The 1969 Miracle Mets: The Improbable Story of the World's Greatest Underdog Team Hardcover - 2009

THE 1969 MIRACLE METS is a retrospective of the 1969 season and World Series championship of the "Amazin Mets", on the 40th anniversary of the 1969 miracle season, a seminal event in baseball and New York history. The Mets' new stadium as well as the new Yankee Stadium are due to open at that time, and the city will be awash in baseball fever.In the popular 1977 movie "Oh, God!" George Burns, playing the deity, is asked in a courtroom to prove His divinity by performing a miracle. Burns tells the attorney, "The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets. Before that, I think you have to go back to the Red Sea." Man has engaged in athletic competition at least since the ancient Greeks. Baseball has been played, according to legend, since Abner Doubleday invented it at Cooperstown, New York in 1839. Through the travail of ages, in the entire history of sports, the 1969 "Amazin' Mets" remains the single most impossible, unbelievable, improbable and wonderful sports story of all times. This book tells the tale of that incredible spring, summer and fall, but it does much more than simply recount how the worst sports franchise ever ascended to the very heights of greatness in a few short months. The Last Miracle is the story of tumultuous times: the 1960s. Amidst the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Mets remained the last, best hope of a city on the verge of bankruptcy. Through the lens of time we now can view them as a metaphor for a changing America, and in light of the Big Apple's phoenix-like comeback over the years, the catapult for this battered-yet-unbowed Metropolis. Somehow, while the Mets became the mods of baseball, the "new breed" athlete, Tom Seaver and his teammates are viewed herein as the final symbols of an innocent age; an age when the greatest icons in American culture – New York sports heroes – mounted the stage in awesome splendor; before Watergate, before free agency, before the mercenaries took over. Here they are: Seaver and Harrelson; Hodges and Stengel; Grote and Swoboda; Jones and Agee; all the characters of the greatest comedy act ever performed, all the while upstaging a tempestuous Mayoral race, President Nixon's "secret plan," a Moonshot, and Woodstock. Praise for Steven Travers "Steve Travers is a great writer, an educated athlete who knows how to get inside the players heads, and when that happens, greatness occurs. Hes gonna be a superstar." - San Francisco Examiner "Steve Travers is the next great USC historian, in the tradition of Jim Murray, John Hall, and Mal Florence! . . . The Trojan Nation needs your work!" - USC Head Football Coach Pete Carroll "Steve Travers combines wit, humor, social pathos and historical knowledge with the kind of sports expertise that only an ex-jock is privy to; it is reminiscent of the work of Jim Bouton, Pat Jordan and Dan Jenkins, combined with Jim Murrays turn of phrase, Hunter Thompsons hard-scrabble Truths, and David Halberstams unique take on our nations place in history. His writing is great storytelling, and the result is pure genius every time." - Westwood One sports media personality Mike McDowd "Steve Travers is a phenomenal writer, an artist who labors over every word to get it just right, and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of sports and history." - StreetZebra magazine "Steve Travers is a Renaissance man." - Jim Rome, The Jim Rome ShowIn the 1977 movie Oh, God!, George Burns, playing the deity, is asked to prove his divinity by performing a miracle. Burns replies, "The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets. Before that, I think you have to go back to the Red Sea."This book is a riveting account of the single most impossible, unbelievable, and wonderful sports story of all time—the 1969 "Amazin Mets" and their incredible spring, summer, and fall as they went on to capture the World Series. But it does much more than simply recount how the worst sports franchise ascended to greatness in a few short months. The 1969 Miracle Mets is a story of tumultuous times. Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and a New York City in disarray, the Mets proved to be a metaphor for a changing America and, in retrospect, the catapult for the eventual comeback of a battered-yet-unbowed metropolis. One hero of this story is, of course, Tom Seaver. At the age of twenty-four, at the start of what would be a remarkable Major League career, he pitched his team to victory in 1969. Seaver represents the crux of what makes this book so unique, so compelling, such a nostalgic memory of a town, a team, and a time that is no more. And yet this is not a book about one superstar, but about an entire team that ascended to the heights. Tom Seaver and his teammates come alive in these pages as the final symbols of an innocent age, an age when the greatest icons in American culture—New York sports heroes—mounted the stage in awesome splendor, before Watergate, before free agency, before the mercenaries took over.A retrospective of the 1969 season and World Series championship of the Amazin' Mets, this work is being published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of that miracle season. THE 1969 MIRACLE METS is a retrospective of the 1969 season and World Series championship of the "Amazin Mets", scheduled for March 2009 publication to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the 1969 miracle season, a seminal event in baseball and New York history. The Mets' new stadium as well as the new Yankee Stadium are due to open at that time, and the city will be awash in baseball fever.From Worst to First!From the foreword by Bud HarrelsonMany things contributed to our unbelievable season in 1969homerun hitters, strong pitching, a different level of bonding among the players. But the real magic of the 1969 Mets had a lot to do with Gil Hodges. . . . One of the coaches would come up to a player and say discretely, Gil wants to talk to you. So youd go into his office and sit down with him, and he would question you. Afterwards I found out he did that with a lot of players. At the time I thought I was special, but thats just how he made you feel. He had quite an impact on every player on that team. He made the difference. He really did. . . . The team in 1969 was different. You could really feel the camaraderie, and there was a lot of encouragement among the players. . . . Its amazing what happens when you winhow the friendships solidify because you were in battle together and you won. You have this common ground and emotional feeling that this was amazing or a miracle, because no one expected it. In fact, Casey Stengel always said the Mets will win when they put a man on the moon. He was a real character and was just being comical, but sure enough, you know, in 69 they put a man on the moon. Seaver Koosman Ryan Gentry McGraw Grote Clendenon Harrelson Charles Jones Agee Shamsky Swoboda KranepoolSteven Travers, a former professional baseball player with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Oakland A's organizations, is the author of fifteen books, including the best-selling Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman, nominated for a Casey Award as Best Baseball Book of 2002; and One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game that Changed a Nation (soon to be a major motion picture). A graduate of the University of Southern California, Travers coached both there and at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as in Europe. He served in the United States Army, attended law school, and was a sports agent. He has written for the Los Angeles Times and was a columnist for StreetZebra magazine in Los Angeles and for the San Francisco Examiner. His screenplays include The Lost Battalion, 21, and Wicked.Bud Harrelson is a former player, coach, and manager of the New York Mets. A key member of the 1969 World Series and 1973 National League championship teams, he was a National League All-Star in 1970 and 1971, and won the Gold Glove in 1971 for his outstanding defensive play at shortstop. Inducted into the New York Mets Hall of Fame in 1982, Harrelson became manager of the Mets in 1990. He is the co-owner, baseball operations senior vice president, and first-base coach of the Long Island Ducks.Table of Contents ForewordIntroduction: The glory of their times The true New York Sports Icon The reincarnation of Christy Mathewson If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere Cant anybody here play this game?" The eve of destruction High hopes In the big inning" Meet the Mets The leaping corpse The first crucial day The birth of a true New York Sports Icon After the Pentecost: July 11 July 16, 1969 The wrath of Gil Resurrection The march to the sea David vs. Goliath The perfect game The Promised Land Fall from grace Platos retreat and subsequent comeback The empire strikes back Whatever happened to . . .? Those Amazin Mets A shining city on a hillNotesBibliography Index