THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (51 page)

As for Selma, Leo said he “just wasn’t
thinking very well, I guess. It was a lack of concentration. You
got to think a little with a one-and-two pitch – throw a curve or a
bad ball.”

Durocher did not toss Selma “under the bus”
as badly as he had Don Young, who despite Leo’s public admonition
on his behalf after his July 8 outburst against the rookie in New
York, had lost his job to Qualls (who earned it by swinging the bat
well).

Durocher was asked about the razzing he got
from Joe Pignatano on the Mets’ bench. Leo said Piggy had never
been a decent player so, “Why should he worry me now?” He was
piling up the bulletin board material for later in the season.

“He hit my best pitch,” Selma said, giving
Weis the credit Leo refused.

At Mr. Laff’s, a Manhattan sports bar,
saloonkeeper Phil Linz just smiled at the television set. Linz, a
former Yankee and Met, tended the bar and played his harmonica for
patrons. He had once been fined for playing his harmonica on the
team bus. Linz was a teammate with and played for Berra, now a Mets
coach, while later playing for Hodges. When Linz hit a home run in
1968, it was considered so rare that Gil ordered champagne. Once,
when a patrolman stopped Linz for speeding, he was told he was
supposed to wear his glasses while driving.

“I got contacts,” he told the officer.

“I don’t care who you know, you still gotta
wear your glasses,” was the reply.

On July 16, 1968 the New York Mets were
beaten by Pittsburgh, 3-2.

Trailing by only four and a half games on
Wednesday, July 16, the Mets faced a game that may or may not have
been as crucial as the previous day’s encounter. A loss would not
be as hard to swallow as it would have been had Gary Gentry lost
his game, but a win would be cause for great joy in the world of
baseball momentum. More important, it was the “rubber match” of a
three-game set on the road against their rivals. It would give them
two straight series victories over the Cubs and a 4-2 record with
Chicago during the crucial overall stretch between July 8-16.

On a team featuring young, hard-throwing
studs, victory would have to be attained on this day with a veteran
who no longer had a great fastball, and was decidedly not a stud,
at least not in the baseball sense of the word. With temperatures
in the 90s, the humidity as sticky as Mississippi mud, Don
Cardwell’s task was a difficult one. Once upon a time, he
did
throw hard, when as member of the Cubs he tossed a
no-hit game in 1960. At 33 the Mets now called him “Big Daddy.” His
record: 3-8. His opponent: Ferguson Jenkins, 25, seemingly
impervious to the conditions. Jenkins was one of the first pitchers
to run to and from the pitcher’s mound, which for years was viewed
as a “high school” example of false hustle. The odds of Cardwell
beating Jenkins: not good.

“I want to see if Fergie runs out to the
mound today,” surmised Agee.

“That Jenkins doesn’t even sweat,” said Art
Shamsky. “He wears long sleeves on days like this.”

Ken Boswell liked to joke about how much he
drank, although whether it was an “act” or not was often an open
question. He told the writers he did not think he could make it
through infield drills on a day like this; that his uniform was
soaked with “all that Bourbon coming out.”

Francis X. Smith, a member of the New York
City Council in Chicago on business, attended the game. Bidding for
the “ball park vote,” Smith said he lived 10 minutes from Shea
Stadium, never missed a home game, and chided John Lindsay – his
opponent in the fall Mayoral election - as a football fan, a
front-runner who “didn’t even make Opening Day at Shea
Stadium.”

Jenkins did sprint out to the hill. The
“bleacher bums” held signs extolling their support for him in light
of the fact that St. Louis manager Red Schoendienst inexplicably
left him – or any other Cubs pitchers – off the All-Star Game
pitching staff. The opinionated Santo, writing a daily column for
the
Chicago Daily News
, made no bones about his feelings. In
Jenkins’s case he was justified. The pitcher was 12-6 and leading
the league in strikeouts on July 16. Over the course of their
respective careers, Jenkins’s statistics would hold up to those of
Schoendienst’s ace, Bob Gibson.

But Jenkins did not have it that day. When
Tommie Agee homered, the ball was thrown back on the field by the
“bleacher bums.” Removed from the game, trailing 5-0 with no outs
in the second by the
other
Rube Walker, Jenkins did not
sprint off the mound. With nothing going for them the “bleacher
bums” took to saying vile things about Agee. They were not above
racial insults and references to homosexuality, then eventually
started fighting among themselves.

In a sloppy game played in the intense heat,
the Mets held a slim 6-5 lead when reliever Rich Nye hung a curve
ball and Weis hit
another
home run. “Oh, no!” was all Cubs
announcer Jack Brickhouse could muster. “Not again!”

Art Shamsky’s home run added some more
insurance, and Cal Koonce pitched well in relief to wrap up the 9-5
victory. The third straight sell-out crowd made for 112,000 fans
over the three-game series. That equaled attendance at the 1929
Notre Dame-USC football game at Soldier Field, and was the largest
baseball crowd for a Chicago series since the 1959 White
Sox-Dodgers World Series (in which Los Angeles set all-time records
of more than 90,000 at each of the games played in the L.A.
Coliseum).

When the game ended, Seaver ran out to
congratulate Taylor, who closed it out. He jumped in the air,
clicking his heels to spite Santo and the Chicago fans. In the
clubhouse, the PR major stood up and stated, “I have a press
release. Al Weis is only 483 years behind Babe Ruth.” Of the
heel-clicking, Seaver said, “It was just a little kick, a small
dig.”

“Weis has lost a little power,” a smiling
Hodges said of the fact that his second-day home run did not make
it to Waveland Avenue as his Tuesday shot had.

As if to counter City Councilman Francis
Smith, Mayor Lindsay sent a telegram to Hodges: “ALL NEW YORK
WISHES YOU AND THE METS BEST OF LUCK IN THE SECOND CITY. LET’S GO,
METS. MAYOR JOHN V. LINDSAY.”

Ron Taylor asked a reporter, “Are the nine
crucial days over yet?” It was in reference to the media’s
interpretation of the period between July 8 and July 16 and “nine
crucial days,” in which two series with Chicago sandwiching the
Montreal set would prove whether the Mets were “for real” when the
“rubber hit the road.” The cliches were flying.

“Hey, wait’ll we get ‘em in Wrigley Field
next week,” one Met yelled. It was a further dig at Santo, who had
said that after losing two of three in New York.

In the Cubs’ clubhouse, Santo sat dazed from
the heat, the long day, and especially the loss. “I still don’t
believe it,” he said.

Durocher, who called the 1-0 victory over
Tom Seaver tantamount to a World Series game, shrugged off this one
as “just another ball game. Don’t forget who’s in first place.”
When the reporters began to ask actual questions, he cut them off
in his inimitable style.

That night, as the Mets gleefully made their
way to O’Hare, escaping the brutal Chicago heat for the cooler
climes of Canada and another series with the Expos, Ed Charles
comprised a poem:

“East Side, West Side,

The fans are feeling gay.

After seven long, long years,

The Mets are on their way

“South side, north side,

The word is going ‘round,

When October rolls around,

The Mets will win the crown,

“East Side, West Side,

The fans are feeling gay.

After seven long, long years,

The Mets are on their way.”

Whether a player today, post-Stonewall,
would refer to Mets fans as “feeling gay” is doubtful, but the
point of Charles’s poem was heartfelt. They were 51-37,
three-and-a-half games back with the All-Star break coming up. The
“other New York baseball team” lost to fall 22 games out of first
place.

“
After seven long, long
years, the Mets were, indeed, on their way,” wrote Schaap and
Zimmerman in
The Year the Mets Lost Last Place
.

“What ever happened to ‘Marvelous Marv?’
”

****

Truly, after the Pentecostal spiritual that
was Tom Seaver’s “birth of a true New York Sports Icon,” the Mets -
like the early Christian martyrs - had faced great adversity in the
immediate aftermath of the event. They had not suffered at the
hands of Roman persecutors, but like the apostles did triumph over
evil, or at least the dark forces of Leo Durocher and the vile
“bleacher bums.”

The momentum they had at mid-season, the
confidence they felt, the optimism of their manager and star
pitcher, and of course the high hopes of a whole city – indeed an
entire country – were overflowing. The historical memory informs us
that they rode their victory train like destiny’s child. But
history is filled with bumps and bruises.

School texts often gloss over the details of
the American Revolution, as if we declared our independence, George
Washington won a few battles, and the Constitution wrote itself.
Americans are often unable to concede the possibility that victory
in World War II was not inevitable, preferring to pay little heed
to the closeness of losing at Midway, or early losses to the
“Desert Fox.”

Indeed, experience informs us that greatness
is forged through great trials and tribulations. The New York Mets
still faced their greatest challenges down the road to . . .
destiny.

The wrath of Gil

Because all those men which have seen my
glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness,
and have tempted me now these 10 times, and have not hearkened to
my voice;

Surely they shall not see the land which I
sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked
me see it:

- Numbers: 22-23

God spoke to Moses, and told him to lead his
Chosen People, the Jews, out of Egyptian bondage to the Promised
Land of Israel. Moses did so, with the help of miracles performed
by God, most notably the parting of the Red Sea.

God gave Moses the Ten Commandments by
which His people were to live by, but the Jews did not obey. After
a golden calf was made and worshipped by the population, God poured
His wrath upon His people, threatening that the Promised Land they
sought would
not
be forthcoming.

Moses prayed that the Lord be forgiving, and
eventually, after 40 years wandering in the wilderness, the
Promised Land was found and occupied, but not until the Canaanites
were defeated in battle.

The Jews had to earn the Promised Land.

So it came to pass that after the “birth” of
the “savior” Tom Seaver on July 9, 1969, the New York Mets could
see the Promised Land. It was so close they could touch it, almost
tasting the “land of milk and honey.” But like the Biblical Chosen
People, they would not simply enter it. They would have to fight
for it. And they would face his wrath first; the wrath of Gil
Hodges.

****

After the series at Wrigley Field, the Mets
traveled to Montreal where they took on the first-year expansion
Expos. Montreal under manager Gene Mauch was not as bad as the 1962
Mets, but they were close: 52-110. Yet somehow, they played the
Mets fairly even in 1969, at least in the first half of the season.
They had knocked the superstar Tom Seaver around on Opening Day,
before he was a superstar. They took a game at Shea Stadium
sandwiched in between the crucial Cubs series, but neither of those
two wins came easily for New York.

Then the Mets rode into Montreal so high
they did not need an airplane. Choose your historical metaphor:
they were the rebs after Manassas I, the Japanese after Pearl,
Nixon after beating McGovern. Each would learn it was not so easy
after all. At first it seemed to be more of the same, with Koosman
gliding to a 5-2 win.

But the next day the great Tom Seaver, the
unhittable master, the superstar, the savior; was terribly
distressed by severe stiffness, which became
actual pain
in
his throwing shoulder. He lost a pedestrian 5-4 game to Bill
Stoneman, a pretty good pitcher who threw a no-hitter in 1969. The
next day Gary Gentry pitched well, but not well enough in a 3-2
loss. They lost a series to
the Expos
.

After that came the All-Star break, a needed
and necessary three days off for most ball clubs, but curiously not
of value to the Mets. Regardless of the Montreal series, the Mets
were the hot team in the National League and were better off
playing other not-so-hot teams.

Nevertheless, the break came. Some of the
Mets coaches went up to the Catskills. They were notorious
cheapskates, complaining about the cost of everything; gotta tip
this guy, gotta tip that guy. Then again, this was an era in which
the minimum big league salary was around $7,000 a year. These guys
were working men, not retired millionaires from their playing days
who coached out of a sense of
noblesse oblige.

A crowd of 42,259 showed up at Washington’s
recently re-named Robert F. Kennedy Stadium (originally Griffith
Stadium, named after Calvin Griffith, but no longer popular after
taking the original Senators to Minnesota, turning them into the
Twins). A black-tie dinner honoring the Greatest Team Ever in honor
of professional baseball’s 100
^th
anniversary, and a
White House reception, highlighted the social calendar. President
Richard Nixon was an enormous baseball fan who was reading the
Washington Post
Sunday statistics of all big league players
when he was informed that President Eisenhower had suffered a heart
attack in 1955, thus making him acting President. Seaver met the
fellow Californian, whose wife was, like he, a USC alum (Nixon
often courted her, sometimes even driving her when she dated
other guys
, at SC football games in the 1930s).