THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (9 page)

An extraordinary amount of athletic talent
flowed to the professional sports leagues from USC and California
in general. Huge crowds watching Trojan football games at the L.A.
Memorial Coliseum played a large role in luring the Dodgers and
Lakers out west. Dedeaux modernized the collegiate game from a
“club sport” to a pipeline for the pros. Utilizing the perfect
California weather, he turned his into a year-round program. There
was “fall ball” from September to Thanksgiving; followed by a full
slate of 50-60 games in the spring instead of a paltry 20 or 25.
But it was summer ball that Dedeaux turned into breeding grounds
for diamond success.

A college player generally returned to his
hometown after school let out and played on a pick-up team, or a
ragamuffin semi-pro outfit. The competition was not good and
players benefited little, returning to school without having
progressed. Dedeaux wanted his players to experience something akin
to minor league life; playing nightly games, traveling, and
handling a fast brand of ball that prepared them for the college
season, then a pro career.

In the 1950s he sent his players to Canada,
where in addition to good baseball experience they enjoyed the
educational aspects of life in an “exotic” locale far from home.
When Alaska became a state, Red Boucher raised money to build a
first class facility and began recruiting the best collegians to
Fairbanks. Dedeaux and USC were his number one source. A league was
developed with teams in Fairbanks, Anchorage (the Glacier Pilots
and later the North Pole Knicks), the Palmer Valley Green Giants,
and the Kenai Peninsula Oilers. Teams from Canada and the
contiguous lower 48 states traveled to Alaska. The sun almost never
set in the summer. Lights were not needed. On June 21 a “midnight
sun” game starting at 11 P.M. was played without any lighting. The
Alaskan teams also traveled, playing in an end-of summer tournament
called the National Baseball Congress in Wichita, Kansas. The NBC
featured all the best teams from across America. The Canadian teams
generally played in the Kamloops International Tournament.

Years later, when Tom Seaver became a
broadcaster even before his playing career ended, he told partner
Joe Garagiola of his Alaskan experience during a World Series
telecast.

“They play baseball in Alaska?” asked
Garagiola.

“Really good baseball, Joe,” replied
Seaver.

“Tell me about it,” inquired Garagiola, and
Seaver did just that.

In June, 1964 Seaver boarded a plane for
Fairbanks to join a team consisting of future big leaguers Monday,
Nettles, Curt Motton, Ken Holtzman and Gary Sutherland of USC. They
were All-Americans with national reputations. Seaver was
immediately intimidated, wondering whether he, a junior college
pitcher still battling the insecurities of a nothing prep career,
could compete at this level. He had little time for contemplation
once he arrived, however. Boucher’s wife met him at the
airport.

“We’re playing a game right now,” she told
him. “I brought a uniform with me. You can put it on at the field.
We may need you.”

The beautiful stadium and the large crowd
struck Seaver. In a town of 20,000, some 50,000 people attended
Goldpanners games.

“I dressed in a shack near the field,”
Seaver recalled.

There was no time for introductions when he
arrived in the dugout, beyond Boucher’s handshake and orders to get
to the bullpen to warm up
right now.
The score was tied 2-2
with the Bellingham, Washington Bells in the fifth inning as Seaver
hurriedly got loose, was waved into the game and “met my catcher on
the way to the mound.”

He proceeded to retire the side, then met
his teammates in the dugout. That night, Seaver pitched effectively
in relief, earning a hard-fought victory and the respect of his
all-star mates. He was used mainly in relief, later rating himself
the “third- or fourth-line pitcher” on the ‘Panners. He lived with
the Bouchers. Aside from being a community leader, Red was a sharp
baseball man who taught young Seaver important lessons on the
psychology of pitching. He was very much like Tom’s optimist
mother. Seaver came to understand that half the battle was
believing in himself. Through psychology and the experience of
successfully testing himself against the best, he was gaining
invaluable confidence. Boucher told him that each morning he needed
to wake up and say to himself, “I
am
a Major Leaguer.”

Dedeaux coached a summer team of USC players
in Los Angeles that traveled to Fairbanks. Seaver pitched and mowed
them down with high heat. When Boucher yelled at Dedeaux from
across the field how it was going, the USC coached cracked, “How
the hell would I know? I haven’t seen the ball since the second
inning.” Seaver’s scholarship offer was seemingly secured that
night, but there were still bumps in the road.

In August the Goldpanners made their way to
Wichita for the NBC, stopping in Grand Junction, Colorado for a
tune-up against a fast semi-pro outfit. Seaver started but was
hammered off the mound. NBC rules required the roster be reduced to
18 players. Boucher had to decide between Seaver and Holtzman, an
All-American at the University of Illinois. He visited Seaver in
his hotel room to inquire of his confidence, but the young
Californian just told him to “try me.” Boucher kept Seaver.

Against the Wichita Glassmen, Seaver was
called on in relief with the Goldpanners winning 2-0. The bases
were loaded in the fifth inning with one out. Boucher tried to
steady his reliever, but Seaver just growled that he had “listened
to you all summer long. Now it’s up to me. Give me the ball and get
out of here.”

Confident or not, it took some doing for
Seaver to steady himself. Two walks and an infield hit pushed
across three runs and now the Goldpanners trailed, 3-2. A
double-play kept the damage down. Over the next innings Seaver
gained command. It was before the days of the designated hitter. In
the eighth inning with the bases loaded Seaver came to the plate.
Boucher saw something in the young man who had once batted .543
with 10 home runs in little league. He decided to let him hit.
Seaver responded with a grand slam to win the game. He pitched and
won a second game in the tournament, earning summer All-American
honors from the National Baseball Congress. For the first time,
professional scouts were evaluating him.

“We had a lot of players who could throw the
ball harder than Tom,” Boucher recalled. “His fastball moved well,
but he was no Sandy Koufax. His curve and slider were not much
better than average by college standards. His greatest asset was
his tremendous will to win. And he had this super concentration. He
believed he could put the ball right
through
the bat if he
wanted to.”

Dedeaux called Boucher and inquired of
several USC players on the Fairbanks roster. Boucher interrupted
him to say that Seaver would be “your best pitcher.” Boucher
assured him that he would “bet on it,” to which Dedeaux replied
that the Alaska manager was so high on the kid “I really don’t have
any choice.”

Seaver had finally assured himself of the
scholarship. He arrived at USC during a golden age on campus and in
Los Angeles. That fall of 1964, quarterback Craig Fertig led the
Trojans to a breathtaking comeback victory over Notre Dame, 20-17.
USC’s running back, Mike Garrett, would go on to become the first
of the school’s seven Heisman Trophy winners.

The actor Tom Selleck, a basketball, baseball and
volleyball star out of Van Nuys High School, was on campus. A few
years separated them, but Seaver and Bill Lee were in the program
at the same time. It was a dominant age, under athletic director
Jess Hill the greatest sustained sports run in college history.
Aside from Dedeaux’s perennial champions, John McKay’s football
team won two national titles and two Heismans in the decade. The
track, swimming and tennis teams won NCAA titles with
regularity.

Cross-town, John Wooden’s UCLA basketball dynasty
was just heating up that year. Big league baseball was in full
swing on the West Coast. The Los Angeles Angels were an expansion
team. The Giants and Dodgers had continued their rivalry in
California. Sandy Koufax and the Dodgers sold out the beautiful new
Dodger Stadium and won the World Series twice in three years.

The famed USC film school also became world
class at that time. Two of their most famous students were in
school when Seaver was there. George Lucas would create the
blockbuster
Star Wars
series. John Milius wrote the
screenplays
Dirty Harry
and
Magnum Force
; then
directed
The Wind and the Lion
and
Red Dawn
, among
many others. He would become known as the most conservative
filmmaker in notoriously liberal Hollywood. Another aspiring film
student was turned down by USC. Steven Spielberg had to settle for
Long Beach State, but as friends with Lucas and Milius, Spielberg
was hanging around the campus so much he seemed to have
matriculated there.

Those three became friends with Francis Ford
Coppola, who was attending film school at UCLA along with future
Doors’ rock legends Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore.
Together, Lucas, Milius, Spielberg and Coppola hatched a
hare-brained scheme to go to Vietnam with actors to film a
“docu-drama” in the style of
Medium Cool
, which was
half-movie, half-footage from the 1968 Democrat National Convention
in Chicago. The Vietnam idea was nixed (for some odd reason) by the
Pentagon, but eventually became
Apocalypse Now
, featuring
the haunting music of Morrison singing “The End.” All of it was
detailed in a fabulous 1998 Hollywood book by Peter Biskind called
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
and in the documentary
Hearts
of Darkness.

The USC campus has always been conservative,
fraternity-oriented and traditional, but even more so when Seaver
arrived. That fall, Republican Presidential candidate Barry
Goldwater energized a conservative movement based in nearby Orange
County, embodied by Republican student politics at USC. Numerous
USC (and UCLA) graduates made up the campaign and later
administration staffs of Richard Nixon. Among them were Watergate
figures H.R. Haldemann, John Erlichman, Dwight Chapin, and Donald
Segretti. In the 1976 film
All the President’s Men
, the
Segretti character tells Dustin Hoffman, playing Carl Bernstein,
about the so-called “USC Mafia” of that era.

Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy was
received like a conquering hero when he toured for his
autobiography
Will
, on campus in 1983. When Democrat
Presidential nominee Walter Mondale campaigned at USC in 1984, he
was met by the resounding chant, “Reagan country” in favor of the
incumbent President. According to student accounts, controversial
filmmaker Michael Moore was booed off stage when he screen
Fahrenheit 9/11
on campus, leading him to start wearing a
UCLA cap.

Bill Lee got a taste of the stuck-up nature
of social life on campus, which he described in his riotous 1984
autobiography,
The Wrong Stuff.
Lee was dating a beautiful
sorority sister until movie star “Alan Ladd’s kid snaked her away
from me,” presumably with a show of wealth.

Seaver enrolled as a pre-dental student,
joined a fraternity, and quickly made friends with Dedeaux’s son,
Justin. His Marine experience immediately separated him from the
silly frat boys. He also befriended Garrett. This arrangement came
to symbolize all that is righteous about college sports. Here was
Seaver, the white middle class son of an affluent business
executive, “prejudiced” while in high school, paired with Garrett,
the black inner city son of a single mother. Had they not been
teammates at USC, these two never would have found each other.
Instead they became the best of friends.

Garrett was an introspective young man bound
and determined to make the most of his opportunity. He had been an
All-American at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles and of course
made his name on the football field, winning the Heisman Trophy in
1965 and helping the Kansas City Chiefs win the 1970 Super Bowl.
Eventually, he graduated from law school and became USC’s athletic
director, where he hired the great Pete Carroll in 2000. Garrett
was serious about baseball, too. He even took some time off from
his NFL career to pursue the game in the Dodgers’ organization
before returning to the San Diego Chargers in 1971.

“Mike was serious about things,” said
assistant USC football coach Dave Levy. “One time he and I got into
a big discussion and he expressed frustration that he could not
rent an apartment in Pasadena because he was black. I just told him
he needed to understand there were white folks of good conscience
and that you had to let people change. I had discussions with black
kids at USC and I said they needed to take advantage of the
educational opportunities that sports provided them. Mike came to
agree with me."

“If you’d told me that a black kid from
Boyle Heights would win the Heisman Trophy,” Garrett said on the
History of USC Football
DVD (2005), “I’d have just said,
‘You’re crazy.’ ”

Seaver and Garrett were both intensely
dedicated. They worked out together. Justin Dedeaux was amazed that
Seaver could keep up with Garrett stride-for-stride running wind
sprints. The Garrett-Seaver relationship also directly marks the
beginning of a revolution in sports training, with profound
consequences. Baseball players were told not to lift weights; that
to do so would “tie up” their muscles, making them unable to throw
and swing the bat. But Seaver had seen how much better he had
gotten when he got stronger lifting boxes and later doing push-ups,
pull-ups and rifle exercises in the Marines.