| The season rolled on, the Mets took shape as a legitimate aggregation of athletes. And people were beginning to believe the Mets when they won two July series over the Cubs. The rambunctious spirit of the team is captured in the locker room hijinx following a winning series in Chicago.
July 17: Mets Show the World They'll Be Around Chicago-The six-game siege, the celebrated mini-war of the 1969 baseball summer, is over and the Mets have emerged neither bloody nor bowed. They beat the Cubs two games to one in the swamps of Flushing and they beat them two to one again in the heartland of America. They persuaded a few more people what the Mets have believed all along; when the cool winds of September blow on the hot pennant race the Mets will be there. The Mets played alert, crisp baseball most of the time. They were opportunistic. They didn't give too much away and they developed a flair for springing a new hero upon the opposition at the most opportune times. This is another way of saying that Al Weis will be remembered for his two home runs that helped the Mets win the second and third games of this series in Chicago. The Mets made a little whoopee in the clubhouse after staggering home with a 9-5 victory in the brickyard heat of Wrigley Field yesterday. Tom Seaver, who pitched two games this side of Paradise against Chicago, and won only one of them, led the cheers. "Let's hear it for Ernie Banks," cried Seaver. The boys--Boswell, Swoboda, Garrett and Harrelson--responded with mock cheers: "The hell with Ernie Banks." "Did anybody see Santo do his victory dance?" chortled coach Joe Pignatano, the self-pronounced Cub-hater. Seaver waved a forefinger in a circle aping Dick Selma's cheerleading of the "Bleacher Bums", "Let's hear it for Dick Selma." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "And let's hear it for the "Bleacher Bums." "Yeah, yeah," Gil Hodges, the manager, said, "I'm happy to sit back and see them play so well and get all the attention they are getting now. They've believed in themselves all along, and now other people are beginning to come along. You're dealing with young people first becoming established and it's understandable that people have been slow to accept this team as a real contender." "Are you a real contender?" a Chicago reporter asked. "We're in the league. You don't win pennants in July, and I know what can happen in August and September. But I am happy for the players and the boost they can get from winning games like these." Cleon Jones asked, "That's the first time anybody has won a series from the Cubs in Wrigley Field this year, isn't it?" Yes it is. And Art Shamsky said, "Weigh all pros and cons and they add up for us. We played two series in front of big crowds. We played in front of the Bleacher Bums and the abuse they threw at us. We hit with power and showed good pitching. And we didn't have special luck. We beat them in both parks." There is still much criticism in the trenches about the Mets. The Cubs, who are most intimately concerned at the moment, seemed to gain a new respect for the Mets. Before the opening game here the Cubs Hank Aguirre asked, "Don't you think we're better off having the Mets right behind us than the Cards?" By yesterday's game Aguirre was talking about the great pitching Seaver showed him, and he was saying, "We think we'll win, but the Mets won't make it easy for us." The Mets will continue to be victims of an information gap. Their reputation as buffoons was hard-earned so it will be some time before everybody begins to see them in a new light. There will be a lessening of the sarcasm that comes in this form: "Garrett? Boswell? Weis? J.C. Martin? Pfeil? That's a team to be taken seriously?" Kenny Boswell, the second baseman with a way of stroking important hits, has heard this kind of thing. He said, "It doesn't mean anything to me. We're young and it takes people time to know about us." And even if the Mets lineup is dotted with guys named Pfeil, they fall back on one of the strongest pitching staffs in the league. Almost anybody who is anybody has heard of Seaver and Jerry Koosman. Ron Swoboda, learning to enjoy the role of cheerleader while he sits on the sidelines and waits for a chance to get into a regular's groove, said, "What I like about us is that we didn't get too excited about the attention being paid to this series. When we started these three games with the Cubs, we got the kind of publicity that could be the kiss of death. But we just played our game and we beat them. We beat them in front of those Bleacher Bums and don't think that doesn't show people a few things." The Bleacher Bums earned mixed notices in this series. When they were enthusiastic and rabid in their group cheering, they were a tonic, an ode to joy and merriment. But some of them turned loutish and nasty in their epithets. Some of them threw pennies at Cleon Jones. "I bend down only to pick up quarters," said Jones. The Bleacher Bums deserve some retaliatory acton by Met fans that is effective but is worthy of the best traditions of New York sportsmanship. For one thing it will take some inspired one-upmanship to come up with something as creatively partisan as the Bleacher Bums' action of throwing back onto the field home runs hit by visiting teams.
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Mets Opener a Joke 
