East Meets East as Series Starts Tonight : Mets and Red Sox Match Their Storied Traditions

One team is here, keeping an appointment with a destiny booked, with typical New Yawk brashness, as early as spring training.

The other is here, unexpectedly defying a legacy of heartbreak that was as predictable as the turning of the leaves in a New England autumn.

The one team is here, 25 years after materializing as the most lovable losers in baseball, the Amazins’ of Stengel and Marvelous Marv.

The other is here, 68 years after winning the World Series for the last time, when Babe Ruth was still a pitcher and the country was nearing the end of the war to end all wars.

The New York Mets. In 1969, the Miracle Mets of Tom Terrific and Tommy Agee. In 1973, the “You Gotta Believe” team of Tug McGraw and Rusty Staub.

The Boston Red Sox. In 1967, the Impossible Dreamers of Yaz and Lonborg. In 1975, the team of “Looie, Looie” and Carlton Fisk and the post-midnight home run that hit the Fenway foul pole, ending what has been called the greatest game ever played.

On the blocks where Gene Mauch and Hal Lanier live, they might feel otherwise, but it is the presence of the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox that makes the 83rd World Series one of the most eagerly anticipated in years.

It begins tonight in sold-out Shea Stadium, where left-hander Bruce Hurst of the Red Sox is scheduled to face Ron Darling of the Mets in temperatures that may drop into the low 40s.

And if the Series didn’t have enough enticements of its own, it follows two of the most memorable league playoff series ever contested:

--The Red Sox, one pitch away from fading away in Fantasyland, rallied to beat the Angels three straight times for the American League pennant.

--The Mets, three outs away from the nightmare of having their bats sandpapered by Mike Scott one last time, forced extra innings, then eliminated the Astros in the 16th inning of the longest game in postseason history.

Wade Boggs, the Red Sox third baseman and American League batting champion, sensed that this Series matchup might happen back in March, under the Florida sun.

“To me, this is like a spring training game,” he said Friday, when both teams conducted light workouts and heavy interviews. “We played them in Florida, and I wondered if we’d be playing them in the World Series.

“To me, this is like St. Petersburg vs. Winter Haven.”

Bill Buckner, the Boston first baseman, had similar thoughts when he flicked on his TV during the summer and tuned in the Mets’ game on cable.

“I had a feeling this is where it would end up,” Buckner said. “I probably watched them 30 or 40 times.”

They played one another in spring training. They played one another again in September, in a charity exhibition at Fenway Park, when it occurred to several hundred reporters that a World Series preview was in the offing.

They are, then, old acquaintances, these Mets and Red Sox, though they have never met before in postseason play. Crossed bloodlines draw them even closer.

Before Boston Vice President Lou Gorman made the trades that transformed the Red Sox, his farm system helped to build the present Mets.

Tom Seaver, a 24-year-old pitching hero of the ’69 Miracle Mets, is now a 41-year-old sore-kneed pitcher for the Red Sox, although his injury will keep Seaver from returning to the site of his greatest triumphs.

The Mets have Bob Ojeda, the left-handed pitcher who led their staff with 18 wins, because they gave the Red Sox Calvin Schiraldi, the overpowering reliever Boston so desperately needed.

Before Darling put on a Met uniform, he wore a New Englander’s allegiance to the Red Sox, and he was in the center-field bleachers the night Fisk’s home run hit the foul pole.

Darling also went to Yale, whose president at the time was A. Bartlett Giamatti, a man of letters who wrote passionately of the Red Sox. Giamatti is the new president of the National League.

In high school, Darling attended St. John’s Prep, a Catholic school whose biggest rival in Worcester, Mass., was St. Peter’s.

The catcher at St. Peter’s was Rich Gedman, who now catches for the Red Sox.

“It wasn’t a great confrontation,” Darling said Friday. “I intentionally walked him.

“The fence in right field was so short that, to one side of a line in right center, if you hit it over the fence, it was a double.

“He (Gedman) would hit the ball three houses over the fence. He’d hit the ball 500 feet, and they’d give him a double.”

Don Baylor was never a Met, but he was a New Yorker, a Yankee until owner George Steinbrenner cut him loose, trading him to Boston for Mike Easler. Baylor’s bat, Steinbrenner predicted, would be dead by August.

Baylor is back, and in the World Series. Steinbrenner, meanwhile, is writing a guest column in the New York Post.

And what did Baylor have to say about Steinbrenner?

“I didn’t know he knew Shakespeare,” Baylor said with a wink, referring to the quote-dropping Yankee-owner-turned-author.

The mayor of New York, Ed Koch, readily admits to knowing little about baseball, but he’s learning fast.

“My mother told me that my brother, Harold, was going to be the athlete in this family and that I was to go in the corner and learn to be mayor,” Koch told reporters the other day.

“I will eat hot dogs, which I love, and I will cheer,” said Koch, who plans to attend tonight’s game.

And when will he cheer?

“When the other people cheer,” he said.

In New York, fans will have the opportunity to cheer--or more likely make sport of--the Boston pitchers, who will have bats thrust into their hands for the first time this season.

Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who once upon a time pledged to resolve the designated-hitter differences between the leagues once and for all, is playing it right down the middle in the World Series. A designated hitter will not be used in games played in the National League park but will be used in the American League park.

Hurst recalls getting a hit in an exhibition game against St. Louis last spring. “That makes me 1 for about the last 10 years,” he said.

All the Boston pitchers have been given one model bat: a K-235, which is the kind Boggs uses. Don’t expect any .357 averages.

“It’ll be like hitting a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle,” predicted Boston reliever Sammy Stewart.

The Boston pitchers can’t do any worse than their Met counterparts, who failed to get a hit in the playoffs. The Met regulars hardly hit up a storm, either, batting a collective .189.

“I sure hope not,” Met Manager Davey Johnson responded when asked if New York’s slump would continue.

“I can’t imagine anyone pitching any better against us than Mike Scott,” Johnson said. “I hope they haven’t come up with a split-fingered pitcher.”

It is the Mets’ good fortune that not only have they put Scott behind them, they shouldn’t have to face Red Sox ace Roger Clemens more than twice.

Clemens, who pitched three times against the Angels, will probably pitch in Game 2 Sunday, setting up a confrontation with Dwight Gooden--the Lord of the K’s vs. Doctor K.

Boston Manager John McNamara said he would wait until today to decide definitely whether Clemens or Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd would pitch Game 2.

“If Roger is ready and able and feels all right, he’ll probably get the nod,” said McNamara, who wants to make certain Clemens is over the flu and his arm has bounced back from two starts with only three days’ rest.

The Mets are heavily favored, with most observers giving them an edge in the bullpen. The Red Sox have Schiraldi and little else, especially on the left side. The Mets’ bullpen allowed just three earned runs in 21 innings during the National League playoffs, two of those runs coming off an exhausted Jesse Orosco in inning No. 16 of Game No. 6.

The Mets are a superior defensive team, having made just one error in six playoff games, and they’ll match their capacity for comebacks against anyone’s. They won three of the four games against the Astros in their last at-bats.

After Game 5 at Anaheim Stadium Sunday, the Red Sox believe they have no peers in the improbable-comeback category. It’s happened all season, they say, and it isn’t about to end now.

“I feel like our team will play really loose,” said Boston second baseman Marty Barrett, voted the most valuable player of the American League playoffs.

“We dodged the bullet in the playoffs. We know we could have been home watching this thing on TV.”

For Angel fans, that, of course, would have been preferable. For other baseball dreamers, however, a Red Sox-Mets World Series is too delicious to miss.