2
2013
How The Miracle Mets Were Built: The Spring Of 1969
An article by Barry Duchan
Welcome to Part Three of my exclusive four part series entitled, How The Miracle Mets Were Built. If haven’t read my first two installments you check them out here: The Spring Of 1968 - The 1968 Offseason.
With no major acquisitions over the winter, the focus in spring training was primarily on the young players. The one exception was Tommie Agee. Coming off a disastrous first season, Agee was surprisingly handed the centerfield job in spring training, with manager Gil Hodges showing unwavering faith in Agee’s ability to bounce back. This was in spite of the fact that two of the prominent rookies in camp were all-star center fielders in the minor leagues, Amos Otis at AAA Jacksonville and Rod Gaspar at AA Memphis.
On the pitching front, Gary Gentry was penciled in to the rotation and Tug McGraw was ticketed to replace Don Shaw as the team’s primary lefty reliever. The Mets felt that their biggest need which could be solved internally was at third base where veteran Ed Charles would be phased out, if not replaced entirely.
The Mets’ best rookie position player, Amos Otis would be given first shot at the job. In the minors, Otis, a one-time minor league Rule 5 selection from the Red Sox, had played all over the field, and with third base perceived as the Mets’ greatest need, Otis would be given every opportunity to succeed there despite the fact that he was primarily an outfielder in 1968.
There was also talk that the Mets, in need of a legitimate slugger would package Ed Kranepool and several other players possibly including Otis, Grote, and one of the young pitchers to get Joe Torre from the Braves, but that never materialized because the Mets were especially reluctant to give up Otis who was considered “untouchable”. At the time, Torre was still primarily a catcher, although he had played some first base. Had the Mets been able to get him without surrendering Grote, he would have probably played first. In any case, Torre wound up going to the Cardinals for Orlando Cepeda.
When spring training ended, rookies Wayne Garrett and Rod Gaspar were added to the bench as was rookie catcher Duffy Dyer. The Otis experiment at third was considered a failure and Otis would spend most of the year back at AAA playing the outfield while Charles reclaimed the starting job with Garrett in reserve. So, basically, the Mets went into 1969 with virtually the same team that won 73 games in 1968 and without acquiring the cleanup hitter they were seeking. There was always hope that the young players would continue to get better, but really, was this a team that could challenge the defending league champion Cardinals or the Cubs?
The regular season started and as they had done every year before, the Mets lost on Opening Day. This time it was particularly embarrassing, losing at home to the expansion Expos 11-10 with ex-Met Don Shaw the winner in relief. Things didn’t get much better as the Mets started the season going 18-23 looking to hold off the Expos and possibly the Phillies and potentially finish fourth.
Then suddenly, things changed. Playing the Dodgers and Giants had never been a pleasant experience for the Mets, but somehow the Mets were able to win 11 games in a row, 7 against Los Angeles and San Francisco and 4 against the expansion Padres. Their record rose to 29-23 and Mets fans began to think that maybe this would be the year the team could turn it around and finish over .500. The Mets still appeared to be in desperate need of a power hitter and veteran presence in the clubhouse if they wanted to be considered legitimate contenders and trade rumors started circulating again. The best was yet to come.
About the Author: Barry Duchan
I've been following the Mets since 1962. Have to admit I was a Yankee fan as a kid, but I found it to be so much more interesting to see how a young team could build itself up rather than following a team where the season didn't really begin until October. I remember them all - Casey, Marv, ChooChoo, Don Bosch, The Stork, etc. As the years went on, I became more and more of a Mets fan, and a Yankee hater once Steinbrenner and Billy Martin entered the picture. After retiring, I relocated with my family from Long Island to Chapel Hill, NC in 2005. I spend a lot of my time now checking out all the various Mets blogs. Fortunately, I still get to watch almost all of the Mets games (except those that are blacked out here).
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NL East Standings
| Team | W | L | Pct. | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Braves | 42 | 30 | .583 | - |
| Phillies | 35 | 37 | .486 | 7.0 |
| Nationals | 34 | 36 | .486 | 7.0 |
| Mets | 27 | 40 | .403 | 12.5 |
| Marlins | 22 | 48 | .314 | 19.0 |
Last updated: 06/19/2013
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Hi Barry,
Again, great installment and loving it, having been a high school senior when 1969 started out and a college freshman when the miracle season was finally completed (sorry if I ruined the ending for those of you who didn’t know what happened that season
).
Yes, remember the Torre rumors and Joe eventually traded for Cepeda. Poor Joe, he missed his chance getting into the post-season as a player because Atlanta won the first western division title after he left and though he thought being with St. Louis he would have a shot with a team having gone to the world series two straight years with no real pennant race to challenge them – and then it finished third.
But I don’t recall Agee not still being pegged as the center fielder during the winter of 1968 or when spring training eventually began. We all knew Gil was still very high on Tommie even though he had been in sharp decline after his 1966 rookie of the year season. Instead it appeared Swoboda was the odd man out with Gadspar winning the job in right over him and Otis (who also lost out at third to Garrett).
However, I wonder how many recall that 1969 started out with a work stoppage over a dispute about the pension fund which began that winter by most players not signing their contracts? It was the first ever action of it’s kind other than the one game when Detroit players went on strike to protest Ty Cobb being suspended (see below for what then happened). This caused a delay in the start of spring training and so Bowie Kuhn, the new commissioner, worked out a compromise deal to get the matter settled. Though most players were holding their own informal team workouts, it was obvious that pitchers were behind schedule and their arms not yet strong enough as they should have been come opening day.
That was why Tom Seaver wasn’t sharp against Montreal and couldn’t make it past the fifth inning, having already given up four runs and a slew of hits. Was at that opener (section 17, loge) and as our bullpen was then imploding in the late innings remember those around me saying “sh*t, we can’t even beat an expansion team”.
So in essence, 1969 was to be completely different than anything we had ever experienced before in that, the centennial celebration year of professional baseball – the work stoppage, the new divisional play introducing a five game league playoff to get into the world series, the lowering of the mound by six inches (the strike zone had already experienced changes in the past) and man landing on the moon – surpassed only by one other bigger miracle that we all know of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Leinhauser
I have to wonder what this team would currently be like if we had a Gil Hodges managing this team…
Same faces but they would play very differently….
It was in January 1969 and the NY Jets surprisingly defeated the Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl. I remember sitting around listening to the all the hoopla as a high school Freshman and thinking, “The Jets won the Super Bowl! The Mets play in Shea Stadium, too. Maybe they’ll win the World Series this year…” Realizing that it was THE METS being considered in my dream world, the next thought that came to mind based on reality, “NAH!!!”
1969: WHAT A SUMMER!!! OUR CHEERING FOR THE METS AND HATING ON THE CUBS!!! WHAT AN EXPERIENCE!!! THE WHOLE NY METROPOLITAN AREA AND THE NATION WAS CAUGHT UP IN IT!!! I REMEMBER SOME STUDENTS CUTTING SECTIONS OF PAGES OUT OF BOOKS FOR STORING THEIR TRANSISTOR RADIOS SO THEY COULD LAY THEIR HEAD DOWN ON IT WHILE IN CLASS AND LISTEN TO THE WORLD SERIES!!!
There will never be a time and experience like THAT, again!!!
Hi Afansince’67,
We didn’t have to cut pages out of transistor radios in college – just used those small plastic earplugs that came with them.
A few of us were listening to game three during one of my college classes when Agee made that first catch. It was a funny site as while started looking at each, trying to keep quiet yet acting as if we suddenly had ants in our pants!
Have a copy of Tom Seaver appearing on the Joe Namath show right before the world series and he said to Tom he had nothing to worry about since he was playing a team from Baltimore. If you recall, now only the Jets but the Knicks also knocked a Baltimore team out of the NBA playoffs the season before they won the NBA Championship and many suspected the Bullets purposely lost their last game so the team they were playing could move ahead of the Knicks in the playoffs so they could face them in the first round. As the Knicks were taking it from them, the Garden crowd started yelling “you wanted us, you wanted us!”
1969/1970 – a GOLDEN age in New York sports and full of glamor. The Miracle Mets made Shea Stadium the place to be and the Super Bowl jets doing the same, the Knicks at the still fairly new Madison Square Garden winning the NBA crown (Bill Gallo created the MJK winner’s club and the Rangers, though disappointing us in the stanley cup, was one of the top clubs in the NHL.
Shea Stadium and Madison Square Garden were THE in-places all year long. Our sports heroes suddenly became overnight glamorous celebrities being seen on TV, commercials and newspapers all the time. Seaver and Namath were staples. There were the “four Jets” singing the praises of Score hair cream. Brilcream had two good ones: Gil Hodges checking the Mets starters for grease and with the Knicks’, Donnie May finally getting a start; however, when introduced and getting fives from Reed and others, they felt grease on his palms and told him to get back to the bench because they couldn’t play with grease on the basketball. Rod Gilbert, Vic Hadfield and Eddie Giacoman always appeared in pictures of them on the City sidewalks, restaurants, etc.
Ah, great times.
Joey,
We said it his way in May 1970: FIRST THE JETS, THEN THE METS, AND NOW THE KNICKS!!!
Definitely a golden age in NY sports history!!!
Hi Afansince’67,
And remember how depressing it was to be a Yankee fan back in 1969? Oh, how they hated not even being an after-thought .
After the Mets moved into first place, WOR (which carried the games on TV) would advertise the next televised game in the sports pages. Let’s say if it was against St. Louis, the ad would read: “number one versus St. Louis, 8:00 PM.
Friend and I joked about about the Yankees and WPIX: “number five versus Detroit”. LOL
Hi guys, that was a great time. Best year ever for NY sports.
Hi Dan,
And it was all so sudden. New York was a sports-team morgue since the Yanks last won the pennant in 1964. A five year span followed which hit rock bottom in 1966 with the once mighty Yankees finishing last,, the once mighty football Giants finishing 1-12-1, the Knicks finishing 30-50, the Rangers at 18-41-11 and the Jets at 6-6-2 being the only team playing at .500.
The big accomplishment in New York sports that year was the Mets – escaping the cellar (9th place) and losing less than 100 games (96) for the first time in it’s five year history – and for us new breeders, that was almost as exciting as the Miracle Season three years later. I remember after three games into the season passing by a friend of mine while in ninth grade – we were so excited we gave ourselves a five yelling “two and one!”. A week later we were two and six. LOL
Well Torre finally made it to the mets in 1975. Traded for my namesake Sadecki and a minor leaguer, 2 years later he became player/manager then just manager. Too bad we didnt get him in 69 as he had some monster years for the cards in the early 70s , winning the mvp in 1971 if im not mistaken.
Great series Barry! Thank you.