like “Ken and Barbie” models. Seaver was considered
intelligent well beyond the ordinary, accorded the respect of a
college professor or a rising young politician. Then there was his
pitching. After the “imperfect game,” Seaver was bidding to go
beyond comparisons with other greats, like Bob Gibson and Juan
Marichal. Rather, he was now seen as a “sure” Hall of Famer
already, his fastball and all-around ability comparable to Sandy
Koufax, Bob Feller, Lefty Grove, and a list so short it boggled the
mind. His was a golden image that comes along once every century or
so.

But as Seaver warmed up at Wrigley Field, he
felt a bothersome twinge in his shoulder. While he prepared in the
bullpen, Pat Pieper read the starting line-ups over the public
address system. Pieper had been the Cubs’ voice since 1906, having
read off the names of “Tinkers to Evers to Chance.” He saw his team
play in the World Series, winning it twice in his first three years
on the job. In 1969, it had been 61 years since their last World
Championship, won after the “Merkle Boner” of 1908 (over Christy
Mathewson and the New York Giants). Pieper was a man who had “seen
too many surprises in this game,” recounting how in the 1918 World
Series, “I saw Babe Ruth lifted for a pinch-hitter.”

Wrigley Field was filled with placards and
banners, fans singing and chanting. It had all the earmarks and
regional pride of a World Cup soccer match. This being the
summertime, a large contingent of New Yorkers was on hand,
challenging the locals with signs of their own. The ushers and cops
were all on edge.

After Bill Hands set New York down in the
first, the great Tom Seaver took the hill. Cubs fans booed, of
course, but his appearance was a curious phenomenon. You could not
help admiring this guy, his superlative ability. He was becoming a
myth, a sighting. In the first, he was untouchable, appearing to be
as unhittable as he had been at Shea Stadium.

The game settled into a pitcher’s duel;
Hands, effective but pedestrian in comparison with the superhuman
heat of Seaver. In his first shot at Jimmy Qualls, Tom got his
nemesis to ground out. The first nine Cubs went down like doomed,
blindfolded prisoners before a firing squad.

In the fourth, Chicago mounted a rally,
mainly on the strength of New York second baseman Ken Boswell’s
error. Boswell’s defensive liabilities were many. Seaver simply
responded by throwing what could be described as baseballs
traveling “through a car wash without getting wet,” in so doing
blowing away Santo and Banks as if they were 11-year old scrubs in
the Fresno Little League.

In the sixth, a chink in the armor.
Kessinger bunted for a hit. Seaver made a pitch to Beckert that he
said was virtually impossible to hit – high cheese – but the Cubs’
second baseman managed a slow grounder to Boswell, advancing
Kessinger into scoring position. Then Billy Williams, the iron man
and future Cooperstown inductee, proved that even Tom Seaver could
allow a measly single, which in this case resulted in Kessinger
scoring to make it 1-0. The capacity crowd at Wrigley, over 40,000
after the standing room only were counted, cheered like it was 1945
and they had just been informed of Nazi Germany’s surrender to Ike
at a French school house.

The utilitarian Hands matched Seaver
zero-for-zero after that. In the eighth, Durocher took the field to
argue a play. “How about a Schlitz, Leo?” Seaver joked to the
manager, who had recently completed a series of beer ads. Seaver
mowed Chicago down, but an imperceptible problem, unseen by average
fans, began to make its presence known. His fastball slowed down
imperceptibly, his curve hung just that much; and worse, his
shoulder was stiff.

With a 1-0 lead and two outs in the ninth,
Hands allowed a base hit to J.C. Martin. Durocher, who sat on his
hands while Fergie Jenkins blew a two-run lead in the ninth inning
a week before, seemed at this point to have recognized the error of
his ways, perhaps taking a lesson from the Hodges playbook. When
Hands told him at the mound, “I’ve run out of gas,” Leo did not
berate his man, telling him that real men complete what they
started, and go into some diatribe about Sal Maglie or Kirby Higbe.
Instead, he patted Hands on the butt and waved in ex-Dodger Phil
Regan, one of the better firemen of the 1960s. Regan was
particularly tough on the Mets over the years. He got Donn
Clendenon on a soft liner, and Tom Seaver
had been beaten!
This concept seemed impossible, but here it was, right there at
Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Santo ran to the mound, leaped high, and
clicked his heels together. The “bleacher bums” loved it, grunting
and plagiarizing the Black Panthers: “AEEBEE! UNGOWA! CUB
POWUH!”

“I love them,” Durocher told the writers. “I
love the ‘bleacher bums.’ ” Recently he had bought a group of them
$29.70 worth of drinks when 10 male bums and two female ones
“cornered” him at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis.

“Who’s the pressure on now?” Chicago’s next
day starter, Dick Selma asked the writers. He and Seaver were
friends, but Selma could not help but feel just a twinge of
something . . . maybe not jealousy, but rather a desire to
demonstrate that “Tom Terrific” was not the only guy from the 1956
Fresno Little League who was worth his salt.

“Yes, sir, yes, sir, that was a World Series
game,” Durocher remarked of beating Seaver. It was telling, in that
he now tacitly admitted beating the Mets was more important than
Chicago’s other opponents.

Tom Seaver, seemingly pitching on a plaque
at Cooperstown, or from a granite perch at Mt. Rushmore, suddenly
was all too human, sitting in the dank Wrigley clubhouse; his head
down, his arm aching. The Mets then boarded a bus back to the
Executive House Hotel, surrounded by taunting Cub fans.

On July 15, 1963 Roger Craig of the New York
Mets lost his 13
^th
of 18 consecutive decisions; the team
their 17
^th
of 18 games, against the Houston Colt .45s.
Between 1963 and 1968, the Mets never won on July 15.

On the morning of Tuesday, July 15, the Mets
were 49-37, five and a half back of Chicago (57-34). Writer Dick
Young had recently predicted that defending league title-holder St.
Louis (46-46) would rebound from their 11 1/2-game deficit to beat
both teams.

Gary Gentry, the rookie who never let
anything bother him, was scheduled to start at Wrigley Field. Their
ace having been beaten the previous day, a loss would drop New York
six and-a-half-back. Aside from the first game of the Cubs series
the previous week, this above all the games played during this
home-and-home stretch in the middle of the long, hot summer was
crucial.

Gentry had said of his previous start
against Chicago that it was “just another game,” but this time he
sensed the gravity of it and decided to allow himself a sense of
excitement. “He had good schooling at that baseball college,”
Hodges said, referring to Arizona State (as if classes on political
science, geometry and economics had been replaced by full course
specials on the bunt, the hit ‘n’ run, and the art of short relief
pitching). But Hodges realized, also, that both Gentry and Nolan
Ryan were still “babies” who had yet to respond to coaching as the
“veterans” Seaver (24) and Koosman (26) did. Whether they would
remained to be seen.

Bud Harrelson, still regaining his form
after his Army service, was not in the starting line-up. Al Weis,
the former Chicago White Sox infielder and normally a second
baseman, was penciled in at shortstop against the Cubs. In
Webster’s dictionary, the word “skinny” was accompanied by Weis’s
photo: all 170 pounds of him, and that was after an off-season
training regiment of “pasta and beer.” The Chicago heat probably
sweated 10 pounds out of him, beer or no beer.

“I haven’t been hitting the long ball yet
this year,” said Weis, as if there was a bonus in his contract if
he should match Hank Aaron’s home run total. Prior to the game,
Weis had a total of four home runs in seven Major League
seasons.

Before the game, the “bleacher bums,”
emboldened by yesterday’s win, were out in force, obnoxious as
ever. When Mets hitters homered into the bleachers during pre-game
batting practice, they tossed the balls back, but on Waveland
Avenue kids retrieved those balls hit all the way out of the
stadium, keeping or selling them.

The day of the July 15 game at Wrigley, both
Koosman and Seaver were named to the National League All-Star
roster in Washington. When Santo came on the field for batting
practice, Mets coach Joe Pignatano caught his attention and did a
clumsy imitation of the Cub infielder’s heel-clicking dance. “Bush,
that’s real bush,” Pignatano yelled at Santo, a fellow
Italian-American who responded with the traditional Italian finger
sign for “back at ya.”

During the pre-game line-up card exchange at
home plate, Hodges addressed Cubs captain Santo, telling him he
reminded him of Tug McGraw. McGraw, he said, would
“jump and down” when he was “young and immature.” Poker-faced,
Hodges then said, “He doesn’t do it anymore,” and left Santo to
ponder non-sequiters.

This was Dick Selma’s chance. The talkative
Californian was 9-3 with 104 strikeouts in 103 innings coming in.
Aside from winning on the same mound where Tom Seaver lost the
previous day, he wanted to show the Mets he belonged. A one-time
hot prospect, New York considered him expendable. He was lost in
the expansion draft to San Diego, who traded him to Chicago.

The “bleacher bums’ ” so-called “commando
squad” charged a Mets fans with a cardboard “LET’S GO, METS” sign,
ripping it to shreds. When a “replacement” appeared, its holders
were showered by garbage.

In the fourth inning of a 1-1 game, with two
men on and two outs, Selma got two quick strikes on Weis with
breaking pitches, long considered his “Achilles heel.” Selma went
for the outside corner but did not get the call. Weis choked up on
his 35-ounce bat. Randy Hundley wanted another breaker, but Selma,
no doubt figuring Weis could not go yard in batting practice,
challenged him.

“Get that fast ball in there,” yelled Ernie
Banks, trying to cross up the hitter. Weis connected and the ball
landed not amongst the “bleacher bums,” but on Waveland Avenue for
a three-run clout. Later, when Banks singled, Ed Kranepool razzed
him about his “call.” Banks remained silent. It turned out Mr. Cub
usually rattled away only when his club was winning.

Gentry pitched one of the best games of his
life. Leading 5-1 in the eighth, however, he hung an 0-and-2 curve
ball to Santo, who powered it over the fence for a three-run homer
to make the score 5-4.

“That was a dumb, dumb pitch,” he told the
reporters, then explained that it was based on Seaver’s “advice.”
It turned out Seaver told him “a real good pitcher” such as Bob
Gibson or Juan Marichal tries to close the door on 0-and-2 counts
instead of wasting an “out” pitch. Apparently, the likes of Gibson,
Marichal . . . and Seaver could do it, but Gentry was not there
yet.

Hodges went to Ron Taylor, who finished the
eighth and then set Chicago down in the last frame, retiring Qualls
on the game’s last play, a grounder to first. Weis was
two-for-four, scored two, and drove in three runs in the 5-4
victory. After the game, Weis was the toast of the clubhouse,
rattling off the names of all the pitchers he had homered off of in
his career: Tommy John, Dick Stigman, Dave McNally, Cecil Upshaw,
and now Dick Selma.

“Once when I hit a homer for the White Sox I
came into the dugout and all the guys were lying on the floor like
they were dead or passed out from shock,” he told the
reporters.

“Weis, Weis, Weis,” sputtered a
towel-covering-his-head Durocher, the villain of this story. “Don’t
mention that name. Selma had to furnish the power. There had to be
a tail wind. And he had to swing as hard as he could.”