The first crucial day

 

On July 8, 1962, the New York Mets made three throwing errors in one inning, allowed five unearned runs in an inning, lost to St. Louis by 14 runs, and in the process allowed 41-year old Stan Musial to hit no less than three home runs against them. They were 25-59 (.280).

 

Precisely seven years later, on July 8, 1969 the Mets woke up with a 54-34 record, five games back of the Chicago Cubs. The rest of the National League East was effectively out of it, in small measure because in head-to-head games with New York, they had fared poorly. St. Louis, the pre-season favorite, suddenly looked old at 40-44, seven and a half back of the Mets. The Mets had knocked Pittsburgh off. The Pirates were floundering at 38-43. The Phillies and Expos were playing out the string.

            They were calling the other division the “wild, wild West,” as Atlanta, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and even Houston were all in the hunt. In the American League, the Baltimore Orioles were absolutely dominating everybody they played. The Yankees in their greatest year were never better than Earl Waver’s juggernaut. It looked like all the excitement over a possible Mets-Cubs showdown; a duel between the Braves, Giants and Reds; or the Kabuki dance in the A.L. West (where Oakland would throughout the season creep within three or so of Minnesota, get swept by the Twins, drop eight back, only to try again); none of it would matter in the wake of Baltimore dominance.

            The most optimistic of Mets fans began to formulate the idea of a Mets-Orioles World Series, only because the January Super Bowl had featured a New York team against a highly-favored Baltimore powerhouse, but this still looked mighty far-fetched . . . 

 

At 9:30 in the morning on July 8, 25-year old Jerry Koosman awoke after a restless night. On that afternoon he was scheduled to face the Cubs in the first of a three-game series. It was the first truly crucial series in club history. A Chicago sweep would give them an eight-game lead, not insurmountable, but the psychological damage to New York would be a major blow. A three-game Mets sweep meant they would be just two out, with the wind at their sails. A 2-1 series would not make for a huge differential either way, although if the Cubs got the two they would call it a big win. The problem for Chicago, however, was that they studiously avoided any acknowledgement that this meant more than all the other games they played. To do so would elevate the Mets into their stratosphere. Leo Durocher had no intention of paying the Mets any of his hard-earned respect.

            The Mets needed to avoid what was happening that year in Oakland. Like New York, the A’s had been doormats for years in Kansas City before the move to California. In 1969 they featured a talented young squad. Minnesota was, like Chicago, a strong, veteran club. The Athletics would creep close, but Minnesota would sweep them in several crucial series. Their 13-5 mark against Oakland marked eight of the nine games they beat the A’s by at season’s end.

            Koosman, leading the National League with a 1.67 earned run average, would be opposing Ferguson Jenkins in one of the best pitching match-ups of the year. Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert and Billy Williams of Chicago were all hitting over .300. Ron Santo was among the league’s RBI leaders, and Ernie Banks was on pace to drive in 100 runs. Randy Hundley was a star catcher and capable with the bat. Even Jenkins had homered off Seaver early in the season. Koosman had his work cut out for him.

            Chicago’s only weaknesses: ex-Met Jim Hickman in right field, and the unknown rookie Don Young in center. Young was walking on eggshells. Leo Durocher gave him no leeway, no rookie comforts as he had for Willie May 18 years earlier. He had impressed nobody so far and needed to prove himself, especially since he had replaced the talented, temperamental Adolfo Phillips in center field.

            New York had two .300 hitters: Cleon Jones and part-timer Art Shamsky, but they featured the hardest throwing pitching staff in baseball: Seaver, Koosman, Gentry and Ryan all throwing gas, plus some of the second line guys were no slouches either. By 12:30, Mets coach Joe Pignatano, a one-time Dodger and member of the original 1962 losers, hit practice grounders. Shea was almost full to capacity along with a World Series-level contingent of press gathered around the batting cage.

“There are more writers here than at Cape Kennedy,” one of them remarked. 900 miles to the south, the Apollo 11 astronauts were in Florida, about a week away from a full-scale landing on the Moon.

            “It looks like the World Series,” another writer said. “Everybody’s here.”

            One prominent member of the press in attendance was the bombastic Howard Cosell. Cosell was a Brooklyn attorney who decided he wanted to become a sports broadcaster. ABC carried the Baseball Game of the Week on Saturday afternoons. The man in charge was a blustery New Yorker with a heart of gold named Edgar Scherick. Scherick gave Cosell his shot, thus launching his career. Cosell’s star was made in a series of hilarious, half-put-on interviews with the equally bombastic heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay. When Clay became not only a Muslim but also a member of the controversial black Nation of Islam sect, Cosell respected his religious views and was one of the first to call him Muhammad Ali. When Ali evaded the draft, refusing to serve in Vietnam Cosell – a major liberal – called him courageous. Later, Cosell would be in Munich when Yasser Arafat’s murderers blew up the Israeli Olympic wrestling team. Cosell begged to do the reports so he could describe “those Muslim faces,” and for that reason was denied.

            In 1968-69, with “Broadway Joe” Namath popularizing pro football above all previous experience, Scherick saw the future and tried to grab it. He started Monday Night Football. Cosell became the face of MNF. Scherick ultimately lost a network power struggle with Roone Arledge, the man history says was behind the concept. Scherick went to Hollywood, producing The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three with Walter Matthau, among numerous other hits.

Cosell claimed baseball was boring, but he obviously knew a good story when it stared him in the face. The Mets were the story in the here and now. He conducted a national interview with Gil Hodges for ABC, then falsely announced to a crowd of kids begging for autographs that after the game Hodges would be “outside with a ball for each of you.”

One of the only members of the press Casey Stengel ever despised, Cosell was the “man you loved to hate.” Despite attracting boos and catcalls wherever he went, Cosell was convinced that he was loved.

 

Ron Santo, the Chicago third baseman, stared at the Mets’ line-up card posted on the dugout wall. He shook his head.

            “I know Los Angeles won with pitching,” he said. “But this is ridiculous.”

            But Ernie Banks did not disrespect the Mets. “People used to laugh at the Mets,” Bank said. “But not any more. Now they have a good team. They have good pitching and they play together. People laughed a few years ago, but the Mets play together now.”

Banks heard the Mets’ theme song, “Meet the Mets,” and hummed along to it with his own riff on the lyrics: “Beat the Mets, beat the Mets. Come on out and beat the Mets.”

He paused to observe his surrounding. “What a beautiful day for baseball,” he said. “New York. The melting pot. The Great White Way. Let’s go. What’s going on?”

            On Broadway during this era it was Oh, Calcutta, Hair, and Jesus Christ Superstar. The times were changing. Just a few years earlier Sir Laurence Olivier had delivered a performance in the traditional Othello described by those in the audience as the finest acting of all time.

            When Banks expressed an interest in such racy fare, one of the writers asked if he was a “dirty old man” underneath his Mr. Sunshine exterior.

            “No, no,” answered Banks, smiling. “You can’t say that. What will all these kids think?”

            He was asked what kept him so exuberant. “You have to be happy, and sports does it,” said Banks. “What kind of world would this be without sports, without baseball? Why, you’d have people at each other all the time.”

 

Mrs. Joan Payson paid for the Mets’ game to be transmitted by a special radio broadcast to her temporary vacation home in Maine, where she was staying. What she heard was a pitcher’s duel, with Jenkins and Koosman working fast and furious; a flurry of strikeouts in a 0-0 game until Ed Kranepool, booed each time his name was announced, lofted one over the right field fence to give New York a 1-0 lead.

            Ernie Banks answered with a solo shot of his own and it was 1-1. In the seventh, Koosman walked Jenkins, of all people. Durocher manufactured a run via a sacrifice bunt and Glenn Beckert’s single to make it 2-1.

            In the stands, a fan named Joe Delberti displayed a sign reading “UNBELIEVABLE.” Two attractive brunettes paraded a placard asking, “WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO MARV THRONEBERRY?”

In the eighth, Jim Hickman took Koosman deep, something he sure did not do much of in his New York days. With the score 3-1 and Jenkins still firing seeds, Mets fans began to resign themselves to the fact that they were going to be six back.

            When the Cubs took the field holding a two-run lead in the ninth, Mets third base coach Yogi Berra passed Banks and said, “We’re gonna get three in the ninth and beat you.” This time Ernie remained silent.

            As this was happening, a man in the Ridgewood section of Queens named Frank Graddock, who had been drinking and watching the game all afternoon, observed his wife, Margaret, casually flip the station to her favorite daytime serial, Dark Shadows. On that day viewers would learn whether Quentin, who carried the curse of the werewolf, would be able to keep the mummy’s hand he had been pursuing through the last few episodes. Frank was uninterested in Quentin, the curse, or the mummy’s hand.

            In the ninth inning, Hodges pinch-hit .245-hitting Ken Boswell for Jerry Koosman. Boswell was a pull-hitter with some power. Cubs center fielder Don Young played him in right-center, a little too deep. Boswell had a bad hand. After working Jenkins to two-and-two, he hit a fly ball to straightaway center. If his hand did not hurt, he may have hit it right to Young. If the Cubs’ advance scouts had known, Young would have been stationed right where the ball was hit. Instead, Young froze like a deer caught in the headlights. Supposedly a defensive specialist – Young’s bat was certainly not exceptional – he lost the baseball for a crucial split-second in the mid-summer haze and background of white shirts in the crowd.

            Kessinger and Beckert saw Young’s fatal hesitation and tried to make up for it, but Boswell’s lazy pop was, as they say, a line drive double in the scorebook. Suddenly, more than 50,000 Mets fans made mental note that Chicago had committed the kind of faux pas previously reserved for their guys. Reservedly watching the fast-paced pitcher’s battle, their guys striking out, popping up and weakly grounding out against a future Hall of Famer in his prime, now they came to their feet; imploring, hoping, desperately shouting.

            In Queens, Frank Graddock was watching Quentin try to decide whether to keep the mummy’s paw or return it in exchange for advice from the witch Angelique, since she was an expert on how to shake the werewolf’s curse. Before this information could be made known to Margaret, Graddock switched the station back to Shea Stadium. The tying run was coming to the plate.

            Nobody got up in the Cubs’ bullpen. Durocher’s creed was finish what you start. Out in the mid-summer sun Jenkins, perspiring and toiling, missed with two balls. Hundley went out to chat with him. Durocher watched stoically. Agee then popped up to Banks for the first out.

            Clendenon came in to pinch-hit for light-swinging Bobby Pfeil, who was playing in Bud Harrelson’ place while he did his two-week military training stint. Clendenon tended to strike out a lot and at the time actually held the National League record for a season, a mark Bobby Bonds would break. Even though a home run would have tied the game, Clendenon did not feel he could handle Jenkins’s still-formidable stuff, so he choked up on the bat, hitting a liner to the warning track. Maybe, had he not choked up he would have cleared the wall but then again, maybe he would have swung and missed.

            Young raced after it, this time without hesitancy. Ball, glove and fence met at the same time. The ball landed in Young’s glove for a tantalizing millisecond, but immediately popped out. The crowd held its breath, the “snow coned” white baseball held precariously in the webbing of Young’s mitt, then let out a roar that could be heard in West Islip, Long Island when it plopped to the ground.

            Or was that gentle Leo cursing out Young?

            Boswell had to hold at second and only made it to third, but his run was not the material thing. Clendenon reached second with one out and Shea was a madhouse. So was the Graddock household. Frank hit Margaret when, just as the Mets threatened with two on and one out, she tried to switch back to Dark Shadows, hoping to observe Angelique explaining how she, too, had once been bitten by a vampire.    

            Cleon Jones came to the plate, hitless all day, but Jenkins was withering. He smoked a line drive double over Ron Santo’s head, scoring Boswell and Clendenon to tie it. The Cubs bullpen was up by now as Durocher went out to talk it over with Jenkins. He kept him in the game. Shea throbbed with emotion. The noise, the fevered passions, were unlike anything ever felt at Yankee Stadium. It was Ebbets with Duke at the plate, Jackie dancing off third; “Broadway Joe” eyeing the Raiders’ secondary with a minute or so left, the goal post within his sights; it was all of it all rolled into one.

The Jets, in fact, were gathering for the 1969 training camp at Hofstra University on Long Island. According to sportswriter Dick Schaap, they were watching, cheering for the Mets on a television set in assistant coach Walt Michaels’s room.

            Durocher ordered Art Shamsky to be walked. Wayne Garrett grounded to Beckert as hoped for, but it was not hard enough to turn two. Beckert threw Garrett out at first while Jones went to third, Shamsky to second.

            Ed Kranepool, the symbol of all those bad Mets teams - of Casey Stengel asking, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” – the bonus baby from James Monroe High who never became the hometown hero; the man who just played out the string; stepped to the plate. No time for the usual boos. Cheers resounded as his name was called.

            With J.C. Martin on deck, the percentage play would have been to walk him, but Durocher was not playing percentages. He stuck with the laboring Jenkins and showed disdain for Kranepool by ordering his man to pitch to him.

In Queens, Frank Graddock punched his wife so hard she had to crawl into her room. He switched from Dark Shadows back to the game. Margaret’s injuries were fatal. The next day Graddock would be charged with first-degree murder.

            Jenkins missed high on the first pitch. Then he came back low and outside. Kranepool normally would have taken it, but he was guessing that way and wanted to punch an opposite-field hit between Kessinger, playing towards the middle, and Santo. But the pitch was farther out of his hitting zone than he thought, and his efforts were weak. The bat almost left his hand, but contact was made, resulting in a lazy pop that eluded Kessinger, landing in the outfield grass. Jones romped home.

            The Mets raced out of their dugout. Koosman was the unlikely winning pitcher. The celebration had all the earmarks of a World Series victory, and the roar of the crowd was mind-boggling.

            It was 4:14 P.M. on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 8, and at that precise instant, the Mets became the official passion of New York City; the team relegating the mediocre Yankees to backpage status; and the miraculous nature of the 1969 baseball season manifested itself as self-evident truth!

            The 11-game winning streak of May and June; beating the Dodgers and Giants; all of that had been important, but now the ghosts of “Willie, Mickey and the Duke,” as the song goes, were replaced by a new generation, a “new breed.” It was like John Kennedy’s “new frontier” come to life. It was the “great beginnings” from the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, embodied by Richard Strauss’s “Sprach Zarathustra.”

No metaphor, no description is too hyperbolic to describe what was happening. It was that huge. In a city that had seen everything, it was, if not new, so different, so refreshing and wonderful as to be a . . . miracle!

 

Clendenon, Jones and Kranepool went on “Kiner’s Corner,” but nobody, not even Ralph Kiner, seemed able to put into words what was going on. Jerry Koosman was equally flabbergasted in the winning clubhouse, muttering with a wide-eyed smile, “Unbelievable, unbelievable.”

            After sipping some beer, he tried to do better than that. “They were marvelous,” he said of his teammates. “I was wild all day. I felt sure of myself, but I didn’t have good control. I was battling myself.”

            Then, for the very first time, the question was dared ask: “Do you think the club’s going all the way now?”

            Koosman looked stunned, as if the idea had not occurred to him, but instead of giving a cliché like, “We’re just playing one day at a time,” he told the reporter what was in his heart: “I don’t see why we just can’t keep winning and winning.”

“The Cubs went out there patting their pockets when they took the field in the ninth,” Cleon Jones said. “They were already starting to count that 25 grand.” The potential share for each player in the upcoming league Championship Series and World Series was estimated at $25,000.

            “Nobody gave up,” he continued, talking about his teammates. “This is a young club and it believes it can win. We’ve got the momentum now. We beat their big man. Now we’ve got our big man. We’re in command now. We can relax.”

            “Hey, don’t save the fireworks until the ninth inning for me,” said the Mets’ “big man,” Tom Seaver, dressing a few stalls away. “I’ll take a 9-0 lead in the first inning any time. I’ll finesse it the rest of the way.”

            At Camp Drum in Watertown, New York, Seaver’s “Buddy,” now known as Sergeant Derrel McKinley Harrelson, heard that the Mets pulled their game out. He thought he was being kidded, since the last he heard they trailed 3-1.

****

In 1962, the Los Angeles Dodgers held what looked to be a safe lead with a week to go, but the San Francisco Giants came back and caught them, forcing a play-off. After blowing a 4-2 lead in the ninth inning at Dodger Stadium to lose the National League pennant in the third game of the play-off, the Dodgers trudged into their clubhouse and engaged in what has been described as the all-time “meltdown” in baseball history.

            Walt Alston locked himself in his office like one of the survivors in Night of the Living Dead while Don Drysdale pounded on the door, trying to get at him with his fists. Booze flowed and with it all the frustrations, mostly aimed at poor Walter, who despite having won the 1955 and 1959 World Series had as much respect in Hollywood as the original screenwriter of a movie on its eighth re-write.

            Leading the chorus against him was the Dodgers’ “celebrity coach,” Leo Durocher. The whole sordid affair was detailed the following year by famed L.A. sportswriter Melvin Durslag in an article penned for Look magazine called “Manager with a hair shirt.” Alston fended off the encroachments of ex-manager Charlie Dressen, brought in as a coach, when he won the 1959 World Series, but that was followed by two disappointing seasons as the club transitioned from the Brooklyn veterans to the Los Angeles youth movement.

            Durocher, fired a few years earlier by the New York Giants, looked like a baseball exile in Elba, er, Beverly Hills. He did some broadcasting, but nobody hired him to manage. The word was out, that he was being “blackballed.” Durocher got Durslag, who had a reputation for writing nasty articles advocating the positions of various people – Durocher, Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke – to write an article called “An Explanation to My Friends.” In it, Durocher explained that he was available, not being hired was not his idea, and that since he lived in Beverly Hills, why, the job of the expansion Angels or the Dodgers would suit him just fine, thank you.

            Angels owner Gene Autry, a decent man, wanted nothing to do with Durocher and hired Bill Rigney. Walter O’Malley, who was not a particularly decent man, wanted to steal some thunder from the Angels when the team moved into Dodger Stadium. He hired Durocher as a “celebrity coach.”

            “Though Alston had nothing to do with Leo’s appointment, he was solicited to make the announcement,” wrote Durslag. “After a flight from Darrtown to California, he had the privilege of revealing to the world the newest candidate for his job.”

            Whenever the club performed below expectations, Alston was allowed to twist in the wind amid rumors of Durocher’s impending hiring. “The Dodgers never plan to fire Alston,” said one observer. “They prefer to torment him.”

            Durocher got tired of Durslag’s constant lobbying for Leo and rebuked him, saying, “You’re pretty sensitive about Durocher’s feelings. What about mine?” But that was rare. Alston was as stoic as they come.

            When the 1962 pennant was blown, the Dodgers’ players were furious over the loss of the $12,000 World Series share, real money back then. Durocher stoked their insecurities like Huey Long at a Bayou political rally, portraying Alston as the man taking food out of their families’ mouths. He was like Javert in Les Miserables, playing the baseball version of j’accuse, his goal being Alston’s head under a symbolic guillotine.

            The Dodgers retained Alston, probably because they had just set the all-time Major League attendance record. The strange Kabuki theatre between Alston and Durocher existed until 1964, when after winning a third World Series Alston finally had control of the Dodgers. Durocher, like Napoleon, just went off to plot his comeback until Chicago came calling in 1966.

            Now, on July 8, 1969 he presided over a clubhouse that had repercussions of that classic Dodger Stadium meltdown seven years earlier. This time, he was on the hot spot. Unlike Alston, who took it like a man and accepted blame whether he deserved it or not, Durocher always looked for somebody to blame, to project his own sins upon. His target: Don Young.

            Several of his teammates came by to offer some condolence to Young, but not Durocher. The atmosphere was toxic. Young endeavored to dress and leave as soon as possible. One teammate suggested drinking as the best option. When reporters confronted Durocher, he exploded.

            “That kid in center field,” he told the Chicago writers. “Two little fly balls. He just stands there watching one, and he gives up on the other.” A string of obscenities followed; foul words from a foul man.

            “If a man can’t catch a fly ball, you don’t deserve to win he,” continued Leo, motioning to the dejected Fergie Jenkins. “Look at him. He threw his heart out. You won’t see a better-pitched game. And that kid in center field gives it away on him. It’s a disgrace.”

            Ron Santo picked up on his manager’s theme and threw his teammate “under the bus.” “He was just thinking about himself, not the team,” he said of Young. “He had a bad day at the bat, so he’s got his head down. He’s worrying about his batting average and not the team. All right, he can keep his head down, and he can keep right on going, out of sight for all I care. We don’t need that kind of thing.”

            Santo fired his spikes against the floor. “I don’t know who Leo has in mind to play center field, but I hope I can sell him on Jim Hickman,” he continued, “Any ball Jim reaches, you can bet your money he’ll hold onto.”

            Santo was on a roll. “It’s ridiculous,” he stated. “There’s no way the Mets can beat us. Just no way. It’s a shame losing to an infield like that. Why, I wouldn’t let that infield play in Tacoma.”

            Jenkins showed class, unlike Durocher or Santo. “With all those people on a bright day, the center fielder is in a constant battle with the sun,” he said. “I thought Young recovered quickly. After all, he had to find it before he could chase it.”

            That night, Young returned to his hotel room at the Waldorf-Astoria and, as advised, did a “little bit o’ drinkin’ ” with teammate Rich Nye. Aside from his fielding blunders, Young’s batting average at this point in the 1969 season was a measly .228. Chicago sportswriter Rich Talley called him on the phone to ask whether he lost the ball in the sun? Did his two strikeouts and two pop outs affect him on defense, as Santo alleged?

            “No,” said Young. “I just lost the game for us. That’s all.”

            Talley’s column of July 9 read: “Young has a history of ‘getting down’ on himself. He is not a confident ballplayer. He has been happy with the Cubs, but never quite believed it and always seemed to be wondering when it was going to end. It may have ended yesterday.”

****

That night, the Yankees lost the second game of a twi-night doubleheader to fall 19 back of Baltimore. As the Yankees were trudging back into their desultory clubhouse, the first edition of the New York Times was about to go on sale. The Mets were the front page story in the “paper of record,” the paper that publishes, “All the news that’s fit to print.” The Times had not even deemed the Mets to be a sports story in their early years, preferring to make the comical Casey and his quotations a series of features on the art of losing.

            Three years earlier, respected Times sportswriter Leonard Koppett wrote a lengthy essay titled, “A Yankee Dynasty Can Never Come Back” when the Bronx Bombers finished dead last, 28 1/2 games behind the Orioles. In 1968 the Yankees appeared to have made a comeback of sorts, but by mid-1969 they folded their tents. Koppett’s premise, at least for now and for a number of years to come, was as right as rain.

            The previous front page treatment given the Mets by the New York Times had been in 1962, when they lost their first nine games. This was their first winning front page. It was a glorious day for the Mets and their fans. They were filled with optimism, having won the first crucial baseball game in their history, pulling within four games of the Chicago Cubs, a team just beginning to come apart at the seams.

            Scheduled to start the next night: Tom Seaver.