Tom Seaver was terrific. So many words and tributes when we learned about the surprising passing of Seaver that described the Hall of Fame pitcher. Yes, he was a Mets icon and his records on the mound put in that all-time great category among pitchers.
Bill Madden, though, the acclaimed longtime New York sports writer, who covered Tom Seaver over the years, has another best seller and probably the best account of the Seaver years.
“Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life” published by Simon & Schuster is available on Amazon and at bookstores Tuesday. Madden, author of the New York Times bestseller Steinbrenner, needs no explanation about the title.
We know that Seaver had a terrific life among family, friends, and respect with teammates. He was a leader. In his era it was always or close to perfection and the Mets were his extended family no matter what the circumstances about a trade away from New York that should have never been.
So you begin to read the credits from acclaimed broadcasters, writers, opposing players, teammates, and Hall of Famers. Bob Costas, Keith Hernandez, Johnny Bench, Tom Verducci, Tony LaRussa, and they say, “Terrific.
Writes Bench, a close friend of Seaver, “Bill Madden was the only person who could write this book of our dear friend Tom Terrific. Seaver was Terrific. A Man’s Man. Brilliant, funny, the best competitor I ever knew, and my friend.”
“After all, there was, and always will be, only one Tom Terrific” explains Madden in wrapping up the last chapter that chronicles Seaver and his deteriorating condition and struggles with dementia.
Allow me, though, to flashback about Seaver and his career defining 300th victory, Yankee Stadium on August 4, 1985 with the White Sox. At the time, I was a rookie reporter for the Bronx News a weekly. I often covered Yankees games.
I also grew up in the Bronx as one of those rare Mets fans. I marveled at every time Tom Seaver took the mound at Shea Stadium. I expected another terrific Tom Seaver outing on the mound and observed as Madden described that “drop-and-drive” delivery.
So the beginning chapter of “Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life” is appropriately titled as “300!” The accounts of that day are detailed. It captured my attention and the ensuing chapters leave no room for disappointment.
The White Sox were the new team.
Seaver, as Madden states, “worried if he could fit in with a new team and new teammates, most of them ten to fifteen years younger than him. He had always been regarded as a true baseball Renaissance man, the out-of the-ordinary clubhouse intellectual who was fond of citing Bernoulli’s law to explain why a fastball rises, who eschewed reading the sports pages or the hunting and magazines in his locker in favor of the New York Times crossword puzzle; and who organized bridge games in the clubhouse.”
Madden explains this was explained to his teammates, “To stimulate your minds.” Seaver had learned the game of bridge from his parents. He carried that part of his game into the clubhouse in the early years with the Mets.
Seaver would say, “It was a mental exercise just like the crossword puzzles I do every day, Both bridge and crosswords have you withdraw bits of information and recall things-just like you do with pitching.”
That day of win number 300 was a crossword puzzle. Seaver’s days on the mound with the Mets was a crossword puzzle as he read every hitter and in a day when analytics was far from a reality in baseball.
So was the waiting that day of 300. The Yankees honored their Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto that delayed the start of the first pitch. Seaver, players, all of us up in the press box, and many Mets fans in the capacity crowd had to wait for the historic game.
“I remember the atmosphere in the stadium like it was yesterday,” then White Sox manager LaRussa said to Madden in a 2017 interview. “At least half the fans were Mets fans, while the Yankees had all these formidable hitters, future Hall of Famers like Dave Winfield and Rickey Henderson and there’d been so much buildup.”
LaRussa says, “I know he’s Tom Seaver, but this is so unfair to Tom to have all this attention and, likely, you know they’re going to get him, and we’re going to play well, and it’s just not going to be a storybook ending. How wrong was I?”
Yet we never questioned that day in the Bronx. Bill Madden made that clear and also provides a great account of Seaver hugging his wife Nancy, his girls, and his dad with a standing only crowd and chanting “Sea-vuh! Sea-vuh! And “Let’s go Mets!”
The chapter concludes with Seaver saying, “Three hundred games in the major leagues is a great achievement.”
Seaver, according to Madden, respected the game enough to understand that the next one was just as important. “If not,” Seaver stated, “more so, than three hundred. Because it makes a statement. I loved it.”
And yes, you will relive that historic game and more about Tom Seaver. As I said, so much has been said and read since his passing. And coming from Bill Madden, knowing Tom Seaver as he did, you will know more.
