SAN DIEGO — Since the Yanks slammed the mis-managed San Diego Padres in the World Serious, the historians have been tripping over their own statistics trying to place this October classic among the best-worst and everything in between.
However, 1998 pales in comparison to 29 years ago when the Amazing Mets were responsible for about 30 million heart attacks.
The 1998 edition of the Flushing Meadows’ Mets is taken for granted as one
of the better teams in baseball, the thinking man’s sport. They even gave
my beloved Cubbies a run for their money for the final playoff spot in the
National League.
As a young sportswriter on one of my first out-of-town assignments for the
now-defunct Toronto Telegram, there I was plunked in the middle of the Big
Apple.
What was a country hick from Bass River, a blink-or-you’ll miss it village
in Nova Scotia, doing rubbing shoulders with the likes of Casey Stengel and
a Broadway cast of thousands? Hey, there’s Ed Sullivan standing on the sidewalk, waiting for his limo.
And heroes from the newspaper trade. I expected Grantland Rice and Damon
Runyon to yell “Stop the Presses” and hand their copy to a pale-faced kid
with pimples and an at-the-ready bike.
The Amazing Mets won the World Serious on Oct. 16, 1969, by mysteriously hoodwinking the American League champion Baltimore Orioles in the fifth
game.
The 57,397 believers immediately went berserk by tearing up the sod at
Shea.
The late and great writer, Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times, wrote that
he had interviewed one of those believers, who said he was going to put his
snippet of grass in a glass of water and “it would grow forever.”
When the Mets were born in 1962, they finished 80 games under .500 and
Marvelous Marv Throneberry, who fumbled and bumbled his way around Shea, epitomized their ineptitude. He gave “bad” a bad name.
From their inception through 1968, they finished 10th in six of those
eight seasons and twice, including 1968, they rose from the depth to finish
ninth.
Then, with suddenness, they were kings of the world.
“We give heart to all the losers in the world,” Mets’ right-fielder Ron
Swoboda told a horde of ink-stained wretches as he leaned against his sweaty cubicle.
Murray was at his best in describing how it was like the movie, Angels In The
Outfield. “There were angels everywhere in the outfield, infield, the dugout, even the trainer’s room. They had more seraphs in the woodwork than they have in the Vatican.”
He topped his column by saying, “One should have gone and checked the
locker room to see if St. Christopher was taking a shower.”
While filing a story for the old Tely, I swear I saw an angel picking up
the towels.
Fronting the 1969 Mets was their owner, once described by Murray as a
little old lady in a floppy hat and sensible shoes.
However, their heart was manager Gil Hodges, who had plied his trade a hop, skip and two jumps away at Ebbets Field as a Brooklyn Dodger.
The team consisted of such no-names as Swoboda, Weiss, Jones, Garrett,
Charles, Harrelson, Gaspar, Kranepool, Agee, Shamsky and someone named Donn Clendenon. On the mound were Seaver, DiLauro, Gentry, Koosman, McGraw, Ryan and Toronto’s Ron Taylor, who practiced medicine on the side.
On that day, Baltimore became a “bombed-out” city of shattered dreams. They have since recovered to rebuild again.
But on Oct. 16, 1969, it was a day of miracles and angels everywhere. It
wasn’t just a game, it was an awakening for a young sportswriter. He became a fan for a day. That was definitely a no-no.
Then reality set in and I went back to covering drab happenings.
However, the memories remain.
Now where’s that snippet of grass?
I bet it’s still growing.
Success is to be measured
not so much by the position
that one has reached in life
as by the obstacles
which he has overcome
while trying to succeed.
