| Every year there is a team that captures the imagination of a city. This year it was the Mets and the real ills of the metropolis receded in the face of the hoop and la.
October 14: The Crazy Bunch of Kids Own 1969 It happens every year. In 1967 it was the Boston Red Sox and all the jazz aout Yaz. In 1968 it was the Detroit Tigers and the sentiment wrapped around Al Kaline. And in 1969 it's the Mets, the crazy young kids who just don''t know they aren't supposed to be this good. Each team and city that gets caught up in the merriment believes its team is something special, a band of destiny's tots. The athletes believe a feeling of love exists--the "team effort syndrome'--which no other team ever knew. The veterans who cover the clubhouses who see the thing repeated know better than to suggest to them that their euphoria has been known in other places at other times. Teams catch on for different reasons. The Red Sox became the darlings of New England. Their rise from the depths on Carl Yastrzemski's super duper playing wowed all underdog fans as well as anybody who had anything of New England in his or her background (childhood or college days spent in New England are a part of the warm folklore of the times). The Tigers' appearance in the World Series meant that Al Kaline was realizing a lifetime ambition to appear in the Series. The Tigers' success also was looked upon by some people in Detroit as a healer of the wounds ripped open during the race riots of the previous summer. Hank Aguirre, the ex-Tiger, said, "Helping the city meant a lot to the players." The Mets, from the day there were born out of frustration and rage at the sellout of New York by the O'Malley Dodgers and Stoneham Giants, were naturals to be the darling of the World Series. They had the comic history, Casey Stengel, the sudden rise from buffoonery to excellence, and they were enveloped by the wit and merriment of the press and huge fandom of the country's most populated and sophisticated megalopolis. Out of this and the explosive rise of a team of faceless youth was born the Mets mystique. The Orioles understand this, but they reflect the approach of professionals and dismiss it. Brooks Robinson offers this explanation: "New York ballplayers are built up better than they are. New York teams are covered more, there's a national press in New York; it's all blown up a little bigger." True. Yet the Yankees have had the same New York press. But they didn't capture the hearts of the people. The Yankees were never underdogs and the Yankees didn't feature the quality of rosy-cheeked youth that pervades the Mets. Youth is the banner under which the Mets rush forth into battle. "Youth," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, "is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other, both in mind and body to hear the chimes at midnight." Joe McDonald, the Mets' farm director, enjoyed the team, but didn't actually think the Mets would win the pennant. At the end he came around as a believer. He said, "Now I feel that no matter how good the Orioles are, these kids will find a way to beat them. These kids are crazy." A bunch of crazy kids, indeed. The thing spreads. Can anybody imagine Mrs. Babe Ruth or Mrs. Lou Gehrig in their day getting up and parading around the grandstand with a banner? The fresh-young-thing Mets wives did it in Baltiore Sunday. Who but a dauntless youth unafraid of what the proper people might think could plan something so audacious as the scheme cooked up by Tom Seaver, the leader of the Mets? Seaver says that if the Mets win the World Series, he is thinking abotut taking out a newspaper ad saying, "If the Mets can win the World Series, why can't we end the war in Veitnam?" Sports always has been one of the last bastions of status-quo, don't-rock-the-boat thinking, so it is unusual for an athlete to show an awareness of a world beyond the rightfield fence. Seaver is receiving some flak for his audaciousness. After looking at a nasty telegram (people who approve don't send telegrams) Seaver said, "Why should it be considered unpatriotic to want us to get out of this terrible war?" Seaver is scheduled to pitch today. If the moratorium-minded see a victory by Seaver as a triumph for a generation that wants to go battle on the playing field only, it will be no great surprise. It is not unusual for people to wrap their own aspirations in the actions of athletic heroes. Just as the triumph of the Tigers was regarded as a salve to a Detroit filled with hate, it is being written that the Mets have moved the hard-bitten citizens of New York to smile at each other again. Perhaps. Yet, at the very time the Mets were moving toward the pennant and splashing onto Page One of the New York Times, that same page included an article in a heart-searing series about drugs making a disaster area of the depressed Hunt's Point section of The Bronx. It is easier to contemplate Shea Stadium than Hunt's Point, and that, too, is part of the mystique. It happens every year.
We go into left field now for a snippet from Larry Merchant, then of the New York Post. I confess I tend to agree with him. In a column in the Post after the Mets clinched the pennant, Merchant, who had been a columnist and sports editor of the Philadelphia News when the Mets were formed, reviewed the phenomenon of the Mets. In part he wrote: "Six men are largely responsible for the Mets as a phenomenon. Casey Stengel saw them individually and collectively for what they were, amazingly bad, a team that not even destiny or miracles could help, and he had himself to entertain us with. Richie Asburn was the first ballplayer who sensed the meaning of Marvelous Marv and Choo Choo and Hot Rod in the infinite scheme, and he was an inside catalyst. And four writers saw the Mets in perspective and wrote the poetry that made them as big as life anyway: Len Shecter of the Post, Leonard Koppett of the Times, Stan Isaacs of Newsday and Dick Young of the News."
|
|
There Just Is Nothing Like a Mets Dame 
