by Gruver , Ed;
The near-mythical play was vintage Mays. This was the superstar who had more than six hundred career home runs to his credit and had a flair for artistry in the field as well, the guy who was known for robbing Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series and running down a Ted Williams drive in Milwaukee’s County Stadium in the ’55 All-Star Game.
Mets fans who had been bubbling for days over the trade for Mays thought Willie’s debut was all that it was supposed to be. It was, New York poet Joel Oppenheimer wrote, as if a script had been written.
Much to the delight of Mets’ fans, Willie went on to hit .375 in May, and despite occasional clashes with Berra over playing time, Mays’s return read like a storybook tale. Along with the Mick and the Duke, the Say Hey Kid was part of New York folklore. The trio of legendary center fielders was further immortalized in Terry Cashman’s song “Talkin’ Baseball” (Willie, Mickey, and the Duke).
What a thrill it was for Mets fans, Mets announcer Bob Murphy said, to see Mays patrolling center field in the Mets’ blue pinstripes. New York fans were Mets-merized. They streamed into Big Shea. The Mets were the only team in the majors in 1972 to surpass the two million mark in home attendance.
Once inside Shea Stadium, fans were treated to the lilting, optimistic sounds from Jane Jarvis. The organist for Mets games at Shea from 1964 to 1979, Jarvis’s in-game repertory included “Singin’ in the Rain” for rainouts, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” for homers, and “Just One of Those Things” for a Mets batter who struck out with runners in scoring position.
Jarvis serenaded Seaver with “Mr. Wonderful,” greeted McGraw’s entrance from the bullpen with “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” and played “My Buddy” for Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson. When the Mets lost, she boosted the mood of departing fans with “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile.” She had a song for when the Mets took the field, and she had the “Mexican Hat Dance” for the seventh-inning stretch when the home team needed to pick up the pace.
At the time, Jarvis was to Mets fans at Shea what Eddie Layton and his Hammond Organ and then Toby Wright were to Yankees fans in that era. Her music reached beyond baseball. At the height of the Vietnam War protests she played excerpts of her composition, “A Prayer for Peace.” Blogger Joe Dublin said Jarvis’s music provided the “semblance and comfort of things staying the same as life otherwise all around us changed too quickly.”
When New York City was darkened by a blackout in July 1977, Jarvis was credited with calming the fears of more than twenty-one thousand fans in Shea Stadium by playing non-stop on her Thomas Organ for ninety minutes a series of relaxing tunes from her collection of American songs. During the Mets’ heated 1973 National League Championship Series against Cincinnati, Jarvis’s music helped calm an enraged crowd following Pete Rose’s hard slide into Harrelson. Mets announcer Ralph Kiner said Jarvis in those years “was the Mets.”
So too was the broadcasting team of Nelson, Murphy, and Kiner, the last hosting a postgame show, “Kiner’s Korner.” Fans in the New York area tuning into Mets’ broadcasts on WOR Channel 9 from the late 1960s into the early 1970s were greeted with a one-minute montage of highlights and accompanied by an up-tempo instrumental of the team’s theme song, “Meet the Mets.”
Penned by Port Chester native Ruth Roberts, the lilting melody was recorded as the Mets’ fight song following their inaugural 1962 season. It didn’t help the fledgling Metropolitans in their early years, but it became a hit with fans and grew into an iconic anthem. “Meet the Mets” has also made its way into modern TV series Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. Roberts, who died in 2011 at the age of eighty-four, grew up in a baseball home whose favorite team was the New York Giants. Somewhat ironically, two of her songs—a 1956 ode to Yankees superstar Mickey Mantle (“I Love Mickey!”) and “It’s a Beautiful Day for a Ballgame,” played at Dodger Stadium prior to every game, were favorites of two of the Giants’ traditional rivals.
Since the Mets were a light-hitting team, the clips shot by Winik films for the annual highlights featured mostly pitching, defense, and base running. Nelson provided the voice-over at the conclusion of the clips, introducing the sponsors for New York Mets baseball: Rheingold, Manufacturer’s Hanover, Getty, and White Owl cigars.
“Kiner’s Korner” followed every Mets’ home game. Kiner, the former Pirates slugger and Hall of Famer would issue a series of questions to his guests, who were usually Mets but were sometimes opposing players. The plain set, awkward questions, and camera screw-ups made for quirky and popular viewing. It was great sports entertainment, far removed from the slick, high-gloss look of modern-day programming.
From the Mets’ inception in 1962 through 1978, Kiner, Nelson, and Murphy made for a tremendous TV and radio broadcasting trio. Nelson was known for his colorful sports jackets, but he was a versatile broadcaster who did national broadcasts of pro and college football and, on Sunday mornings in the fall, Notre Dame highlights (“We move ahead to further action later in the second quarter . . .”).
Kiner wasn’t as polished a broadcaster as his two colleagues. He once said of the sport he covered, “That’s the great thing about baseball. You never know what’s going on!” Kiner was prone to tongue-twisting malapropisms and mispronunciation, but he provided great insight. In 1973 Kiner was doing a Mets-Phillies game and predicted young Mike Schmidt had a bright future. Schmidt went on to have a Hall of Fame career. He also said of Garry Maddox, the Phils’ ground-eating center fielder, “Two-thirds of the earth is covered in water. The other third is covered by Maddox.”
As a teen Kiner had shaken hands with Babe Ruth and had talked baseball with Ty Cobb. His A-list friends included fellow baseball enthusiasts Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. He golfed with Bob Hope and Jack Benny and dated Liz Taylor and Janet Leigh. He had an easygoing charm and engaging personality, and his trademark home run call—“Going, going, gone, goodbye!”—was one of the staples of Mets broadcasts. Kiner, Nelson, and Murphy were living room companions for generations of Mets fans.
The procession of planes from nearby LaGuardia Airport sometimes drowned their comments, but Kiner, Nelson, and Murphy had much to talk about in ’72. There were the additions of Staub and Fregosi, at the time the forty-sixth man to play third base for a Mets franchise just starting its second decade; young guns Matlack and Milner; Seaver and McGraw; Jerry Koosman, Jim McAndrew, and Buzz Capra; Berra’s first season at the wheel; and of course Mays, who would have a solid season for the Mets, with a team-best on-base percentage of .402 and a .446 slugging percentage that was second on the club.
While Mays provided magic, Seaver provided muscle. The Giants’ Bobby Bonds said Seaver’s fastball took off “like a 747 going up.” Reds manager Sparky Anderson thought Seaver the best pitcher in baseball.
Nicknamed “the Franchise,” Seaver reached the twenty-win plateau for the second straight season and for the third time in four years. He struck out ten or more in a game six times in ’72, including an overpowering performance against the Pirates on September 20 in which he fanned 15. Nine days later Tom Terrific tamed the Bucs again, whiffing 13 in a two-hit, 1–0 win. Another gem that summer was a 5-hit, 2–1 win over the Big Red Machine in Riverfront on June 18.
Seaver was a student of the game—he copied Sandy Koufax by loosening his jersey beneath his pitching arm to remove restrictions—and was a student of history as well. He read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. He liked French wine and would arrive at the clubhouse early to read fan mail and work crossword puzzles. He was a practical joker, once goading his roommate, 5-foot-10, 155-pound shortstop Bud Harrelson, into shadow-boxing 6-foot-5, 250-pound NFL star Deacon Jones.
Facing San Diego in the first game of a July 4 doubleheader at Shea, Seaver pitched one of the finest games of his career. He struck out six over the first four frames and was staked to a 2–0 lead in the third following Fregosi’s disputed bases-loaded walk that brought Padres manager Do
n Zimmer storming from the dugout. Many of the more than forty thousand fans on hand mocked the mustard-gold uniforms the Padres wore. “Hey Zimmer,” one man shouted from the box seats. “You look like a pregnant canary!”
Seaver had eleven strikeouts through eight innings and nursed a no-hitter into the ninth. With the holiday crowd buzzing, left-handed hitting Leron Lee stepped in with one out.
Kiner: Here’s the pitch to Lee. . . . It’s a bloop hit, a broken-bat base hit into center field and Seaver’s no-hit game goes out the window. . . . Listen to the ovation for Tom Seaver.
His bid to make history over, Seaver got a double play to end the game. It was the fourth one-hitter in as many seasons for Tom Terrific.
Lee would come to be known for more than just ending Seaver’s bid to make history. He played eight years in the majors before helping revolutionize Japanese baseball in 1977, when he became one of the first American players to play in Japan while still in his prime. Lee went on to become the batting coach for the 1989 world champion Oakland A’s and is uncle to Yankees great Derek Jeter.
Oppenheimer, who wrote a book about ’72 titled The Wrong Season, believed the Mets’ loss in the second game of the doubleheader was the one that said it all about the club. “We are hurt bad,” Oppenheimer wrote in his diary. The Mets’ storybook season had begun to fall apart back on June 3, when Staub was hit by a pitch by Atlanta reliever and future Mets teammate George Stone. Staub continued to play despite the injury but went on the disabled list when it was revealed he had a broken hand. At the time of his injury Le Grand Orange was grand indeed, batting .313 and helping the Mets to a 31-12 mark and five-game lead over the Pirates. When he went on the DL on July 18, Staub’s average had dipped to .297, and New York was 47-35 and five games behind Pittsburgh.
To paraphrase P. F. Sloan’s protest song of the era—“Eve of Destruction”—the eastern world in the NL was exploding, and the absence of Staub’s bat was crippling the Mets’ attack. Seventy-one NL batters had at least one hundred hits in ’72, but none of them were trimmed in Mets’ orange and blue. Tommie Agee led New York with ninety-six hits, and the Mets batted a league-low .225.
Seaver struggled on the mound as well. On June 13 he surrendered a three-run lead in the eighth inning at Atlanta. The Braves won it in the bottom of the tenth on Hank Aaron’s 650th career homer. Seaver dropped five straight decisions from late July into early August. On June 24 he was driven from the mound in the fifth inning of an eventual 11–0 loss to St. Louis on a rainy Saturday afternoon Game of the Week telecast, prompting Tony Kubek to murmur, “This isn’t the Tom Seaver we’re used to seeing. He hasn’t thrown a fastball with real good stuff on it.” Curt Gowdy agreed. “He doesn’t have that little extra mustard [on his fastball].” When Seaver lost July 23 in San Francisco on Bobby Bonds’s three-run homer, Mets fans like Oppenheimer exploded in anger. “Tom Seaver,” an irate Oppenheimer wrote, “has no goddamned right blowing a goddamned ballgame proving his goddamned machismo throwing a goddamned fastball to goddamned Bobby Bonds.”
Seaver reached his nadir on September 16 at Wrigley Field, surrendering eight runs in just two and a third innings in an eventual 18–5 loss. Seaver bounced back in his next start with fifteen strikeouts against division-leading Pittsburgh, fanning Clemente and Stargell three times each. It was the first of four consecutive victories that allowed him to close out the season with his third twenty-win campaign in four years.
Staub’s injury was one of several that struck the Mets. Jones, Harrelson, Fregosi, and catcher Jerry Grote missed games due to a string of injuries that decimated the team. His troops depleted, Berra was forced to move players around like pieces on a chessboard. Martinez saw playing time at second base, third, short, and the outfield; Grote and fellow catcher Duffy Dyer patrolled the outfield; Fregosi played third, short, and first.
Despite the versatility of their “Bandage Brigade” the Mets fell from contention in the second half of the season and ultimately finished third in the East behind the Pirates and Cubs. Ernie Banks, “Mr. Cub,” had retired the year before at age forty following a nineteen-year career that would take him to the Hall of Fame. But Chicago still had a solid corps of talented players, including a collection of gritty holdovers from their bittersweet summer of ’69—Jenkins, Beckert, Santo, Don Kessinger, Jim Hickman, Randy Hundley, Bill Hands, and of course Billy Williams.
A native of Whistler, Alabama, Williams was known as “Sweet Swingin’ Billy from Whistler,” and even at age thirty-four in 1972, Williams still had that sweet swing. He led the majors with a .333 batting average and a .606 slugging percentage, both career bests. Lean and muscular, Williams was the most overlooked hitter of his era.
Stargell called Williams the best left-handed hitter he had ever seen. He recalled playing first base in a game and Williams stinging the ball so hard through Stargell’s legs that Willie didn’t even have time to move his glove.
Pirates second baseman Dave Cash said that when he got to Pittsburgh, he found out there were guys who weren’t half as good as he had heard they were. But when he saw Billy Williams, Cash thought this man is a ballplayer, and nobody writes about him.
Why was Williams overlooked? His manager, Leo Durocher, figured it was because Williams wasn’t controversial. Williams never got mad, never threw a bat. Durocher would write Williams’s name in the same spot in the lineup card every day—batting third and playing left field. To Durocher, Williams was “a baseball machine.”
He was a machine largely ignored by fans. As late as midsummer, Williams was fourth among National League outfielders in the fans’ balloting for the All-Star team, despite the fact he was in the midst of a campaign that would see him named Player of the Year by The Sporting News, earn the National League Batting Trophy, be named to the Associated Press All-Star team, and gain the Fred Hutchinson Memorial Award for typifying the “character and competitive spirit” of the late Reds manager.
Sweet Swingin’ Billy took the lack of attention in stride. He knew it wasn’t always the good player who got all the stories. If someone was a .250 hitter and was suddenly batting .340, everybody wondered, “Hey, where did this guy come from?” The writers rushed to find out what changes he’s made and how to account for his hot streak.
On May 19, 1972, Williams was a .250 hitter—.254 to be precise—and was trailing the league leaders by 150–190 points. He didn’t panic; he’d had slow starts before. “Every spring!” he told reporters with a laugh.
Williams knew he would come around, knew that among starting players who had the 600–700 plate appearances he managed every season, the difference between batting .250 and .330 was two additional hits each week throughout the summer.
His turnaround began in June, when he hit .326 with 9 homers and 23 RBIs. In July he batted .438 with 9 homers and 29 RBIs. In one two-week stretch that month, he hit .458 with 5 homers and 13 RBIs. Included in that period was his best day in baseball—an 8-for-8 outing in a doubleheader against Houston in which he collected 5 singles, 2 homers, 1 double, and 4 RBIs. In that one day, Williams raised his average eighteen points to .328. Durocher called it “a week’s work in one day.”
Such improvement was made possible by Sweet Swingin’ Billy’s near-perfect stroke. There was beauty in its brevity. Sharp and economical, Williams’s artistic swing relied on the wrist-snapping power in his hands and forearms. When he connected, the ball was lined with startling speed and power. Onlookers still recall the day a Williams drive to the wall was hit so hard that it bounced back to the infield before Billy made the turn at first base.
Tony Kubek said on an NBC telecast in ’72 that Williams owned a picture-book swing, one you would like your Little Leaguer to emulate. But there was more to Williams than his sweet swing. He was a student of his sport; he studied opposing pitchers, watched how their pitches moved, and observed which pitches they used in certain situations.
Williams’s physical and mental approach combined to earn him a reputation as the fin
est number three hitter in baseball. He was fast enough to outrun double plays, and he hit for power and for average. He also hit in the clutch; he was one of the few in baseball at the time to hit .400 with runners on base.
Williams was a natural at the plate but not in the outfield. He had been an infielder growing up, but after signing with the Cubs for a “bonus” of a one-way ticket to Ponca City—a team in the Class D Sooner State League—and a fifteen-cent cigar for Billy’s father Frank, eighteen-year-old Billy was converted into an outfielder. The transition was a work in progress. He made 25 errors his first year in pro ball. He had to learn how to judge fly balls and to compensate for not having a strong arm.
Williams worked to improve his all-around defense and learned to deal with the demands of playing the outfield amid the unpredictable winds and the ivy-covered brick walls of Wrigley Field. He proved instrumental in no-hitters thrown by the Cubs’ Ken Holtzman, Burt Hooten, and Milt Pappas, making sensational catches in each of those historic games.
Pappas’s no-hitter came on September 2, 1972, against San Diego. Legendary Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse provided the call: “Milt Pappas, trying not only for a no-hitter, he’s trying for a perfect game. . . . [John] Jeter is in the batter’s box. . . . There’s a well-hit ball, deep to left-center, back goes [Bill] North, he slips and falls. . . . However, it’s Billy Williams coming from nowhere to save that play! Oh, brother!”
After retiring the first twenty-six hitters, Pappas worked a 1-2 count on the pinch-hitting Larry Stahl. Leaning forward from the waist and swinging his arms back and forth between pitches, Pappas was one strike from baseball immortality. Home plate umpire Bruce Froemming called the next two pitches—both of which were close—balls.
Brickhouse: Now here comes one of the most fateful pitches of the year. . . . Ball three, strike two, two out. . . . Perfect game on the line. . . . No-hitter on the line. . . . It’s a ball! And Pappas is enraged.