Thirty Years Ago, the Mets Used a Miracle Finish to Become . . . : Amazin Greats’

The New York Mets open a four-game series at Dodger Stadium tonight, seemingly on their way to the National League playoffs, a fitting accomplishment in a season that marks the 30th anniversary of their first playoff experience.

They were the Miracle Mets then. Now, with no disrespect, they are more akin to the Millionaire Mets.

There are few miracles in the Haves-vs.-Have-Nots world of major league baseball in the ‘90s.

The Mets are where they are--3 1/2 games behind the Atlanta Braves in the East Division and 3 1/2 games ahead of the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card race--through a financially aggressive and adroit approach leading to the retention and acquisition of Mike Piazza, Robin Ventura, Rickey Henderson, Al Leiter, Roger Cedeno, Armando Benitez, Dennis Cook, Darryl Hamilton and Kenny Rogers, among others.

There was no free agency or arbitration in 1969, no major debate over payroll and revenue disparity, as the Mets out-miracled the Miracle Braves of 1914.

They did it by going from a ninth-place finish in the 10-team National League of 1968 to a first-place finish in the six-team East of 1969 (expansion leading to the first year of division alignment), then on to a three-game sweep of the Atlanta Braves in the National League’s first championship series and a five-game victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles. It was a World Series remembered for comparatively anonymous Met heroes Tommie Agee, Ron Swoboda, Al Weis and Cleon Jones, rather than Oriole stars and future Hall of Famers such as Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer.

Virtually dismissed by Nevada oddsmakers at 100-1 when the season began, the Mets won 38 of their last 49 regular-season games to overcome a 9 1/2-game deficit in August and author another painful chapter in a Chicago Cubs’ history otherwise written by Stephen King.

It was a season played against the backdrop of a country inflamed by the Vietnam War and a season in which a platoon of young and home-grown starting pitchers--Tom Seaver, 24; Gary Gentry, 23; Jerry Koosman, 26; Jim McAndrew, 25, and a wild and irregularly used Nolan Ryan, 22--gave the Mets a chance to win every game.

Catcher Jerry Grote saw it in the spring and predicted the Mets would win, ignoring the odds and aspersions regarding his sanity.

Said Seaver in reflection:

“Everyone thought Jerry was crazy, but he was the guy behind the plate and he saw the young pitching coming along and knew we could be good every day. I think it may have been the same kind of atmosphere as when Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale were pitching for the Dodgers. Every at-bat, every ground ball, every fly ball, every aspect of the game for nine innings was important, and it raised the level of play. There was no margin of error.

“The pitchers fed off each other, and the position players fed off the pitching, and I think one by one, at different points in the season, each of us started to believe in what was happening. For me, it came in a game with the Dodgers in midseason. We were down by a run or two in the late innings and we had a couple guys on base when Ed Kranepool hit a single up the middle. There was obviously going to be a play at the plate, but the ball rolled under Willie Davis’ glove in center field and the winning run scored. That was the moment I knew we were going to win and that Jerry had been right.”

Now a member of the Met broadcasting team, Seaver would win his last 10 decisions as the Mets overtook the Cubs, finish with a career-high 25 wins against seven defeats and capture the first of his three Cy Young Awards. He would pitch better in ’71 when he gave up two runs or fewer in 28 games and three or fewer in four others, he said, but from a team aspect there was never a more rewarding or enjoyable year than ‘69, nor a year when he was any better down the stretch. In a July series against the Cubs with Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo and others, the Mets made a statement on their August intentions by winning two of three, including a 4-0 victory by Seaver in which he struck out 11 and pitched a perfect game other than Jimmy Qualls’ single with one out in the ninth.

“That was probably the best game I ever pitched,” said the man who would win 311 games and throw a no-hitter in 1978 against the St. Louis Cardinals while a member of the Cincinnati Reds. “I had great stuff and great control. I didn’t make one bad pitch. I think they hit every pitch where I wanted them to hit it.”

He was three years removed from USC in 1969, knew he was good, caught up in something special in a special city and compared it, looking back, to a dream, a bit of magic.

If so, there were others who shared in it.

* Center fielder Agee hit a career-high 26 homers from the leadoff spot and made two spectacular catches to save, perhaps, five runs in a 5-0 victory by Gentry and Ryan in Game 3 of the World Series.

* Left fielder Jones, who hit .297 the year before and .277 the year after, finished third in the NL with a .340 average and was the central figure twice in the 5-3, Game 5 victory that wrapped up the World Series. He doubled and scored the winning run in the eighth inning after Manager Gil Hodges, in the sixth, convinced umpire Lou DiMuro that a pitch from Dave McNally had hit Jones on the foot because shoe polish was on the ball Hodges carried out from the dugout. Oriole Manager Earl Weaver protested in vain, then reached for another cigarette as Donn Clendenon, who had been a key addition early in the season, followed with a home run, cutting the Mets’ deficit from 3-0 to 3-2.

* Right fielder Swoboda made one of the most spectacular and dramatic catches in Series history when he took extra bases away from Brooks Robinson in the ninth inning of a 2-1, 10-inning victory in Game 4 of the Series and combined with Art Shamsky to hit 23 home runs and drive in 99 runs in one of Hodges’ two productive platoons: First basemen Clendenon and Kranepool combined to hit 23 home runs while driving in 86 runs in the other.

The Mets would win 10 consecutive games in September and a total of 100, with 32 saved by Tug McGraw, then a blossoming 24, Ron Taylor and Cal Koonce. Rookie Gentry, starting regularly in a rotation that Seaver called overpowering, was 13-12, while Koosman, in only his second full season, was 17-9, winning nine of his last 10 decisions.

“The atmosphere was crazy,” Seaver said. “There were 50,000 people in the stands every night who probably didn’t think we could win, but we weren’t trying to prove anybody wrong as much as proving we were right. The miracle stuff was more for the press than anything. We weren’t looking on it in those terms. The fans may have been going crazy, but we saved our energy and focus for the field and clubhouse.”

In that, Seaver said, Hodges was a “pillar of strength” and the “perfect leader for a basically young team. I can’t stress his importance strongly enough. I mean, you can apply whatever term you want--be it father figure or captain of the ship--there was never a question who was in charge or how he wanted the game played. Gil created a professional aura that contributed to the way we went about it--on and off the field. He also planned his pitching around a 162-game schedule. The Cubs [under Leo Durocher] basically used a four-man rotation. By August and September, with all that heat and day games in Chicago, they were dead.”

From ninth to first, from 9 1/2 out in August to champagne in October, Casey Stengel would have called it amazin’--and did. The Mets were the first expansion team to win a World Series. “If they keep improving like this,” their inimitable first manager said, “they can keep going to Christmas.”

The miracle gave way to reality. The Mets finished third for three consecutive years and returned to the playoffs only once in a 17-year span before Davey Johnson helped restore a measure of prestige during the second half of the ‘80s. It has been 11 years since the Mets last played in the postseason, but the ’99 team appears on its way at 85-55.

The Mets have emerged as one of baseball’s best, and there is no question, said Seaver, about the infield defense of first baseman John Olerud, second baseman Edgardo Alfonzo, shortstop Rey Ordonez and third baseman Ventura.

“Probably the best I’ve ever seen,” he said. “To a man, absolutely superb. Olerud gets overlooked, but the other three guys are on a different level. Ordonez is worth the price of admission, and Ventura may be the free agent of the decade. It’s a surprise when a ball gets between short and third. It’s a surprise when they don’t make the spectacular play, we’re now so accustomed to it.”

An anniversary keepsake, the ’69 miracle fades into the scrapbook of the mind as the ’99 Mets produce an array or new and improved images.

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Miracle Mets

The Mets, who came into existance as one of the worst teams in baseball history, reached the pinnacle only seven years later.

A Night at the Met

The lineup for the 1969 World Series champion New York Mets:

BATTING ORDER

*--*

Player, pos. HR Avg Tommy Agee, CF 26 .271 Bud Harrelson, SS 0 .248 Cleon Jones, LF 12 .340 Donn Clendenon, 1B* 16 .248 Ron Swoboda, RF 9 .235 Ed Charles, 3B 3 .207 Jerry Grote, C 6 .252 Al Weis, 2B 2 .215

*--*

STARTING PITCHERS *--*

Player WL ERA Tom Seaver 257 2.21 Jerry Koosman 179 2.28 Gary Gentry 1312 3.43

*--*

* Played 38 games with Montreal before joining Mets.