1969 Mets: Remembering them as we approach their 50th anniversary

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Let’s take some time to appreciate the 1969 New York Mets in their 50th Anniversary.

Were you there when the 1969 New York Mets won the World Series? Were you one of the 57,397 (box score) people at Shea Stadium who watched Cleon Jones catch a deep fly ball to left field, then sink down to one knee in prayer as the Mets somehow won their first championship in five games?

Trivia question 1: Sho sang the National Anthem before game five of the 1969 World Series? (answer at the end)

Trivia question 2: Who joined Kurt Gowdy on the pregame show before game five?

Well, I wasn’t there either, but I was at the game before (box score).

I was nine, my mother was dying of a brain tumor, and my dad, big brother, and I went to Shea for game four, the one where Ron Swoboda made an incredible diving catch in right-center field in the ninth inning with runners on first and third and one out.

The tying run scored but it kept Boog Powell on first, and the Mets won the game in the tenth inning, 2-1. Oh, and Tom Seaver pitched a complete ten-inning game.

I don’t remember a single thing about the game, but my brother does. He has a scrapbook with newspaper clippings and autographs of almost every player and coach, which he shows me every time I visit him.

1969 National League Championship Series complete broadcasts

Game 1 (not found)

Game 2 (Radio)

Game 3 (Radio)

1969 World Series complete broadcasts

Player introductions before first home game (Game 3)

So that’s the miraculous end of the 1969 season, but how did they get there?

Before looking at 1969, we have to look at the 1968 roster. The 1968 Mets went 73-89–the most wins the in franchise history at that point–with an average age of 25. Many names are familiar if you know the more famous names of the 1969 roster.

The 1969 Mets went 100-62, an astounding jump of 27 wins in one season. They averaged 26 years of age.

Players added in 1969: Amos Otis (22 years old in 1969), Bob Johnson (26), Bobby Pfeil (25), Donn Clendenon (33), Gary Gentry (22), Jack DiLauro (26), Jesse Hudson (20), Jim Gosger (26), Rod Gaspar (23), Tug McGraw (24) (McGraw was already on the Mets, but pitched in the minors in 1968), Wayne Garrett (21)

Players subtracted in 1969: Bill Connors, Bill Short, Dick Selma, Don Bosch, Don Shaw, Greg Goossen, Jerry Buchek, Larry Stahl, Mike Jorgensen, Phil Linz

Players who played for the Mets in 1968 and 1969: Cleon Jones, Tommy Agee, Bud Harrelson, Jerry Grote, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Nolan Ryan, Ron Taylor, Don Cardwell, Al Jackson, Al Weis, Art Shamsky, Bob Heise, Cal Koonce, Danny Frisella, Duffy Dyer, Ed Charles, Ed Kranepool, JC Martin, Jim McAndrew, Ken Boswell, Kevin Collins, Les Rohr, Ron Swoboda.

Season summary

There is no point in writing a beginning-to-end review of the 1969 Mets since many people and websites have already done a great job. Here is the page from ThisGreatGame.com, capturing the basic details of the most incredible season in Mets history.

Casey Stengel was quoted as saying that man would walk on the Moon before the New York Mets would win a World Series. They were right, at least according to most people.

There was another quote about something happening that was as unbelievable as a moon landing in 1969.

There was also the famous Black Cat Game on Friday, August 13. The cat, Leo Durocher‘s questionable managing, and the maturation of the Mets’ young pitchers are all credited with helping the Mets beat out the Cubs.

I credit the bond between Gil Hodges and Tom Seaver more than any other factor. I have heard Seaver interviewed many times over the years. He credits Hodges as the key. The other players credit Hodges and Seaver for bringing a new confidence to the team at just the right time.

Mark Herrman wrote an article for Newsday comparing the 1969 and 2015 Mets. Here’s a quote from Herrman’s article, putting the season in historical context:

“There never will be another team like the ’69 Mets in large part because there never will be another year like ’69. It straddled the line between excitement and turmoil. Woodstock happened that summer and Vietnam loomed over every aspect of American life, including baseball. Players, including Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson, had to leave their clubs for weeks to fulfill military reserve duties. Tom Seaver won Game 4 of the World Series against the Orioles during Moratorium Day, which produced a massive antiwar protest in New York.”

And here’s a joke quoted by Herrman: “In the 1977 movie ‘Oh, God!’ George Burns played the title character and said, ‘My last miracle was the ’69 Mets. Before that, you have to go back to the Red Sea.'”

Key transaction

June 15, 1969: Traded a player to be named later, Jay Carden (minors), David Colon (minors), Kevin Collins and Steve Renko to the Montreal Expos. Received Donn Clendenon. The New York Mets sent Terry Dailey (minors) (May 16, 1970) to the Montreal Expos to complete the trade (from Baseball Reference).

Key in-season move

Early in the season, Hodges used Cal Koonce (SABR bio) as his closer. He got off to a bad start, and in June, Hodges replaced Koonce with Tug McGraw, using the tandem of Ron Taylor (SABR bio) and McGraw (SABR bio) as his late-inning relievers, pushing Koonce to the role of long man/mop up.

The Mets had transitioned McGraw from starter to reliever early in the season, and he took well to his new role, giving the Mets a lefty-righty combo that provided quality support for the talented young rotation.

In addition to being talented, McGraw and Taylor were two of the most interesting baseball players to ever play for the Mets. Maxwell Kates from the SABR Biography Project wrote about Taylor, “Although he was a natural left-hander, his mother feared that young Ron would suffer cardiovascular ailments from extensive use of his left arm, and insisted that he learn to pitch right-handed — ‘Insist? She tied my left hand behind my back!'”

Best regular-season moment

September 24, 1969: Mets Clinch NL East

Gary Gentry shuts out the St. Louis Cardinals (radio broadcast) 6-0 at Shea, and the fans tear the field apart.

A Postseason for the Ages

Keys to winning in the postseason: great pitching, platooning at four positions, stability up the middle

Very few teams before or since had the quality of pitching in the postseason rotation: Seaver, Koosman, Gentry and bullpen: McGraw, Taylor, Ryan.

They platooned at four positions in the postseason. There were four starters that played every game: Cleon Jones in left field, Tommie Agee in center field, Bud Harrelson at shortstop, and Jerry Grote, the catcher.

Strength up the middle, as the saying goes. Agee, Harrelson, and Grote played three of the four key defensive positions and played them well. Jones played his position well, too.

The right-handed hitting platoon of Clendenon at first base, Weis at second base, Charles at third base, and Swoboda in right field rose to the occasion when it counted most, in the World Series with Clendenon winning the World Series MVP, Weis getting some key hits, and Swoboda playing exceptional defense.

The left-handed hitting platoon of Ed Kranepool at first base, Ken Boswell at second base, Wayne Garrett at third base, and Art Shamsky in right played more during the season, but only started one of the five World Series games, because Mike Cuellar and Dave McNally started four of the five games.

In the NLCS it was the left-handers who dominated vs. the Atlanta Braves, who used three righty starters in three games. Despite the Mets’ relatively average offense and superior pitching, the Mets outscored the Braves 27-15 in their series sweep.

NLCS composite box score

World Series highlights

World Series composite box score

Player Notes and Quotes

Tom Seaver

From SABR article by Maxwell Kates: Diligence and luck, along with talent, were essential ingredients in the Mets’ 11-game winning streak in late May and early June. For every player, there was a different highlight that augmented their confidence, but for Seaver, it was an extra-inning clutch hit to win the contest on June 4 in Los Angeles.

“We were in a scoreless game until the 15th inning. Then Wayne Garrett hit a ball up the middle with [Agee] on second. There was going to be a close play at the plate. Willie Davis came charging in and the ball was under his glove. The winning run scored. There was real electricity. I remember going into the clubhouse and making eye contact with Grote,” Seaver said. He described the experience as “the last ounce that tipped me over into believing we could win.” Kates, quoting from Maury Allen. After the Miracle: The Amazin’ Mets – Two Decades Later (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 236

Gil Hodges

From SABR article by John Saccoman: “What happened with the shoe-polish incident? Did Hodges bring out the actual game ball with a shoe-polish smudge? Ed Kranepool, on the bench because a lefty was pitching, said that Hodges brought out a smudged ball from a bucket of discards. Hodges asserted that it was the actual ball with the actual smudge. Koosman recalled that he picked up the errant ball and Hodges told him to rub it on his own shoe, perhaps to enhance the mark that was already there. Jones acknowledged that “Gil Hodges would never do anything dishonest.” Saccoman quoting Tom Clavin and Danny Peary, Gil Hodges: The Brooklyn Bums, the Miracle Mets, and the Extraordinary Life of a Baseball Legend (New York: New American Library, 2012), 344.

Nolan Ryan

From SABR article by Talmadge Boston: “Angels pitching coach Tom Morgan broke down and overhauled Ryan’s delivery, taught him how to throw a sharp breaking curveball, and provided the moral support the young right-hander had never received with the Mets.”

Cleon Jones

“There was this one field that we put some old shirts down for bases. Behind right field there was this little creek and behind left field, well, man, it just went on and on for miles. We played our games there and after a couple of games, I had lost four or five balls when I hit them left-handed into the water. We didn’t have too many real baseballs so when the other guys came to me and said, “You better stop doing that or we ain’t got no more baseballs here,” I just turned around. That’s how I became a right-handed hitter. I just wanted to save those balls.” Cleon Jones told Maury Allen, quoted by Fred Worth from the SABR Biography Project.

Tommie Agee

“On the gridiron, Agee was an end and his friend Cleon Jones, a halfback. MCTS football had a stellar record—only one loss during Tommie’s three years with the squad. He would remember fondly, ‘We had a play that we called number forty-eight, and it was a halfback option play. The quarterback would hand off to Cleon and he had an option of running or passing to me. During the 1960 season, we made five touchdowns on that play alone.'” John Vorperian of the SABR Biography Project

A is for Apple + A is for analytics

For those of you who know I love analytics, here is a statistical surprise:

Total WAR of players who played for the Mets in 1968 but not 1969
- -0.4
Total 1968 WAR of players who played for the Mets in 1968 and 1969
- 34.7
Total WAR in 1968
- 34.3
Total WAR of players added in 1969
- 5.6
  - Tug McGraw 2.5
  - Gary Gentry 2.2
  - Donn Clendenon 0.4
  - Rod Gaspar 0.4
Total 1969 WAR of players who played for the Mets in 1968 and 1969
- 35.7
  - Seaver 7.2
  - Jones 7.0
  - Agee 5.2
  - Koosman 5.0
Total WAR in 1969
- 41.3

The biggest surprise for me is that the players who played in both seasons had a difference of 1 Win Above Replacement from 1968 to 1969. It was the new players who added the biggest impact, with a difference of six WAR.

Most of the impact was from 24-year-old Tug McGraw (2.5) and 22-year-old Gary Gentry (2.2).

Then what/Where are they now?

Tom Seaver interviews (1972) by former bonus baby pitcher Pat Jordan (2013)

[Unfortunately, the second Jordan piece is from a website that has been found to have malware, so this is just a couple of quotes from it. I read it years ago, and it was great, as are all Pat Jordan’s books and articles.]

Cleon Jones today

Ed Charles passed away

1969 New York Mets Yearbook

Lasting impact of 1969 Miracle Mets

Bibliography

You may want to go to your local library and check out these books about the season:

A Magic Summer: The Amazin’ Story of the 1969 New York Mets, by Stanley Cohen
Miracle Year 1969: Amazing Mets and Super Jets, by Bill Gutman
The 1969 Miracle Mets: The Improbable Story of the World’s Greatest Underdog Team, by Steven Travers and Bud Harrelson
Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team, by Peter Golenbock
Gil Hodges: A Hall of Fame Life, by Mort Zachter
Gil Hodges: The Quiet Man, by Marino Amoruso
The Life Story of the One and Only Cleon, by Cleon Jones with Ed Hershey
(Forthcoming, due in March) The Miracle of 1969: How the New York Mets Went from Lovable Losers to World Series Champions, by Rich Coutinho
(Forthcoming, due in March) After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the ’69 Mets, by Art Shamsky and Eric Sherman

Answer to trivia question 1: Pearl Bailey, who attended games regularly.

Answer to trivia question 2: Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle

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