Memories of his 300th Win
On July 19th, 1985, Tom Seaver, aged 40 and pitching for the Chicago White Sox, threw a complete game 1-0 shutout against the Cleveland Indians. It was his 298th win.
I looked at the White Sox schedule (I don’t know how; I didn’t possess a pocket computer with the world’s information on it yet), did a little calculating, and called my college buddy Ken. We had just met as freshmen the year before, and bonded over the Mets.
“You know,” I said, “if Seaver wins one of his next two starts, he’ll be going for 300 a week from Sunday at Yankee Stadium.” Sure enough, after losing his first bid for 299, on Tuesday, July 30th, he beat the Red Sox at Fenway the following Tuesday. The next morning, we headed to TicketMaster at Sunrise Mall, and bought tickets to the White Sox-Yankee game for Sunday, August 4.
What a glorious day.
You see, it’s not easy being a Mets fan in Yankee Town. As the great baseball writer Roger Angell put it, “It is the peculiar fate of Mets fans to live in New York, surrounded by the exuberantly smug hordes of Yankee fans.” (Despite the fact that I do now have a pocket computer with the world’s information on it, I can’t find the quote, and I’m doing it from memory. I almost certainly screwed it up.)
I should say that I don’t subscribe to the notion that being a Mets fan is one filled with pain and horror. At least, not exclusively with pain and horror. Let’s do the math.
- Major League Baseball has 30 teams
- The Mets have been in existence for 58 years
- They have won 2 World Series – a perfectly average rate for a 30-team sport over 60 years
- They have won 5 NL Championships – an above-average rate for a 15 team league over 60 years
The Phillies have also won 2 World Series – but they’ve been around since 1883! Since the final year of the Roosevelt Administration the Cubs have won the World Series once – and that’s the Teddy Roosevelt Administration. The Padres, founded like the Mets in the 1960s, display no World Series trophy in their offices.
And the Mets didn’t win any two World Series – they won two of the most famous World Series in history. Tom Seaver’s Miracle Mets of 1969 are one of the great stories in the history of any sport. (I always loved the George Burns line from the movie “Oh God”: “The last miracle I did was the ‘69 Mets. Before that you’d have to go back to the Red Sea.”). And I don’t have to remind Red Sox fans – or any baseball fans – what happened in 86.
I would even argue that the pain of the Mets’ low points have their purpose: namely, that they make the high points so memorable. For example, find a Yankee fan, and ask him to name the 4 teams the Yankees beat for their memorable Title run between 1996-2000. Most can’t do it. The titles blur together. They’re like heroin addicts, always failing to find the high of that first injection.
But ask a Mets fan to give you the play-by-play of the 10th inning, Game 6, 1986, and most can do it. Our highs are made higher by their rarity.
No, the hardest thing about being a Mets fan isn’t the dry periods, it isn’t the inept ownership, it isn’t even the fact that so many of our promising young stars have their path to Cooperstown sidetracked by drugs, injury, and tomfoolery. No, the hardest thing about being a Mets fan is Yankee fans.
Anyway, where was I? Right, Yankee Stadium. August 4, 1985.
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The Yankees were good in 1985 because, you know, the Yankees are always good. They won 97 games that year – which in a pre-Wild Card era was good enough for 2nd place and no playoffs.
But this was a very unusual day at Yankee Stadium. It was Phil Rizzuto Day, and all of Yankee royalty was there to celebrate the Scooter. Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford, Billy Martin and Mickey Mantle. Joe DiMaggio and – well, shoot I don’t remember who was there. During the ceremony they brought a cow out to home plate, in honor of the Scooter’s signature phrase. It was kind of cool and kind of silly – two words you rarely associate with the Yankees, who are very serious about themselves. I’ve always thought the Yankees were a cross between the Renaissance Church and a publicly-traded bank – regal and boring and powerful and corrupt.
But today, the old-timers were having a grand old time at home plate. If memory serves the cow even knocked Rizzuto down. But then, the door to the visitors’ bullpen opened, and the White Sox’ starting pitcher, having completed his warmups, strolled to his dugout. He wore #41 and the crowd – filled with Mets fans on Phil Rizzutto Day - went wild.
Tom Seaver won his 300th of course. And being Tom Seaver he did it in style. He went the distance*. He won 4-1, matching his uniform number. He got Don Baylor, a borderline Hall of Famer himself, to fly out for the final out. He jumped into the arms of another Hall of Famer, Carlton Fisk, to celebrate.
* He was 40 years old and pitched 9 innings in his 298th, 299th, and 300th win. Think the game has changed?
I should say that my college friend Ken wasn't the only Ken with me that day. My brother, a Yankee fan, was there too. But my brother is not a typical Yankee fan. Maybe it's because he was born in Flushing. Maybe it's because he lived with his Mets-loving Italian Nana till he was 7. Maybe it's because Ed Kranepool was our neighbor growing up. But he is never obnoxious about being a Yankee fan, he never tortures Mets fans. He loves the Yankees with a purity that is admirable.
And some time after this glorious day he presented me with this plaque - the ticket from the game, with some selections from his impressive baseball card collection. A rare moment of Yankee-Met unity.
(As for college Ken - he lost his ticket from that day and it still pisses him off.)
I was too young for the 69 Mets. My earliest sports memory is the Pete Rose-Bud Harrelson fight in the 73 NLCS, but I have no memory of the 73 Series. In October of 1986, I was in London for a semester abroad, and while I have some great memories, including listening to Game 6 on Armed Forces Radio, I mostly missed that Series. Of 2000, we shall not speak. And in 2015, I was in the stands at CitiField as the Royals beat the Mets.
But I'll always have August 4, 1985. And Mets fan will always have Tom Seaver.
