THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM (85 page)

Ron Santo hit 26 home runs in 1970, 21 in
1971 and 20 in 1973. He hit .302 in 1972. Considered one of the
best third basemen in baseball in the 1960s and early 1970s, he
retired abruptly after the 1974 season with 342 homers and a .277
batting average. He was in his mid-30s. Santo was one of those guys
who was an All-Star, but not a Hall off Famer. His name was always
brought up every year he was eligible, and he even got a vote here
and there, but he was not a superstar.

Santo was a popular figure in Chicago, a
town that loves old ball players who publicly drink beer in
retirement. Ex-Bear Steve “Mongo” McMichaels became a folk hero
playing this role as a talkshow host. Santo was popular like Harry
Caray was popular, and became the Cubs’ color man. Occasionally he
said things he should not have said. He was what is referred to as
a “homer” in the booth, rooting hard for the Cubs without regard
for professional opprobrium. A favorite at card shows, he has made
a lifetime of commenting and lamenting about the 1969 baseball
season.

Billy Williams’s streak of consecutive games
played finally ended at 1,117 in 1971. He played another 157 in
1972. Williams started his big league career in 1959 and got better
every year. He was just reaching his peak in 1969, maintaining that
level through the 1972 campaign. When the Cubs faltered in 1970, it
was no fault of Williams. He batted .322 with 42 homers, 129 runs
batted in and 208 hits. In 1972, Williams was the Major League
Player of the Year when he hit .333 with 37 homers and 122 RBIs. In
1975 he was traded to Oakland, where his 23 home runs and 81 runs
batted in played a major role in propelling the A’s to the last of
their five straight division titles. Williams retired after the
1976 campaign with a .290 average and 426 home runs. Had he taken
steroids he would have hit well over 500. Williams was elected to
the Hall of Fame in 1987.

Don Young never played another Major League
baseball game after the 1969 season. The 6-2, 185-pound Texas
native batted .239 that year, “retiring” with all of 112 games
under his belt.

Jimmy Qualls completely faded into obscurity
after breaking up Tom Seaver’s no-hitter on July 9, 1969 at Shea
Stadium. He hit a creditable .250 in 43 games that year, but in
1970 the young Californian batted all of .111 in nine games at
Montreal. In 1971 he batted 10 times for the Chicago White Sox,
garnered zero hits, and that was the end of his Major League
career.

In November 1974, Seaver recounted his July 9, 1969
“imperfect game” to writer George Vass, printed in a coffee table
book called
From Cobb to Catfish.
“I still get needled about
Jimmy Qualls,” said Seaver. “Even now. Even after the years that
have gone by. People still say, ‘Imagine that, Qualls!’ They don’t
let me forget it. But do I have regrets? Lord, no! When you pitch a
one-hit shutout in the middle of a pennant race that in itself is a
very memorable game . . .

“No other game sticks out for me quite like
that one. How could it? . . .

“I could feel the tension, the excitement,
the expectation of the crowd more than I had ever sensed it before.
It was stimulating but it also put pressure on me. You couldn’t
help but feel it.”

If a baseball team has four Hall of Famers
in its midst, one might assume they are the 1930 A’s or the 1961
Yankees. It would certainly seem, especially if all of them are
pretty much in their prime, that it would at the least win a
division. Not so, the 1969 Cubs. Durocher (the Hall of Fame
manager) could not get it done with future Cooperstown inductees
Fergie Jenkins, Billy Williams and Ernie Banks.

If newspapers were to reprint a headline
reading, say, “Ernie Banks needs kidney donor,” or “Ernie Banks
trapped in a well,” the next day about 10 million people would show
up volunteering to give up a body part or go rescue Ernie. Nobody
can truly know who in this world is saved, who is one of God’s
children, but if one is forced to try and identify somebody, the
eye circles the room until it finds Ernie.

“That guy.”

The man does not have a malicious bone in
his body. In a book about the 1969 Mets, in which Leo Durocher and
the Cubs – among others – are seen as foils, slightly malevolent in
comparison with the chipper young men of Metsmania (at least until
the Las Vegas (s)trip), then Ernie is a true exception. Recounting
how the wonderful Banks never made it to the post-season is not
fun, but Ernie found joy in his wife, his children, and his
life.

I had never met Ernie Banks until 2000. I
was a sportswriter in Los Angeles, and went to interview the
volleyball star Sinjin Smith at an elite pro training center in
Santa Monica. The man who arranged the interview told me Ernie
Banks would be there and I could perhaps fashion a story out of
that, too.

I had always heard what a nice guy he was.
In meeting hundreds of big-time athletes and celebrities, some of
whom were college or professional teammates of mine, it was
too-often my experience that the reputation a man has for niceness
is pure malarkey.

(One man prominently featured in this
book was a huge disappointment as a personality; Barry Bonds, who I
wrote a book about, had a
terrible
rep, but turned out to
be, at least in my presence, a lot nicer than anticipated; so go
figure).

I was introduced to Ernie, who immediately
inquired of my wife and kid as if we had spent the previous week
vacationing with him. It turned out to be his standard approach,
almost New Age in whimsicality, but oh-so-sweet. A living doll.
Ernie has not seemed to age. Perhaps evil wrinkles and withers.
Righteousness just exudes good health. At least it seemed that way
with Ernie.

Ernie’s inner beauty makes it a pleasure
to report what a superstar ball player he was. Some nice guys get
extra props for nicety. Ernie does not need it. He was a superstar
just starting to slip a notch by 1969, but still a dangerous
106-RBI man. In 1970-71 his reflexes gave out on him. He managed to
hit his 500
^th
home run at Wrigley
Field in 1970, a moment of supreme celebration. He retired after
the 1971 campaign to a life of baseball ambassadorship. He loved
Santa Monica; the warm ocean breezes and probably the pretty girls,
a little glitz from nearby Hollywood, the L.A. scene. He lived
there, but had other abodes, traveled. The good life for a good
man. Ernie went into the Hall in 1977.

Chicago is a town with a lot favorites over
the years: George Halas, Sid Luckman, Mike Ditka, Gale Sayers, Jim
McMahon and Mike Singletary of the Bears; Stan Mikita of the Black
Hawks; Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson of the
Bulls; Joe Jackson, Luke Appling, Luis Aparicio and Frank Thomas of
the White Sox; Three-Fingered Brown, Frank Chance, Joe Tinker,
Johnny Evers, Gabby Hartnett, Ferguson Jenkins, Ron Santo, Billy
Williams, Ryne Sandberg and Harry Caray of the Cubs. Forget it.
Ernie is number one. Saints go to the front of the line.

The Vatican should beatify this guy.

****

Phil Niekro, Ohio boyhood friend of John
Havlicek and brother of pretty fair big league hurler Joe Niekro,
came into his own in 1969 with 23 wins. He pitched until 1987 and
the punditry never mentions his name with Seaver, Palmer, Gibson .
. .

He won more than any of them. His
fluttery knuckleballs confounded batsmen and catchers alike for 24
big league seasons. He won 20 twice more (1974, 1979). He was 17-4
with the 1982 West Division champion Braves. Between 1967 and 1972,
Niekro’s ERAs were extraordinary: 1.87 (1967), 2.59 (1968), 2.57
(1969), 2.98 (1971) and 3.06 (1972). He pitched 302 innings in 1974
and always stuck around for the decision, which was why he had
records like 16-20 (1977), 19-18 (1978),
21-20
(1979) and
15-18 (1980). The word “venerable” should be accompanied by Phil’s
photo. Niekro finished 318-274 with a 3.35 earned run average. He
was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1997.

Maybe
by 1969 some people were starting
to mention that Hank Aaron had the best chance to catch Babe Ruth’s
record of 714 home runs. It was obvious by then that Willie Mays’s
best years were behind him and he did not have the legs to get it
done. Aaron was not just in his prime, he appeared to be
ascending
. Having broken into the National League in 1954, he
won the 1957 MVP award on the World Champion Milwaukee team, played
in the Fall Classic two straight years, then proceeded to
get
better
.

Aaron, the very first alphabetical
listing in the entire
Baseball Encyclopedia
(his brother
Tommie - Mobile, Alabama pals of Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee - is
second; he died in 1984) seemed fixated on the number 44. That was
his uniform number and the amount of home runs he pounded in four
separate seasons. In 1971 he finally hit more, a career-high 47.
His career was so dead-on consistent that one could throw a dart at
Aaron’s lifetime statistics, just as easily hitting any season and
calling it his best ever.

Finally, in 1974 he hit number 715 off of Al
Downing of the Dodgers in Atlanta. A former USC Trojan named Tom
House, a Braves reliever, caught it in the bullpen. Aaron finished
with 755. *Barry Bonds broke the mark in 2007. Aaron went into
Cooperstown in 1982 and has been an important (not just celebrity)
member of the Atlanta front office for years.

****

Frank Robinson said the 1969 Orioles were
better than the 1970 Orioles. There are teams like that. The 1906
Chicago Cubs were probably better than the 1907-08 Cubs, both of
whom won World Series the ’06 version did not (absent the gaudy
116-victory regular season).

F. Robby’s assertion might be more valid if
the 1970 O’s had won the East with 95 or 98 wins, then gotten hot
in October, taking the brass ring. Separating the 1969 and 1970
teams (with the exception of World Series action) is an exercise in
minutiae. It requires comparing the 1969 exhibition record of 19-5
with their 1970 Grapefruit League mark of 16-8, then making
something out of the 109-53 record of 1969 vs. the 108-54
“drop-off” of the following season. In the end, the 1970 Baltimores
were the superior team with an overall record of 115-55 vs.
113-57.

“Now, two games doesn’t sound like much . .
.” wrote Phil Jackman of
The Sporting News
. “But, oh, what a
difference.”

Baltimore did what the Chicago Cubs did not:
take the 1969 disappointment and use it for motivation. They were
not merely motivated in 1970. They were men possessed; a collective
Arnold Schwarzenegger in
Commando
.

It started in April with Brooks Robinson,
who placed an identification strip on his luggage that read,
“Brooks Robinson, Baltimore Orioles, 1970 World Champions.” B.
Robby made sure of it with a World Series performance that probably
must rate in the all-time top five, ever, period, end of story. He
batted. 429, “fielded .3.500,” wrote Jackman, and earned Series MVP
honors after a five-game blowout of a great Cincinnati club in the
World Series. He made fielding plays that October defying
description, several of the most incredible ever witnessed by human
eyes.

Mike Cuellar and Dave McNally both won 24
games. Jim Palmer, if this can believed, was somehow seen as the
third pitcher on the staff
with 20 victories. Ted Williams
called center fielder Paul Blair the best he ever saw in center
field, and Ted saw guys named Joe D. and the Mick!

Boog Powell was the Most Valuable Player
after hitting 36 homers and driving in 114. Frank Robinson batted
.306. The Orioles swept Minnesota again in the Championship Series.
The Big Red Machine was everything the Mets had not been; namely,
impressive with future Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Pete Rose,
manager Sparky Anderson, plus maybe-future-Hall-inductee Tony
Perez. But Cincinnati sorely lacked anything close to the Mets’
pitching, so that was that. Baltimore destroyed their well-crafted
mystique in blowout manner. Oriole manager Earl Weaver, who wanted
the Mets to repeat, had no complaints after it was over.

In 1971, Baltimore won 101 games and swept
the astonishingly good young Oakland A’s as if they were the
triple-A’s. Despite seven fewer regular season wins, they seemed
even better than before; veteran experience, supreme confidence,
and if this can be surmised,
superior pitching.
Palmer,
Cuellar and McNally all came in with their usual 20 wins, like blue
chip stockbrokers who make their quota come hell or high water. But
a hotshot junior member of the firm, Pat Dobson, also managed to
win 20 pitching out of the fourth spot in the rotation.

Up two games to none against a Pittsburgh
club that looked to have no business being on the same field with
them, Baltimore inexplicably slumped. It was the curse that
separates Weaver’s teams from the great dynasties, just as Tony
LaRussa’s Athletics from 1988-90 failed to match expectations.

Roberto Clemente put on a show that matches
Brooks Robinson’s of 1970 for sheer heroics, leading the Bucs to a
seven-game title. On New Year’s Eve 1973, having attained his
3,000
^th
hit in his last game of the previous season,
Clemente died in a plane crash trying to fly relief supplies to
earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

Baltimore contended in 1972 but lost to
Billy Martin’s Tigers. They won the 1973 East in impressive, albeit
speed-laden fashion when Weaver finally realized his big boppers –
the Robby’s and Powell – were getting long in the tooth. But
Oakland was riding the whirlwind and could not be stopped on the
way to glory. 1974: different year, same teams, same story.

Earl Weaver’s clubs continued to contend
year in and year out. However, Weaver’s Orioles’ place in the
pantheon of all-time greatness kept running into obstacles. The
1969-71 teams could have been ranked among the very greatest the
game has ever known, but unlike the 1998-2000 Yankees, to use one
example, they only captured a single ring instead of the three they
were favored each time to bring home.