 |
| After giving up four runs in five innings of the New York Mets' opening-game loss in the 1969 World Series, Tom Seaver was once again in command in Game 4. The 1969 National League Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer allowed six hits over 10 innings as the Mets took a 3-1 lead in the Series with a 2-1 victory. |
By Phil Ellenbecker
This was more like it. More like Tom Terrific.
The Tom Seaver who'd been so dominant for most of 1969 but was missing so far in the postseason was back in "drop and drive" force for Game 4 of the World Series.
The Baltimore Orioles got the full dose of Tom Terrific, 10 innings worth, as the New York Mets took a 3-1 advantage in the Series with a heartstopping 2-1 victory before 57,367 at Shea Stadium.
It took a controversial bunt play in the 10th, and spectacular defense by right fielder Ron Swoboda in the ninth and first baseman Donn Clendenon in the third, for the underdog Mets to pull it out. They were now within one win of toppling an Orioles team whose 109-regular season wins were the most since the 1961 New York Yankees. The main reason was Seaver kept New York in contention throughout with a six-hitter, striking out six, walking two and allowing one earned run.
Seaver, who was in the third season of a 20-year career culminated by selection to the Hall of Fame in 1992, didn't allow an extra-base hit. According to an article by Tom Verducci in Sports Illustrated, the only two other pitchers to manage this feat were fellow New York legends Christy Mathewson in 1913 and Carl Hubbell in 1933.
This was the Seaver who'd been unyielding in the last part of the regular season, going 10-0 with a 1.34 ERA in his last 11 starts. Not the one who'd given up five runs in seven innings of the Mets' 9-5 win over Atlanta in Game 1 of the first-ever National League Championship Series. Not the one who'd given four runs in five innings of a 4-1 loss in Game 1 of the Series in Baltimore. Seaver had taken three days off from running before that Game 1 after he'd strained a leg muscle shagging flies. "I just ran out of gas," he said of his abbreviated stint in which he'd given up three runs in the fourth inning.
But this time, even pitching on short rest, Seaver was at full throttle for the most part. And when the Orioles threatened, he bowed his back and fought through, leaving runners at third in two innings to keep Baltimore at bay.
And he needed every bit of resiliency to match Orioles' left-handed screwballer Mike Cuellar in a battle of two 1969 Cy Young Award winners. This was a repeat of Game 1 in which Cuellar, in his first season with Baltimore after coming over from Houston, had prevailed. Cuellar, who would tie with Denny McLain for the AL Cy Young, held the Mets to one earned run and seven hits over seven innings, with no walks and five strikeouts.
The Mets, whose 100-62 regular-season record was their first winning season since joining the NL as an expansion team in 1962, pushed across the winning run against two Orioles relievers in the 10th. Jerry Grote set the stage with a leadoff double to left field off new pitcher Dick Hall. Don Buford lost Grote's fly ball in the sun, and it dropped just beyond the reach of eight-time Gold Glove winning shortstop Mark Belanger, who'd given chase into Buford territory.
"Mark Belanger went about as deep as you'd ever see a shortstop go out for a pop-up," NBC announcer Curt Gowdy said.
Leonard Koppett, in chronicling the Series in "The New York Mets: The Whole Story" (excerpted in the Series anthology "Glory in the Fall"), deemed this Turning Point No. 9, ticking off the breaks that just seemed to keep coming the Mets' way, and/or that they kept making.
Rod Gaspar was sent in to run for Grote. Al Weis, the Mets' No. 8 hitter who'd gone 2-for-3 in the game --- a lifetime .219 hitter who would hit .455 in the Series -- was intentionally walked to set up a force play.
 |
| This throw from Baltimore Orioles pitcher Pete Richert is about to hit New York Mets pinch hitter J.C. Martin on the left wrist after Richert fielded Martin's bunt in the 10th inning. The ball ricocheted into right field, allowing the winning run to score as the Mets defeated the Orioles 2-1 in Game 4 of the 1969 World Series. |
That brought up Seaver's spot in the order, and Mets manager Gil Hodges sent up left-handed hitting J.C. Martin.
Billy Hunter, who was managing for the Orioles since Earl Weaver had been ejected in the third inning, countered by bringing in left-hander Pete Richert. (Actually, it was pitching coach George Bamberger who visited the mound and waved in Richert.)
Martin hit only .209 during the season and .222 lifetime but had delivered a two-run pinch single in the Mets' opening win in the NLCS. But with nobody out, Hodges wanted to get the runners into scoring position and ordered a bunt.
Martin dribbled it in front of the plate between Richert and catcher Elrod Hendricks. Richert picked it up and went to Boog Powell at first. The throw hit Martin in the left wrist and ricocheted into right field, allowing Gaspar to score the winning run from second. The Orioles argued to no avail that Martin had interfered by not running outside the baseline as required.
Koppett wrote: "Photographs that evening showed that Martin, indeed, had run well in fair territory when hit by the ball; he should have been out." But in home-plate umpire Shag Crawford's judgment, "Martin had touched the foul line with his right foot." Turning Point No. 10.
Amid all the twists and turns, the big constant was the presence of Seaver, who would go on to win three Cy Young Awards.
The Orioles had the go-ahead run perched at third base in the top of the 10th, but Seaver escaped. Dave Johnson led off the inning by reaching on an error at third by Wayne Garrett, who'd just been inserted into the game. After Belanger popped out foul to the catcher Grote, pinch hitter Clay Dalrymple sent a single to center, putting runners at first and second. Johnson went to third on Buford's fly out to deep right field.
Seaver kept the score at 1-1 by striking out Paul Blair on his 150th pitch of the day.
 |
| New York Mets right fielder Ron Swoboda makes a diving catch on a line drive off the bat of Baltimore's Brooks Robinson in Game 4 of the 1969 World Series, with the Mets leading 1-0. Frank Robinson tagged up and scored on the catch, but Swoboda possibly prevented the Orioles from going ahead, as instead of two runners on and one out, Baltimore had two out and one on. The Mets went on to win the game 2-1 in 10 innings. |
Baltimore broke up Seaver's shutout in the ninth, but Swoboda kept the Orioles from possibly moving ahead with a diving catch on Brooks Robinson's sacrifice fly that scored Frank Robinson. Frank had singled with one out and went to third on Powell's single to right off Eddie Watt, who'd come on in the eighth after Hunter pinch hit for Cuellar.
"I'm running out of gas, but I still have a few pitches left in me," Seaver told manager Gil Hodges during a mound conference after Powell's hit, according to Verducci in SI.
Brooks Robinson then sent a line drive into short right, barely over Weis at second, on which Swoboda made a sprawling, backhanded, belly-flopping grab, with Frank Robinson tying the game when he crossed the plate.
"Swoboda, the right fielder, could have played it safe," wrote Thomas J. Brown Jr. in an article for the Society for American Baseball Research's Games Project. "The conservative approach would have been to concede the run and play the ball on a hop. Instead, Swoboda practically knocked himself out with an extraordinary catch that would go down as one of the best in World Series history. Swoboda ran at full speed and dived at the last minute to make the catch inches above the ground."
Frank Robinson, according to Verducci, later called Swoboda's decision to dive for the ball stupid because it risked having both runners score.
But he caught it, so instead of two runners still on and one out, the Orioles had one on and two out, and Hendricks then lined out to Swoboda, who nearly overran the ball according to Koppett, to end the inning.
(By scoring, Baltimore ended a string in which Seaver had gone the entire season without giving up a run or an extra-base hit in the ninth inning, Verducci reported. Only Virgil Trucks in 1949 among starting pitchers had done that before.)
Swoboda's catch was seen not only as a game changer but a back breaker, a Series scene shifter.
"Swoboda’s catch made the Mets and their fans start to believe that they might actually win the Series," Brown wrote. "Many of those who saw the catch consider it even more momentous than Willie Mays’ famous catch in the 1954 World Series."
 |
| The headline in the New York Daily News proclaims another improbable victory for the New York Mets. J.C. Martin's game-winning bunt and Ron Swoboda's catch are highlighted from the Mets' 2-1 victory over Baltimore in Game 4 of the 1969 World Series. |
The omens started early as Seaver, who'd given up a homer to Buford on his first pitch in Game 1, indicated this day was going to be different by striking out Buford and Powell in the first inning. But he ran into trouble in the third when the Orioles, with the Mets up 1-0, put runners at second and third. Belanger, after Weaver had been tossed for arguing balls-and-strikes calls with Crawford, led off the inning with a single, and Cuellar followed with another single. Buford grounded to Clendenon at first for a fielder's choice that retired Cuellar at second and moved Belanger to third.
The Mets had been playing in for a bunt when Buford hit a one-hop liner that Clendenon "speared like a hockey goalie," Koppett wrote.
Blair then sacrificed Buford to second, bunting the ball down the third-base line to move up Buford while Belanger held.
But Seaver got the ever-dangerous Frank Robinson to pop out foul to first. He then retired 16 of the next 17 batters he faced from the fourth through the ninth before the Orioles rose up to tie the game.
Clendenon had given the Mets the early lead with a solo homer leading off the second. It was his second of three homers in the Series as he won MVP honors.
The Mets threatened in the third when Weis bounced a grounder off Brooks Robinson's chest at third for a single and went to third on Tommy Agee's single with one out. Cuellar squeezed out of it by getting Bud Harrelson and Cleon Jones to ground out.
New York didn't get any runner into scoring position from there until the ninth, when Jones and Swoboda singled, Swoboda completing a 3-for-4 day at the plate with his two-out hit. But pinch hitter Art Shamsky grounded out, bringing on extra innings, and more gritty pitching by Seaver. And the winning run on a walk-off bunt, only the second one in postseason history, according to an article by Paul Casella at MLB.com. The first was in Game 3 of the 1914 World Series when the Boston Braves swept the Philadelphia Athletics.
That 1914 Boston team was called the Miracle Braves because they rallied from 15 games out on July 4 to win the NL pennant.
The 1969 National League team in New York, while popularly called the Amazin' Mets, has also been known as the Miracle Mets, for like those '14 Braves they seemingly came from nowhere, from 10 games behind Chicago on Aug. 13 to overtake the Cubs and win the National League East by eight games. And then a sweep of the Braves in the NLCS.
And following Tom Seaver's terrific outing on Oct. 15, 1969, and after a 5-3 victory in Game 5 the next day, the Mets, believe it or not -- those Mets who had won only 40 games their first season and whose previous best was 73 wins in 1968 -- were World Series champions.
Sources:
Play-by-play: https://www.
Seaver's 1969 season: https://www.si.com/
1969 World Series: "Glory in the Fall," 2010, Sterling
Video of game-winning play: https://www.youtube.com/
Additional background came from various sources on the Retrosheet and Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project and Games Project websites, as well as baseballreference.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment