As a Mets fan growing up in Queens collecting baseball cards through the 1970’s, whenever I saw a Mets player was on another player’s card, it was sort of a free bonus – an extra Mets card. We’ve shown a few cards of that sort during this series, (1974 Gary Matthews with Wayne Garrett, 1989 Padres Team card with Gary Carter) and today we’re going to take a look at another one. The card shown below is #264 from the Topps 1971 set, and shows Joe Morgan (#18) with the Astros swinging the bat. Also shown is a catcher (#15) and the home plate umpire.
This is going to be a bit of a challenge, but let’s see if once we take our Sherlock Holmes dearstalker hat off the wall and pull it down firmly on our head, we can determine more details of the events shown on the front of this card.
1. Who is the catcher?
As anyone who read the headline of this article could probably guess, the catcher shown is Jerry Grote, the regular NY Mets catcher from 1966 until traded at the trade deadline of August 31, 1977 to the Dodgers for two players to be named later. Neither player, Daniel Smith or Randy Rogers, ever made it to the majors. That the catcher is Grote can easily be determined by noticing the catcher was wearing the Met’s home uniform, and a quick look up on baseball-reference shows that the Met who wore #15 in 1970 was indeed Jerry Grote.
As a quick aside to our younger readers, Grote was acquired from the Houston Astros for pitcher Tom Parsons after the 1965 season and for the next dozen seasons manned the backstop for the Mets. His first season in NY, he earned the praise of his teammates for rolling the ball to the far side of the pitchers mound when the inning ended on a strikeout so the opposing pitcher would have further to walk to pick the ball up.
Grote was the NL All-Star catcher in 1968 and again in 1974. Upon his selection in 1968, due to hitting over .300 at the break and leading the league in throwing runners out, Grote became only the second Met selected to start the All Star game. In the World Series year of 1969, Grote posted a .991 fielding percentage; led the league in total zone runs as a catcher; and threw out 56.3% of runners trying to steal, second-best among National League catchers. Grote played every inning of the playoffs and the World Series for the Mets. He led National League catchers in putouts and in range factor in both 1970 and 1971, and in 1973 again played every inning of the World Series, meaning Gary Carter became the first Met other than Jerry Grote to catch an inning in the World Series for the Mets.
2. Where was the game played, and when was it played?
As the infield is grass, and the Astrodome was astroturf, the game was played at Shea Stadium. As for the when part of the question, note that it is a day game. This leads us to search for 1970 home day games against the visiting Houston Astros, wherein Joe Morgan batted and Jerry Grote played behind the dish.
A check of baseball-reference shows that the Mets had three home games during the day, including May 30, May 31, and August 19th. However, a check of the scorecards lets us rule out May 31 as a possibility as Duffy Dyer, the backup catcher caught the game for the Amazin’s.
That leaves us with either May 30 or August 19 as the possible dates. While we can’t definitively narrow down between the two dates, we can make a very defensible choice hat the date is more likely May 30. The reason? As we saw in two other cards included in the 1970 set and analyzed on MMO, the Tommie Agee card (#310) was definitively from the May 30 game as was the “Bud” Harrelson, card #355 from the set. The angle of both of those cards, as well as this card, were taken from slightly up the third base side of the field, Together, it is reasonable to conclude that all three pictures were from the Saturday, May 30, 1970 game.
3. Who is the umpire shown?
Assuming we have the May 30, 1970 game correct, the umpire for that game was Lee Weyer. Weyer was an umpire from 1961 until his death in July of 1988 from a heart attack. A 1987 Sports Illustrated poll of National League catchers rated Weyer the best at calling balls and strikes.
4. Who is the unseen pitcher who threw the ball?
Again assuming we have triangulated the date of May 31, 1970 correctly, and we note from the shadows that the sun is relatively high in the sky, the unseen pitcher was Nolan Ryan who started and pitched 8 innings that day. Morgan did bat in the 9th, against Ron Taylor, but the shadows would have been far longer than those shown in the card.
5. Did the Mets win the game?
The Mets won 4-3 that day with a three-run rally in the 8th.
Let’s call this case closed Watson and put our deerstalker hat back on the wall.
If you have a card you would like to see analyzed here by MMO, include it in the comments section below.
LGM
