THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (74 page)

Dallas, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle . . .
these and other cities won titles in different sports. None of it
compared. The Mets – in conjunction with the Jets and less than
half a year later the Knicks – were the last champions, the last
magic,
The Last Miracle
.

****

For millions of New Yorkers, and millions
more throughout the Fruited Plain, the morning of October 16, 1969
dawned with the kind of anticipation one usually reserves for the
birth of a child, a wedding day, a long-anticipated re-union. There
was religious fervor to the day, spirituality, a sense of destiny.
Everybody
was following this story. Prisoners in the Hanoi
Hilton knew about it. Soldiers in the central highlands knew about
it. Soviets knew about it. USC football coach John McKay once said,
“A billion Chinamen couldn’t care less” if his Trojans lost to
Notre Dame, but in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, even
they
knew about it.

Tom Seaver woke up that morning fatigued,
aching, and exhilarated. His work was done. He could be a fan, a
cheerleader. What a day! He knew that he was now a true New York
Sports Icon. He had put himself in a position to walk the streets
of New York, his privacy forever gone, replaced by the
celebrityhood of Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley.
The reality if this discomfiting notion had not yet hit home. In
truth he would not have welcomed this pagan idolatry, but the dye
was cast, the Rubicon crossed. He was, as he put it in
The
Perfect Game
, “public property.”

Game five featured Koosman against McNally,
the two dueling pitching
artistes
of game two: one a flame
throwing southpaw, the other a crafty one. Both were big league
stars of the first order.

Baltimore was stunned by fate but came out
like professionals trying to see the bright side. For a team that
won 109 games and swept the Championship Series, winning three
straight was routine. McNally over Koosman, then it was Gentry, and
he could be beat . . .

57,397 fans jammed Shea, hawking with cries,
shouts and Pentecostal enthusiasm. Pearl Bailey, a big Mets fan and
good friend of Mrs. Payson, sang the National Anthem. While waiting
to be introduced, she stood next to Koosman warming up. She told
him she was into astrology or something, and saw “the number
eight,” and “you’re going to win the game.” The contest started and
the two pitchers settled into their work, which was to render bats
quite useless. Then in the third, Baltimore made their move . . .
finally. Belanger opened the inning with an opposite-field single,
bringing up McNally.

“With McNally up, we were expecting a bunt,”
Koosman said. In accord with that expectation, Koosman fired a high
strike. McNally did not bunt. He was not a great hitter, not like
some pitchers – Don Drysdale, Warren Spahn, to name a couple – but
he handled the bat and swung away, hitting a two-run home run over
the left field fence. It was a surprise that shocked the fans, but
at the same time there was something unsaid: McNally was doing the
hitting for Baltimore, not their sluggers. B. Robby, F. Robby,
Powell; all were in slumps.

That premise only lasted a couple of
batters. Koosman got the next two outs, then faced Frank Robinson,
the ultimate competitor. He boasted of only two singles in 16
at-bats. Robinson, one of the greatest home run sluggers of all
time, got hold of one and drove it
deep
over the center
field wall to make it 3-0, Orioles.

The massive crowd began to rationalize; no
home field celebration, on to Baltimore. In the dugout, Gary Gentry
began to feel the nerves that would come with pitching at Memorial
Stadium against the surging home champions. What were the chances
that Agee would save his skin this time? The fan Tom Seaver began
to morph into the professional hero who would have to win game
seven like Koufax and Gibson in recent years.

“Seaver could win with bad stuff,” said Ed
Charles. “He was such a competitor with a gift for self-analysis.
He always knew just what it would take to win on a given day.
Koosman was so strong that he could struggle for the first part of
a game then suddenly just start blowing you away.”

Which is what happened. After the third,
Jerry was untouchable. But could the Mets score three off of
McNally? They had barely sniffed him in Baltimore. In the top of
the sixth Frank Robinson, an all-time hit-by-pitch artist, backed
off an inside fast ball, then said it grazed his uniform. Umpire
Lou DiMuro said no. Robinson and Weaver argued vociferously, which
of course woke up the throng.

Robinson “disappeared into the runway behind
the dugout for five minutes while the trainer sprayed his thigh
with a freezing medication and while everybody in the stadium
waited,” wrote Joseph Durso. “Then he returned, was greeted by a
sea of waving handkerchiefs and struck out.”

Baltimore’s protests were “long and
ineffectual,” wrote Roger Angell. DiMuro’s examination of the shoe
polish baseball was done with “the air of Maigret,” whereupon it
was pronounced “the true Shinola.”

The argument was lost, Robby was set down,
and Koosman was now at the top of his game, pitching better than
Seaver the previous day. In the bottom half of the inning, Cleon
Jones stepped in. McNally came in low and inside. The ball skipped
past his foot, but Jones said he had been struck. Jones was not
adamant. He wanted to hit. DiMuro again did not call it. But
on-deck hitter Donn Clendenon told Hodges he had seen the ball hit
Jones’s shoe. Hodges casually meandered out to the batter’s circle,
quietly spoke with Jones, then informed DiMuro that his man had
been hit. DiMuro . . .
demurred
; that is, until Hodges
retrieved the ball and showed it to him.

“Then, with the precarious resolve of a
judge letting a guilty defendant go free on a technicality, he
straightened up, took a deep breath, and thrust out his right arm,
index finger pointing to first base,” wrote Joseph Reichler in
Baseball’s Great Moments
. “The 57,397 spectators roared
their approval.

“Surprisingly, plaintiff Weaver did not
hotly contest the circumstantial evidence . . . Having been found
in contempt and ordered from the premises the previous day, Weaver
was not anxious for another ejection.”

Many in the press box recalled a similar
incident involving Milwaukee’s Nippy Jones against New York’s Ryne
Duren in the 1957 World Series. DiMuro explained that when Hodges
showed him the baseball, it had a
shoe polish
smudge on it.
To this day, the story has holes. Shoe polish? Yes, in those days
clubhouse attendants did clean and shine the player’s spikes before
every game. They used an old fashioned polish, buffing it with a
cloth or brush for some sheen. In later years, the shoe polish was
replaced by a liquid application. Modern baseball shoes have a
different kind of leather, less subject to scuffs and dirt.
Generally, these shoes are wiped clean using a wet cloth, retaining
a shine.

While Jones would have been wearing polished
shoes, by the sixth inning the cool air, the dust, grass and
activity, would seemingly have made it unlikely that polish could
still be fresh enough to rub off on a glancing baseball. Many have
said Hodges put polish on his fingers, smudging that ball when he
picked it up, which in the strange pantheon of baseball would have
been an acceptable form of gamesmanship that Leo Durocher could
applaud.

Swoboda told Peter Golenbock that “it made
sense for you to keep a ball with shoe polish smudges on it in the
dugout somewhere, and as soon as a pitch is close, toss that sucker
out there and say, ‘Here’s shoe polish on the ball.’ ”

“After the ball bounced, it came into our
dugout,” said Koosman. “The ball came to me, and Gil told me to
brush it against my shoe, and I did, and he came over and got the
ball from me and took it out there and showed the umpire, ‘There is
shoe polish on the ball.’ ”

The argument left McNally stewing on the
mound. Weaver, to quote Rube Walker, had about as much chance under
these circumstances “as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking
contest.” Not this year. Not in this place.

With Jones at first, Clendenon came to bat.
With the count two-and-two, he got hold of one, knocking a two-run
homer over the left field fence. It was 3-2, but it was over. It
had been over for two days. Yogi Berra said, “It’s never over ‘til
it’s over.” It was over. The script had been written. The crowd was
now out of control, sensing it, the drama and hysterical craziness
of it all building to the boiling point.

McNally retired the side. Then Koosman gave
his best imitation of Lefty Grove. He was not going to be touched
again today. In the bottom of the seventh, “Babe” Weis stepped in.
Improbably, many actually thought about a home run. He had done it
in Chicago. It was that kind of year, that sort of environment.
McNally just figured his best swing would result in a “can ‘o’
corn.” Weis took him deep. As the ball left Shea, the concept that
this was indeed an inspired act of God presented itself to the eyes
of spectators, at the park and watching on TV, changing from a
possibility to manifest truth. It was insane!

Koosman took the mound. This time he
resembled Warren Spahn. One-two-three. The Birds was dead. 3-3,
bottom of the eighth. Eddie Watt came in. If New York scored, they
only needed to hold the O’s one inning and it was theirs. Delirium
built, people edging to their feet, anticipating a riotous on-field
celebration. Cleon Jones met Watt with a hard drive over Blair’s
head for a double. Weaver and his team looked like Napoleon when he
sees the Prussians come to Wellington’s aid in the late afternoon
glare at Waterloo. Baltimore was the losers of history; at least
this history.

Clendenon tried to bunt, but it was too
hard. He was thrown out and Jones held. Swoboda took the stage
again. He slammed a hard-sinking liner to left, not unlike the ball
Brooks Robinson hit to him the previous day. Buford got there but
trapped it. Jones alertly waited halfway between second and third,
then raced home with the go-ahead run when the catch was not made.
The place was a mad house. Charles flied out, but Grote hit a
grounder to first. Powell bobbled it and threw late to Watt
covering the base. Swoboda was hustling. He scored the insurance
run that Koosman, now imitating Sandy Koufax, did not need anyway.
Still, it electrified the audience. This was it. A done deal. The
picture of Koosman hugging Swoboda as he scored appeared in
Life
magazine.

Koosman took the hill. The crowd was
screaming, incomprehensibly noisy, edging towards the aisles. New
York’s finest nervously eyed this nascent South American revolution
about to explode.

“It was so noisy at Shea you couldn’t hear
yourself think,” said Koosman. “And the cops and the specials were
already coming down the first row so people couldn’t mob the field.
It was so noisy you couldn’t even hear the bat on the ball.”

Koosman nervously worked Frank Robinson too
carefully, walking him, but quickly got Powell to ground into a
force. Brooks Robinson flied to Swoboda. Dave Johnson came to bat.
Koosman was in the maelstrom, something out of a 19
^th
Century poem about keeping one’s head when everyone else is losing
theirs. Calmly, he delivered to Johnson and induced a high, lazy
arc to Cleon Jones in left field.

“With all the noise, you couldn’t hear the
crack of the bat,” said Koosman. “I didn’t think it was going out,
but the fans were going
nuts
when the ball was in the air,
and I thought it was going to be a home run, but when I turned
around and looked at Cleon, I knew right away . . .”

Johnson later said he got all of it. Swoboda
in right felt at first that it could carry. “What stopped it from
going out?” he asked, implying unseen forces. It was 3:17 P.M.
Jones camped under it, made the catch, and like the Southern
Baptist he was, sunk to one knee in prayer.

Jones then sprinted to the infield for his
life while the world exploded. The Mets quickly celebrated on the
mound. Koosman jumped into Grote’s arms like a little kid, and then
“here come the fans,” he said. “They came right through the cops,
and my mind immediately went from celebration to running for your
life!”

Fans were coming over the top of the dugout,
falling on top of each other. The Mets were surrounded like British
soldiers in
Zulu
. Koosman tore one guy’s leg with spikes
stepping on and over him. The players quickly made for the dugout
like youths running from bulls at Pamplona. Each member of the
groundscrew was tasked with “saving” a base, but quickly gave up.
Jones never made it in. He jumped a fence! Fans were grabbing
everything; hats, gloves, bats. It was sheer bedlam.

“They did it with a full dose of the magic
that had spiced their unthinkable climb from ninth place in the
National League – 100-to-one shots who scraped their way to the
pinnacle as the waifs of Major League baseball,” wrote Joseph Durso
in the
New York Times.

“Children, housewives, mature men, all swarmed onto
the field where the Mets” had “beat the avalanche by a split
second.”

TV star Ray Romano was on the field after
the division-clincher. “I got hooked on Mets magic,” he said.

“I ran on the field three times,”
Malcolm
X
director Spike Lee said.

Later, Swoboda came out to see what was
going on; fans digging up the bases, the mound, home plate, the
turf. “It was the most appropriate loss of institutional control I
can ever recall,” he said. “The fans had a right to do that.
Besides, they had to re-sod the field for football anyway. What
difference did it make? Let them go out and have some fun.”

After several hours in the clubhouse, Seaver
and Gentry ventured out on the now-empty field. Gentry’s uniform
was still intact, but Seaver looked disheveled. Little clods of
turf lay all about, resembling Old Testament frogs having fallen on
ancient Egypt.