This is about how an ordinary man can seize one extraordinary moment, as much as anything. The coming weeks and months will be a glorious celebration of the golden anniversary of the Mets’ golden summer, and all the wonderful memories forever attached to it.
For my money, there is one moment that symbolizes what happened to the Amazin’ Mets in that summer and fall of 1969 better than any other.
“Who wouldn’t want to be defined by the best thing you ever did?” Ron Swoboda says over the telephone, and the laughter that follows is full and it’s genuine. “Better that than people reminding you all the time about the game when you struck out five times, right?”
The moment in question occurred on Oct. 15, 1969, as shadows grew long at Shea Stadium, and the Mets led the Baltimore Orioles 1-0 in Game 4 of the World Series and 2-1 in games. But a crisis had arisen: The Birds had runners on the corners, one out, and Brooks Robinson stroked a sinking line drive to right field off a tiring Tom Seaver.
Swoboda, the right fielder, came charging after the ball on the dead run. Nicknamed “Rocky,” he was one of the Mets’ first homegrown prospects, a righty with real power who slugged his way into fans’ hearts — and made those same tickers rattle nervously every time he pursued a fly ball.
Four days earlier, the Orioles’ first batter of the World Series, Don Buford, had hit a long fly that Swoboda drifted back on, and it looked like he would make the catch with his back against the wall. But Swoboda — a Baltimore native who admits he was “scared out of my wits” playing in the World Series in his hometown — retreated awkwardly, never quite got his glove up and the ball eked over his glove for a home run.
“Who is the ‘Star Wars’ character?” Swoboda asked. “C-3PO. I looked like C-3PO going back on that ball.”
That wasn’t exactly an unusual sight for Mets fans.
“Eddie Yost hit me literally thousands of fly balls,” Swoboda said. “Being a major league fielder was always something I needed to work on, and I did.”
So there was Swoboda, charging Robinson’s ball. To each of the 57,367 at Shea that day, the smart play was obvious: Play the ball on a hop, cut your losses, keep the go-ahead run off third base. Except Swoboda chugged faster, then jumped forward and to the side, his body parallel to the grass.
“I know what people were thinking,” Swoboda says, “they were thinking, ‘What the heck is he doing?’ I know that because I was asking myself, ‘What the heck are you doing? Are you sure about this?’ ”
Fully extended, Swoboda snared the ball on his backhand, maybe an inch north of the turf. Frank Robinson scored the tying run on the sac fly, Boog Powell retreated to first, Seaver retired Elrod Hendricks on a far more routine fly to Swoboda, and the Mets won in the bottom of the 10th to take a 3-1 lead in the series. Twenty-four hours later, they were champions. The miracle was complete.
And Swoboda had his piece.
“It’s like your part of this great 25-man orchestra,” he says, “and then you get a shot at a solo.”
Tommie Agee made two catches for the ages a day earlier, but Agee also won a pair of Gold Gloves in his career. Tom Seaver’s 25-7 season may have been the engine, but he was a Hall of Famer. Cleon Jones was the hitting force, but he was an All-Star.
Swoboda was the clarinetist in the band. And when asked, he performed the solo of his life. That’s what the ’69 Mets were. And are.
“You’d be amazed, when I’m in New York, how many people remember,” he said, but there’s nothing surprising about it. In June, St. Martin’s Press will publish Swoboda’s memoir of that forever season. It’s called “Here’s the Catch.” Because of course it is.
Vac’s Whacks
LJ Figueroa deciding to stay put on Utopia Parkway is Mike Anderson’s first important recruiting coup at St. John’s.
Now that his time with the Jets is over for my doppelganger Mike Maccagnan, I do regret we never got around to trying some of the capers we could have pulled off doing silly twins tricks. Ah, well.
“From Champs to Chumps,” about how the lousy Yankees of the early ’90s became the dynasty Yankees of a few years later, is Bill Pennington’s terrific addition to a slew of great baseball books that have dropped the past few weeks.
I understand the shock of John Beilein leaving Michigan for the NBA, but not the hysteria and the hand-wringing about this being end-of-days for college basketball. He has coached at every level but this one, and now he gives the NBA a try. Why shouldn’t one of Earth’s best basketball coaches want to see what he can do coaching its best players?
Whack Back at Vac
Neal Auricchio: Why is it that almost anything the Yankees touch turns golden while anything the Mets touch turns to fertilizer?
Vac: I’m usually the guy who laughs off stuff like this as nonsense … though that task is becoming harder and harder.
Palmer Murphy: I was struck by the uncanny resemblance between Adam Gase and Doug Neidermeyer (of “Animal House” renown), and thought it might be worth a mention in your column given this week’s apparent scheming by Gase …
Vac: Interesting, since witnesses reported Mike Maccagnan screaming as he cleaned out his office: “Gase … DEAD!”
@777kmel: J-E-T-S Jets! Jets! Jets!
@MikeVacc: It always impresses me how stubborn the die-hards are even when they find themselves, as Paul McCartney sang, “in times of trouble.”
Brendan Moffett: I’m with you on the Knicks. RJ Barrett is a great deal better than a mere consolation prize. Now, if they don’t get KD and Kyrie, they still have made a big improvement. Let’s hope they don’t use max contracts for stars who are not super.
Vac: Of course, these are the Knicks, so …