THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM by Steven Travers Page A

and threw them at the offenders,
telling them to wake up and pay attention. His attitude would have
been taken exception to, except that he was so shockingly good. It
earned him immediate respect.
    Seaver’s work ethic was legendary, his
concentration and seriousness unprecedented in Met history. He was
immediately successful. When his brother, Charles Jr., a New York
City social worker, visited a client he saw a poster of his brother
hanging in his tenement apartment. It was an era before ESPN and
the lowly Mets were not on national TV very much. Cincinnati’s Pete
Rose openly wondered who “the kid” was at Gallagher’s, a New York
steak house, when he saw an out-of-place Seaver sitting at a table
by himself. Told whom he was, Rose then made the connection. This
was the guy who beat his Reds, 7-3, on June 13.
    He sure looks young but the kid’s got a
helluva fast ball .
    Against his hero Henry Aaron, Seaver induced
the slugger into a double-play, but was almost in admiration of his
opponent when Aaron adjusted later and hit the same pitch over the
fence. Henry told him he was “throwing hard, kid.” He “stalked”
Sandy Koufax at the batting cage when the now-retired legend was in
town as a broadcaster. When Koufax recognized who he was, Seaver
was taken aback but pleased.
    Seaver earned a spot on the National League
roster for the All-Star Game, played near his college stomping
grounds, at Anaheim Stadium. This meant more embarrassed mistaken
identity. Cardinal superstar Lou Brock thought he was the clubhouse
boy and asked him to fetch a Coke. Seaver dutifully did that, but
Brock had to apologize when he was informed who he was.
    In the game, Seaver came on in extra innings
to retire the American League, saving the National’s 2-1 victory.
On the season he was 16-13 with a 2.76 earned run average, easily
garnering Rookie of the Year honors. His 16 victories came with
little offensive or defensive support from the 10 th place Mets. He easily could have won 20 games in a year in which
the great pitching aces of the era – Koufax, Don Drysdale, Bob
Gibson, Juan Marichal – were retired, hurt or slumped. Mike
McCormick, a journeyman southpaw with the Giants, won the Cy Young
award, but in truth did not pitch better than Seaver.
    The Tom Seaver of 1967-68 was still
developing. In the beginning, he was considered a sinker-slider
pitcher whose fast ball was excellent but not nearly at the level
of such heaterballers of the time as “Sudden Sam” McDowell or Bob
Gibson. But the late maturation process that began when he entered
the Marine Corps had not reached fruition. His hard work and weight
lifting paid off, and by late 1968 Billy Williams of the Cubs told
teammates “he brings it” after being set down by him.
    Seaver was honest with his manager when
asked how he felt. Whereas most pitchers lied, Seaver put so much
into pitching that by the eighth inning he was worn out. He and
Nancy took to the New York scene feet flying. If ever a “sports
couple” was seemingly born for the Big Apple, it was the
Seavers.
    “Nancy and I love this town,” Seaver told
sportswriter Maury Allen. “We walk around Manhattan, up Fifth
Avenue, past Carnegie Hall, down Broadway. We want to get to the
Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History on our next day
off.”
    Seaver felt a natural intellectual
curiosity, fueled by his surroundings. The literary nature of New
York society did not escape him. He read books by John Steinbeck,
who had written of the central California that they both grew up
in. Steinbeck’s vision of California was much different from
Seaver’s easy affluence, but Tom had an inquiring mind and absorbed
all of it. He read books about politics, satire and the classic
baseball history book The Glory of Their Times , which
allowed him to realize that he was part of something bigger than
himself; that being a New York baseball star was special over and
above playing in other cities. He had respect for the