3
2012
Remembering the Mets First “Star” – Ron Hunt
An article by 
After just reading Barry Duchan’s excellent piece here on MMO: “Mets Memories 1964 – Ron Hunt, Pete Rose and Bobby Klaus,” I was inspired to share my own thought’s and memories of Ron Hunt.
Back in ’64 I was 7 years-old, a tremendous Beatle nut, and a budding Mets fan. My favorite TV shows at the time in order were the brand new sci-fi adventures Star Trek, and The Time Tunnel, Combat!, and the re-runs of Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges (Beau and Jeff’s dad). Lot’s of great scuba adventure. To a seven-year-old Sea Hunt was pretty exciting, but thinking back all I remember about it was Lloyd gesticulating wildly underwater with lot’s of bubbles, and his freakishly bushy eye-brows behind the fogged up scuba mask.
I found out that Ron Hunt wore a rubber wet-suit under his Mets uniform because he was being hit with baseballs all the time, and it was the only way he could find to prevent his body from becoming one giant bruise. I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever heard of, and I quickly latched onto what was happening with this funny, inept baseball team in a place called Flushing, and their star second-baseman, the human baseball magnet. It was no wonder, the way Hunt used to crowd the plate. When he hit, the toes of his shoes were only six or seven inches from touching home plate, it was ridiculous and outrageous, even to me.
In the 1963 and 1964 seasons with the Mets, Hunt was hit by 24 pitches, 13 and then 11. Everyone thought that was amazing at the time, but he was only getting warmed up. After leaving the Mets he went on to play for the Giants and then the Expos. In the seven years between 1968 and 1974, Hunt was hit with a staggering 192 pitches! That’s an average of more than 27 HBP’s each season. His career year was 1971 with Montreal, when he was plunked a whopping 50 times, to give him a cool OBP of .402, and by the end of his 12-year big league career, Hunt had been tagged a total of 243 times.
November 29, 1966 was one of my personal worst days as a Mets fan. I was nine now, and at the time, I felt the Mets had done something very stupid. They had inexplicably traded their two best players, Jim Hickman and Ron Hunt to the Dodgers. Yes it was for an unbelievably talented left fielder named Tommy Davis, but he had not shown he was still the same kind of hitter, or that he had fully rebounded from a serious ankle injury that had wiped out his 1965 season.
Around that time Hunt and Hickman, and pitchers Dick Selma and Dennis Ribant (who GM Bing Devine would trade to Pittsburgh a week later for Don Bosch and Don Cardwell, a big contributor in ’69), were the only home grown major leaguers we could be proud of, and two of the most fun players on the team to watch. The return on the trade? Outfielder Tommy Davis for only one year. In the 1967 season Davis hit .302 for the Amazins, with 16 HR’s and 73 RBI’s, not bad, but what I didn’t realize at the time was the importance of what was about to happen with Tommy Davis.
On December 15, 1967, new Mets GM Johnny Murphy traded Davis, pitcher Jack Fisher and two other guys to the White Sox for a center fielder by the name of Tommie Agee, with a throw-in on the deal named Al Weis, a light-hitting middle infielder. Agee became a catalyst of the Mets drive to the World Series in ’69, batting lead-off, hitting huge HR’s down the stretch, and making legendary defensive plays in Game 3 of the Series. Weis, played ten years in the bigs, hitting a total of 7 HR’s with a lifetime SLG% of .275.
But in the 1969 World Series, Weis had 11 AB’s, 16 PA’s with 4 walks and 5 hits, a BA of .455. He also had 3 big RBI’s in the Series, and hit a huge homer off Dave McNally in the 7th inning of the clinching Game 5, which tied the score at 3-3, and set the stage for a two-run bottom of the eighth an inning later that gave the Mets a 5-3 victory, and the Series. Sadly, GM Johnny Murphy was to pass away the following January, just three months after his team won the title.
For the Series, Weis had an OBP of .563 and a SLG% of .727, which put his OPS at 1.290! Who could have known when the Mets traded their two star players back in 1966, and broke my 9-year-old heart, that three years later the players they indirectly got back would play key roles in helping them win a miraculous and legendary World Series. Our first and of course, one of only two in the first 50 years of the organization.
And it may never have happened, if not for Ron Hunt.
To see the final out of the 1969 World Series, and the mayhem that ensued, click >HERE<
About the Author: Peter Shapiro
The first time I went to Shea was not for a Mets game, it was for the Beatles concert there in August of '66. My first Met game was '67, a guy named Salty Parker was the interim-manager then. My first pennant race was 1969. As a 12 year-old that summer and fall, I managed to get to the park for 3 games. The first was the beginning of the Miracle which actually started on Tuesday July 8, 1969 with a day game against the Cubs. I was there a lot in '73. I saw games 3 & 5 of the 1973 NL Playoffs against the "Big Red Machine", from the upper deck behind home plate. It was from there that I witnessed the fight between Bud Harrelson and Pete Rose, and the mayhem that ensued. And that sweet victory in game 5! I saw a couple of WS games at Shea that year against that legendary Oakland A's club. I was there in 1985 for every single game Dr. K pitched including his two 16 strikeout performances, and the day he one-hit the Cubs on an infield single and the Mets won 1-0. I loved being a Met fan in those days. Hopefully we are once again preparing to emerge from the darkness.
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Hi Pete,
Actually, the one we should really thank is Frank Bolling. If he wasn’t anchored as the Brave’s second baseman, Hunt might not have been sold to the Mets in October of 1962.
Hunt actually shed tears upon learning he had been traded to Los Angeles and we fans never forgot what he meant to us for we always applauded him taking his turn at the plate in an opponent’s uniform.
The Mets were really fielding quite an old ball club when they took the field against Pittsburgh for the 1967 season opener at Shea. While they did have Kranepool/Swoboda platooning at first, Harrelson at short, Bosch (who they hoped would be their center fielder), Grote and a hopefully upcoming Gregg Goosen behind the plate plus an unknown pitcher by the name of George…. (forgot, was the rest of his name?
) they also had Hiller at second (eventually replaced by Jerry Buchek), Boyer at third, Davis in left, Luplow in right (also platooning with Swoboda) and a starting rotation of Fisher, Shaw and Cardwell. During the season they added such youngsters as Ed Charles, Bob Johnson, Dennis Bennet, Jack Lambe and Ralph Terry.
They really did some “rebuilding” just two short seasons later, didn’t they?
Frank Bolling. Good grab Joey D!
Wow Pete so your an old fart like me! LOL
No Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea on your TV schedule?
Definitely anything with the Irwin Allen stamp Metsie! I knew I’d be leaving out a few good shows, but I was trying to stay focused on the baseball angle!
LOL only mentioned it because I am currently encoding Season 1 – 4 for use on my Twonky server so I can stream it to any TV in the house!
500 Channels on cable and still can’t find anything to watch thats any good forcing me to go back 50 years to when TV was great!
Isn’t it odd how when there were only three networks there was great programming and now that there are 500 they all suck? LOL
(That should be read as: “When we were kids we had to live in a shoebox on the side of the road, Oh you were lucky to have a shoebox!”) LOL
Time Tunnel…..wow, that takes me back. Forgot all about that show.
As I mentioned on the last post, I was just a tad too young (fan since ’68) to have seen Ron Hunt play as a NY Met. Remember him well though for his tendency to get on base as a result of being hit by the pitch. As a kid my favorite players always seemed to be the scrappy ones (Buddy was my favorite Met back in the day).
I snagged a Ron Hunt baseball card which was one of my prized ones of my collection around 1970. No longer have any of them. Can’t even blame my parents as I threw the entire collection out myself when I was 21 and moved out, into my own place. Can’t imagine whose rookie cards I might have had during that era. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Still remember that Al Weiss HR in the ’69 series. Was about as unlikely as a HR from Buddy.
SRT – Bud was always my favorite player and funny you bring up HR’s. Tom Seaver had more career homeruns then Buddy H did. He was a hard nose player though, loved him.
I have a picture of Pete Rose and Bud fighting from the 73 playoffs signed by both of them on my wall. I love hearing, years later, Bud talking about it and how he ran into Pete’s fist, lolol
Ah…another Buddy fan.
I think one of the main reasons Buddy was my favorite player on that ’69 team was my Dad played on a weekend baseball league and he played SS. He’s only 5’9″ and was reed thin back then. Buddy was that ‘scrappy’ type player I always gravitated to as a kid.
Funny you mentioned his HRs….or lack thereof. I always wanted him to hit a HR when he got up, even as a kid though I knew that wasn’t likely to happen….
I was so disappointed that didn’t win that ’73 WS, especially after that brawl.
And Buddy was also called the mini-hawk in reference to the power hitting “Hawk” Harrelson.
Yup, Seaver had more home runs. I remember the game when he hit his first one. He was on the mound when the crowd started laughing and he turned to see that the scoreboard flashed the message he was now only 713 home runs behind Babe Ruth. Even the no-nonsense Tom broke up seeing that one.