THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (67 page)

Baltimore led the East by six and a half
games in mid-June, 14 by mid-July, 15 1/2 by mid-August, and
clinched on September 12. Weaver, the little man with the little
man’s complex, bristled under the suggestion that anybody could
have managed this crew to the title. When the club gave him a raise
and some job security, he suggested they were fair but “could have
been fairer.”

The Orioles were utterly confident and
self-assured. With veteran superstars Brooks and Frank Robinson,
they resembled the old Yankees. The 1966 “Baby Birds” were a team
of untested youth, but the 1969 edition was absolutely impregnable.
They began a ritual called the “Kangaroo Court,” held after all
wins. F. Robby donned an English barrister-style wig (actually a
mop), used a bat as his gavel, and assessed “fines” (usually about
a dollar) for such “crimes” as eating at the post-game spread in
the nude, missing the laundry basket with a thrown sweatshirt, or
bad cowboy boots. At season’s end, the accumulated $475 was donated
to the children of Cincinnati catcher Pat Corrales, whose wife died
in childbirth that summer.

Like the 1968 Tigers, Baltimore did it late
and often, the Weaver/Oriole way: come back from the seventh inning
on (44 times), usually via a big hit. If Frank Robinson had ever
been in anybody’s shadow before, he firmly established and
separated himself from Mays, Aaron, Yaz, or the other stars.
Batting coach Charlie Lau was given much of the credit for the
club’s offensive improvements over 1968. Lau would become a legend,
teaching a downcut, line drive style with a one-armed
follow-through that George Brett credited with making him a
star.

Baltimore actually had some pitching beyond
Palmer, Cuellar and McNally. Tom Phoebus won 14. The bullpen was
sufficient: Eddie Watt, Pete Richert, Dick Hall, Dave Leonhard, and
Marcelino Lopez (29-15, 36 saves combined).

The American League Championship Series
started in Bloomington, Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium. The
Twins, 1965 A.L. pennant winners, had experienced ups and downs,
but under brash new manager Billy Martin they captured the West
Division. But Baltimore out-pitched, out-fielded and out-hit
Minnesota to easily capture the play-offs in three straight
games.

Cuellar and Minnesota’s Jim Perry hooked up
in a pitcher’s duel in the first game, won by Baltimore in 12
innings, 4-3. Perry led in the ninth until Powell homered to tie it
up. Baltimore won it, oddly, on a bunt by Blair in the
12
^th
that was not reacted to by third baseman Harmon
Killebrew or catcher John Roseboro, allowing Belanger to score. The
play was not called by the bunt-phobic Weaver. Blair did it on his
own.

Game two was a classic between 20-game
winners McNally and Dave Boswell, who managed to make the mistake
of drinking in the same bar as Martin. Somehow they got in a fight,
the reason for Martin’s first of many firings over the years. Curt
Motton, another one of Seaver’s teammates with the Alaska
Goldpanners, won the game for the Orioles with a pinch-single in
the 11
^th
, 1-0. McNally allowed three hits in going the
distance, utterly untouched by the powerful Minnesota offense.

Back in Baltimore, Brooks Robinson had four
hits and Palmer breezed to an easy 11-2 victory. Attendance in
Minnesota and Baltimore was below capacity despite good weather.
The play-off concept somehow had not caught on in the American
League, re-generating talk about saddling the public with extra
baseball games in the middle of the college and pro football
seasons.

The 1969 Orioles were an even better
baseball team than the 1968 Colts were a football team. In every
way, they were thought to be superior to the Mets. If the National
League champions had any chance, it would have to come from
superior pitching by Seaver and Koosman. Their respective
mediocrity against Atlanta made this problematic.

Mets fans certainly hoped against hope for
“magic,” a “miracle,” some kind of out-of-the-ordinary occurrence
that would give their club a chance at an upset. They had
experienced the joy of clinching the division and Championship
Series on their home turf, resulting in wild on-field celebrations.
That possibility seemed remote, since if the Mets were to beat
Baltimore, it would surely take six or seven games. The last two
would be at Memorial Stadium. A four- or five-game Mets win was not
in the cards.

Despite their disappointing attendance,
Baltimore had a core of enthusiastic, knowledgeable fans. A World
Series against the Mets represented a great opportunity to gain
some revenge and earn pride for their beleaguered city against the
“New Rome,” the mighty fortress of the American Empire, New York
City. They were modern day Gauls, Huns, Barbarians,
Carthaginians.

The tables were turned when it came to the
teams, however. These were not the old New York Yankees; dominant
and domineering. The Mets were David, the Biblical boy-warrior.
Baltimoreans saw their team, the modern version of the Philistine
Goliath, and wondered if Seaver or Koosman might just be able to
sling a rock at their “giant” with enough force to knock them down.
There was this disquieting notion that the Mets really were
“magical.” Could Baltimore stomach still another loss to a New York
team on the world stage?

****

As the Mets were boarding a plane at La
Guardia Airport after a short workout at Shea Stadium, the National
Guard was moving in on demonstrators in Chicago, protesting the
trial of the “Chicago Eight,” who had stirred the riots at the
previous year’s Democrat National Convention.

“New York City, on the other hand, became
our kingdom,” wrote Art Shamsky in
The Magnificent Seasons: How
the Jets, Mets, and Knicks Made Sports History and Uplifted a City
and the Country
. “Everyone was into the Mets. Newspapers,
television, and radio were covering our every move. Feature stories
on the manager, coaches, and players were everywhere and in every
medium. Governor Rockefeller invited the players and their families
to his ‘apartment’ on Fifth Avenue for a cocktail party the night
before we left for Baltimore. Now that was someone who was rich.
With famous paintings galore and an apartment as big as an estate,
the Governor and his wife were great hosts. To my best
recollection, I didn’t remember the team being invited to the
Governor’s apartment the year before when we finished near the
bottom of the standings.”

Mayor Lindsay was not to be one-upped by
Rocky. He showed up at La Guardia with an eight-piece band, and
read a poem, written by Jeff Greenfield:

“Ode to the New York Mets

“Oh, the outlook isn’t pretty for the
Orioles today.

They may have won the pennant, but the Mets
are on their way,

And when manager Gil Hodges’ supermen get
through with Baltimore,

They’ll be the champions of the world –
they’ll win it in four.

The experts say they cannot win, but they’ll
just eat their words.

When Jones and Koos and Agee pluck the
feathers off those Birds,

When Gentry shuts out Robinson and Ryan does
the same,

The world will know the Mets have come to
dominate the game,

With Harrelson and Kranepool, with Gaspar
and with Weis,

With Grote, Shamsky, Boswell – we’ve got the
games on ice,

And when we’ve got a manager like Gilbert
Raymond Hodges

We’ve got a team that makes up for the
Giants and the Dodgers.

So good luck in Baltimore, New Yorkers place
your bets,

We know we’ve got a winner – with our
Amazin’ Mets.”

Somehow, the poem omitted Tom Seaver.

The Mets arrived in Baltimore and thought
they were in triple-A. Then they arrived at the Sheraton-Belvedere.
It was as old as the Confederacy, or so it seemed; shabby and run
down. The team complained to traveling secretary Lou Niss, and in
the backs of their minds tucked away the thought that, if possible,
they did not want to come back. The Orioles that day were having a
parade, as if they had already won!

Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium held 52,137
fans, but there were empty seats on Saturday, October 11, game one
of the 1969 World Series between the Orioles and New York Mets.
50,429 came out to see a match-up between the fireballing college
boy, Tom Seaver, and the junk-throwing Cuban
émigré
, Mike
Cuellar.

Baltimore’s unfilled stadium was “explicable
only when one recalls that two other league champions from
Baltimore – the football Colts and the basketball Bullets – had
been humiliated by New York teams in post-season championships this
year,” wrote Roger Angell in
The New Yorker
. “Baltimore, in
fact, is a city that no longer expects
any
good news. In the
press box, however, the announcement of the opening line-ups was
received in predictable fashion (‘Just
no
way . . .’), and I
could only agree. The Orioles . . . topped the Mets in every
statistic and, man for man, at almost every position.”

Gil Hodges had lined his pitching staff up
so that Seaver started game one of the play-offs. When New York
swept, he did not need to go back to his ace against Atlanta. It
also meant another seven-day lay-off in between starts. It was only
Seaver’s third start since September 27. He, and his team for that
matter, were
too
well rested.

A hot team does not want days off. They want
to play, to go for the kill like a lion going after an injured
hyena. The Mets’ had been as hot as a pistol before the All-Star
break, but after taking three days off came back struggling.

Pitching, their strength, was a possible
question mark. Nobody expected the Mets to hit Cuellar, McNally and
Palmer the way they hit Atlanta’s Phil Niekro, Rick Reed and Pat
Jarvis. However, the Atlanta series portended the grim chance that
the Robinson boys and Boog Powell could touch Seaver, Koosman and
Gentry as forcefully as had Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda, and Rico
Carty.

“I hear the Mets have six good pitchers,”
said Weaver. “Well, we’ve got 10.”

All the Mets really wanted was a split in
Baltimore. It was an intimidating scene and a crazy time. Seaver
had the dual job of preparing for Baltimore while dealing with
celebrity status rivaling John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Neil
Armstrong. Nancy stayed with him in their Baltimore hotel and was
given an “assignment,” a diary in the form of a column for the
New York Post
to be written with the help of Maury
Allen.

“The Mets became winners when they began
believing they could win,” Hodges told the press in Baltimore.

One local newspaper headline read, “Miracle
of Mets Near End.” Weaver was quoted in the
New York Times
that the Mets had, “Two pitchers, some slap hitters and a little
speed.” Most of his quotes had to be censored in a family
paper.

“I sensed the Orioles were overconfident,”
said Swoboda, adding that his main motivation was to “not embarrass
ourselves if we don’t win it.”

A poll of adults in the country showed New
York was the sentimental favorite. It sure was not like “rooting
for U.S. Steel.”

On Saturday morning, Seaver awoke, pleased
that he was not as nervous as he had been at Atlanta. In fact, he
felt loose, which worried him just as much. He wanted to find his
center. He met up with Bud Harrelson for a 9:30 breakfast, but the
coffee shop was jammed with customers in town for the game, so they
gave up. So did most of the team. The club boarded a bus for
Memorial Stadium, still on empty stomachs. Clubhouse man Nick
Torman ordered sandwiches for the hungry team, but their routines
had been thrown off.

Aside from hunger pangs, Seaver questioned
his body. He had been derailed from his usual routine by the
October schedule and pulled a muscle running in the outfield at
Atlanta. Unable to do his usual wind sprints, he had fallen
slightly out of shape, at least by the standards of a finely tuned
professional athlete. He mentally prepared himself to go six or
seven innings before running out of gas. It was Indian summer in
Maryland, and still humid.

Seaver ate, went through his pre-game
routines, getting tinctures put on his feet to help absorb the
pounding they would go through. He liked to take his time, putting
on his uniform one piece of clothing at a time while attending to
details; reading the paper, drinking coffee, having a dip of snuff,
checking out a football game on the tube, or going over scouting
reports.

Finally, he walked out for batting practice.
Cuellar was already there, and the photographers clamored for
pictures of the two pitchers. Memorial Stadium was like a plain
girl dolled up to look pretty for her wedding, with flags, banners,
bunting and a band playing, all giving off the aura of a college
football Saturday.

Ohio State was the number one college team
in the Associated Press poll at that time, followed by Texas and
Arkansas. On the day Seaver pitched against Baltimore, his USC
Trojans, in contention for the National Championship, were tied by
Joe Theismann and Notre Dame at South Bend, 14-14. It would be the
only blemish in an unbeaten, Rose Bowl-victory season, costing them
the number one spot that Texas eventually attained.

In pro football, both the Colts and the Jets
had strong, talented, slightly disappointing teams. Joe Namath had
“retired” when Pete Rozelle told him he had to choose between
Bachelors III and the Jets. Eventually he came back, but in the AFL
the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders were the dominant teams
of 1969. Seaver was a little torn. The Raiders, Chiefs and Jets all
featured rooting interests of his. The Raiders were his “hometown
team” of sorts, and their last two quarterbacks, Tom Flores and
Lamonica, were Fresno boys. His Trojan pal, Mike Garrett, was the
starting running back for Kansas City, but Seaver was a New Yorker
now. That meant rooting for
Broadway Joe and His Super Jets
.
George Allen’s Los Angeles Rams were dominating the NFL, but
another central Californian, the ex-Cal Bear signal-caller from
John Steinbeck’s Salinas, Joe Kapp, would lead Minnesota to their
first Super Bowl. In the end, Kapp’s Vikings would lose to
Garrett’s Chiefs in New Orleans.