A wonderful trip down memory lane for us original new breeders and thank you for allowing us to hop on board.

No, the 1969 Mets were not a fluke – they earned everything that year. But it was a story of everything coming together at the same time and everyone doing things that one sees but once in a lifetime. That’s why it was the miracle – whenever a miracle catch, clutch hit, goof by the opposing team in the field, improbable occurance (like Swoboda with Carlton, the double header 1-0 wins against Pittsburgh where Koozman and Cardwell drove in the only runs) was needed, it came. The team played on an emotional level and poise never seen before or after from a bunch of kids.

But that also meant the team didn’t play over it’s head but that it would come down to earth and could no longer rely on miracles. Perfect example is the 1970 home opener that I was at (wouldn’t have missed the raising of the world championship flag for nothing!) Tie game top of the ninth with a runner in scoring position for Pittsburgh and a short fly is hit to a running hard Ron Swoboda. 1) He obviously short-hopped it whereas he would have caught it the year before, and 2) He then raised his arm up with the ball hoping to fool the umpire – an amateur trick no Met would have done the year before behaving so professional.

What really stuck out in my mind of your great article was this:

“…..the emergence of M. Donald Grant as the “top dog” in the baseball structure of the organization. This was the end of the Mets as a contending team.

“As M. Donald Grant, who in Whitey Herzog’s own words: “knew nothing about baseball,” went on to destroy the Mets franchise for the next decade, Herzog went to St. Louis to lick his wounds. Of course Herzog, who knew “plenty about baseball,” went on to build a perennial contender and championship team while the Mets were entering their darkest period as a franchise.”

Why does that remind me of the past two years?

You can hire the best guys in baseball to work under you but if you don’t listen to them and do what they suggest it doesn’t matter!
By the same token you can hire the worst guys in baseball and if your good and know enough to not listen to the bad advice you can succeed as well but it is much harder!

“Perhaps by reviewing the history of our own beloved Amazins, we can ourselves relearn what it takes to build a winner.”

I never paid homage to the wonderful scouts and assistants who helped these G.M.’s, that is true, but that is for another piece as I didn’t want make this one too convoluted where the point was lost. I think Metsie summed it up pretty well with his analysis of the structure of a successful front office. As a baseball mind balanced with a business mind, and of course scouting is equally important. It’s actually a front office as a team, and in that respect you have a point, that maybe I didn’t make the importance of that structure important enough in the article. But again, it was getting pretty complicated just with bringing all those players and their Met origins together, and I was trying to streamline the thing. One more point Barry. At the time this was written, I was writing it for the 2012 Mets Annual, and we were on a STRICT word limit from the editor.

A Good manager TRUSTS the guys he hired to do a job and lets them do it to the best of thier ability!

Weiss TRUSTED Devine and what you BELIEVE does not matter as much as what you DO and DECIDE!

he decided to let Bing do what he thought best!
THATS what a good manager does!

Unlike now where a decision gets made and then a week later the GM second guesses that decision and changes course.

I know you were focused in 1969 but your piece did bring up something that should be noted regarding then and 1986.

It has to do with the Corporate construct of the organization.

Look at the structure Devine and Weiss had and you see it parralells quite well with the structure in 86!

A STRONG baseball mind at the top with two lieutenants one baseball guy and one Bean counter business type.

The Bean counter in this case is Grant who much like our Current GM really wasn’t a baseball guy more a business guy!

In 1986 Cashen had a very similar structure.
He was the strong baseball mind at the top and had two lieutenants, one good at baseball and the other good at business.

Those two FOs are the only ones who had such a structure and by the same token the only ones who won a WS!

We look at the Omar years and most agree he was good at the baseball but bad at the business side of the operations. If he had a good Business minded lieutenant he might have won a WS in one of those years because he might have not made those deals most people lament as crippling and unwise.

And the Paralells don’t stop there….

When Devine left and grant was the greater presence in the room and named his boy McDonald to run the team for him We essentally put the Business guy at the top instead of a Baseball guy!

Business ruled the day and that led to the Seaver trades and gutting of a team that would make it as bad as it was for a decade until Cashen took over!

We have a Business guy in charge again…
Three All Stars are gone and one is close to being out the door.

As they say History is Cyclical and those who don’t remember the history are doomed to repeat it!

I find it quite notable also that the majority of those who seem to think things are fine right now are all those who weren’t alive at the time this history was first tried.

Well everyone has to grow up and learn sometime don’t they!
Living through repeated mistakes is the way you get OLD and EXPERIENCED!