THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (92 page)

Carlton won four Cy Young’s (1972, 1977,
1980, 1982) to Seaver’s three, but Seaver should have won five
(denied in 1971 and 1981). Carlton never won the MVP award, which
Seaver did not, either, but the 1969 vote was a misdirected joke.
Carlton did not win the Rookie of the Year award. Carlton benefited
from excellent offensive support in St. Louis and strong
Philadelphia clubs of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1972, he had his best
year (27-10, 1.97 ERA, 310 strikeouts, eight shutouts). On paper,
it may have been better than any year Seaver ever had, but all
things considered it was a close call, since Seaver was just as
dominant in 1969, 1971, and for the most part in 1973. Carlton did
it on a last-place club, but in one of the most startling turn of
events ever, the Phillies scored and defended brilliantly when
Lefty took the hill.

Carlton was a key member of two World
Champions; the dominant ace of the second one (1980), but he played
with the great Mike Schmidt and never had to carry a club in the
manner Seaver carried the 1969 or 1973 Mets.

Carlton surpassed Seaver with 329 wins, but
his percentage of .574, loss total (244), ERA (3.22) and shutouts
(55) fell short of the Mets’ right-hander. Where Carlton makes
strong claim is in the strikeout department. He and Ryan dueled
each other, each trading off on the all-time mark previously held
by Walter Johnson. Carlton finished with 4,136, but Ryan passed
that mark and then some.

All in all, the argument as to who was
better, Seaver or Carlton, is a very close, subjective one. It
could go either way. Perhaps Seaver’s more heroic stature as a
person and role model compared to the taciturn, conspiracy-theorist
Carlton, gives the slight edge to “Tom Terrific.”

Since Seaver’s 1987 retirement, three
hurlers have had astonishing careers that challenge if not surpass
Seaver’s record. Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson have
in many ways broken new ground. Steroid suspicions have dogged
Clemens and Johnson. The longevity and effectiveness of the modern
athlete is absolutely extraordinary.

Clemens, a teammate of Seaver’s on the 1986
Red Sox, has compiled records that, on paper at least, place him in
a position to possibly even claim that he is the best pitcher in
baseball history. He has, to use a phrase, “punched every ticket.”
Seaver pitched 20 years. 2007 marked Clemens’s 24
^th
. His
352-183 record put him in a position to challenge Warren Spahn’s
363 wins and the unheard-of 373 that both Christy Mathewson and
Grover Cleveland Alexander won, tied for the National League record
and trailing only Cy Young (511) and Walter Johnson (416) on the
all-time list. Clemens’s .658 percentage bests Seaver’s .606. He
compiled 4,157 strikeouts and a 3.12 ERA in a steroid-induced
hitter’s era.

Clemens played when play-offs went seven
games as well as Divisional Series. He was 14-9 in post-season
play. Roger was a pivotal member of two New York Yankees World
Championship teams, but did not carry either as Seaver had the 1969
Mets. Where Clemens appears to separate himself from the pack is in
his extraordinary seven Cy Young awards. He also won the 1986
American League Most Valuable Player and Major League Player of the
Year awards, both honors that eluded Seaver. Clemens was not the
Rookie of the Year.

In 20 seasons through
2007, Randy Johnson – like Seaver a USC Trojan –
was 284-150 for a .654 percentage. Injuries may
prevent him from reaching the 300-win milestone that is considered
a major dividing line of historical greatness. Johnson had 4,616
strikeouts and a 3.22 ERA. He pitched Arizona to the 2001 World
Championship, earning co-MVP honors in the Series with teammate
Curt Schilling. Johnson also won five Cy Young awards. In this
respect, he and Seaver are part of a remarkable group of Trojan
pitchers (including Barry Zito of Oakland, 2002) who have a
combined nine Cy Youngs. Johnson was not Rookie of the
Year.

Greg Maddux was not a strikeout
artist like Seaver, Carlton, Clemens or Johnson. His 341-212 record
averages to a .617 percentage along with a sterling 3.10 earned run
average. Maddux won four Cy Youngs, numerous Gold Gloves (no Rookie
of the Year), and played on the Braves’ 1995 World Series winners.
That was his best year. He missed 20 because the strike cut a few
games off the schedule, but finished 19-2 with a 1.63
ERA.

His teammates Tom Glavine and John Smoltz
are considered a notch below him. Glavine is a sure Hall of Famer;
Smoltz a likely inductee but less a lock than the other two. Great
relief pitchers of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s have included Dennis
Eckersley, Mariano Rivera and the Mets’ own John Franco.

Not factoring in steroids, an honest
assessment of Seaver probably ranks him second among all post-World
War II pitchers, behind Clemens, “tied” with Carlton, but ahead of
Spahn, Maddux, and Johnson. There are a numbers of factors that can
be used to argue on behalf of Seaver as being number one, but
Clemens’s Cy Young awards, total wins, percentage, strikeouts, two
World Championships, and MVP award put him in front. Gibson,
Marichal, Koufax, Perry, Hunter, Palmer, Don Drysdale, Jim Bunning
and others each lack some important ingredient that would let them
challenge Seaver’s place in the pantheon.

This leaves the baseball historian with the
task of assessing Seaver’s place not just among pitchers after
World War II, but of all time. Baseball is a unique game; the only
one that truly accords great respect to the records of its oldest
old-timers. Red Grange, for instance, is not somebody generally
mentioned alongside Barry Sanders. Hank Luisetti has no supporters
urging his ranking ahead of Michael Jordan. Johnny Weismuller was
no Mark Spitz. This said, one cannot completely discount the
possibility that had Grange been born in 1966, given training
methods, diet and lifestyle advantages of the era, by 1988 he would
have been as good as Sanders.

In the last decade, the fact old-timers did
not play against blacks is used as the biggest diminishment of
their greatness. What is required is a skillful, knowledgeable
ability to factor in all the factors, this being a major one. The
statistics of the old timers – Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner,
Napoleon Lajoie, “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, Eddie Collins, Tris
Speaker, George Sisler, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, and others – are
wildly skewed. It is ridiculous to contemplate that Ty Cobb would
have hit .367 in the modern era. It is not ridiculous to
contemplate that he may have hit .303, as Pete Rose did.

Therefore, one must consider all the
variables when discussing the great pitchers; modern vs. old-timer.
Logic tells us that if Christy Mathewson would have been
transformed by time machine from 1905 to 1969 and asked to pitch in
the Major Leagues, he probably would have been effective. He might
have been an All-Star. He would not have won 31 games and almost
surely would not have thrown three shutouts in the World
Series.

Had Mathewson been born in 1944, raised in
Fresno, played at USC on a scholarship, and broken into the big
leagues in 1967, he may well have been a fine pitcher. He was 6-1
1/2 and weighed 195 pounds. With a modern diet and weight training
he may have been an inch taller, 15 or so pounds heavier, and
thrown five or seven miles per hour harder.

Baseball, as has been mentioned, is
resistant to the notion that the Mathewson’s and Cobb’s are not as
great as the Tony Gwynn’s and Tom Seaver’s. Despite all the factors
used against him, it is still apparent that Ruth was the greatest
of all players, if not all athletes. His pitching, sheer dominant
chasm between his statistics and the rest of baseball, particularly
in the early 1920s, and revolutionary shadow he cast over American
sports and society, cannot be denied.

The attempt to rank Seaver, as well as
Carlton, Koufax, Clemens and even Bob Feller, with those 37-game
winners of the 1900s is just too subjective. Suffice to say Seaver
and his fellow moderns deserve mention with Cy Young, Christy
Mathewson, Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Lefty
Grove, the dominant pitching aces of
The Glory of Their
Times
and the pre-World War II era.

The average sportswriter never played
baseball, or at least not very well. Most were lucky to have made
it past the high school junior varsity, which is what spurred them
on to a sportswriting career in the first place. Never having
competed at a high level, to be “in the arena,” as Teddy Roosevelt
put it, they often fail to grasp just what all-time greatness in
sports truly is.

To consider all the millions of kids
worldwide who started playing ball at age five, six, eight; and the
winnowing-out process that follows: the move to the big diamond,
actual cuts in high school, scholarships, the draft, the minors,
the “dog eat dog” process of ascending to the Majors . . .

Then, the separation of all those fine
athletes into the stars, the superstars, then the Hall of Famers,
and finally the most elite names of all. There is luck, timing,
hard work, but most of all a God-given talent that is awe-inspiring
when viewed in the overall context of things. Tom Seaver is among
that elite group; in fact, he is near the top of the list.

****

Tom Seaver did reach the $200,000 salary
that he stated was his long-range goal in the 1969-70 off-season.
Free agency hit with all of its cataclysmic effect in the
mid-1970s. Seaver was in his prime, able to take full advantage of
it, and became one of the highest-paid athletes in the world for
the better part of a decade. The $200,000 figure was passed; left
in the dust as Seaver and his fellow sports stars ascended towards
the $1 million mark and beyond.

By the mid-1980s, the money was exorbitant,
although paling in comparison to 2000s figures. Still, Seaver was
not part of that generation – Mays, Aaron – who looked back
bitterly at the times passing them by. He had not come along too
soon. He came along just in time.

Seaver was one of the most marketable
athletes in the world throughout the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
He has remained marketable since. He took 100 percent advantage of
his New York base and reputation, doing numerous ads. One of his
most memorable was for a line of clothes. It fit perfectly with
Seaver’s three-piece suit image, depicting him pitching on the
mound at Shea in business clothes, the tag line being that Seaver
was a corporate tycoon on the mound.

He wrote, and was the subject of a number of
books; some authorized, others not so. He wrote a novel, another
book on baseball’s great moments, and
How I Would Pitch to Babe
Ruth
in which he dissected mound strategies to various sluggers
of history. Seaver was involved in various other literary projects,
but curiously the “quintessential Seaver book” has never been
written; either in autobiographical or biographical form. Those
books, along with films and documentaries about the 1969 Mets, are
begging to be done by somebody.

Book offers have been spurned by his agent,
Matt Merola (who represents retired stars like Reggie Jackson), who
demanded larger sums of money than most publishers are willing to
depart with. Merola claimed that, “Tom can make more money sitting
at home signing autographs” than he could writing a book, which may
be true. For a man with a sense for baseball history like Seaver,
however, it seems odd he would not want it all in the historical
record; his way, his words, once and for all.

Seaver benefited hugely from the enormous
memorabilia market, which has always thrived in New York City. His
memory and nostalgia for the 1969 Amazin’ Mets remain golden.
People line up for blocks, bidding large sums, for those things
attached to Seaver and the Mets. However, many have complained of
Seaver.

“Seaver wants too much money,” is the
constant refrain of publishers, promoters and those who wish to
have him involved in various projects; autograph signings,
appearances. On the one hand, he appears greedy; on the other, he
is a good businessman who gets what he gets because people will pay
for it, and he knows it.

Tom Seaver started broadcasting while still
playing, for channel two in New York (1975). He announced
post-season games for ABC and NBC until 1984. In 1977, life
imitated art at Yankee Stadium. Seaver was in the announcer’s booth
doing ABC color commentary, alongside sportscasting legends Howard
Cosell and Keith Jackson. Reggie Jackson welcomed himself into the
exclusive true New York Sports Icon club, pounding three home runs
(five overall) to lead the Bronx Bombers to their first World
Championship since 1962, four games to two over Los Angeles. This
event may well be the closest one to the 1969 Mets as an exciting
sports story. Yankees fans surely would argue it was bigger.

At NBC, Seaver also broadcast professional
golf. After retirement from playing, he broadcasted the NBC
Saturday
Game of the Week
, the pre-eminent weekly showcase
in the days before Fox Sports, ESPN and cable. Among his broadcast
partners were Joe Garagiola and the legendary Vin Scully. Seaver’s
paring with the great Scully was an honor and a privilege that
almost matched his accomplishments as an athlete.

From 1989 to 1993, Seaver was on the WPIX
channel 11 broadcast team for the New York Yankees. In 1999, he
re-joined the Mets as Gary Thorne’s broadcast partner on WPIX. A
few years later, he retired and moved back to his home state of
California.

Around 1977
, while still
in his pitching prime, Seaver’s brother-in-law asked him what he
intended to do when he retired. "I told him that I intended to go
back to California and grow grapes," he said. "It just kind of
emerged from the back of my mind and I think there was an amalgam
of reasons."