This story by managing editor Lowell Reidenbaugh originally appeared in the Nov. 1, 1969, issue of The Sporting News under the headline “100 Million Miracles Rolled into One!” after the “Miracle Mets” defeated the Orioles in the World Series.
The hands on the huge Longines clock atop the scoreboard stood at 3:16 p. m. on October 16.
The big birds out of LaGuardia zoomed overhead in a kind of ceremonial roar.
And the little birds dipped and darted drunkenly about Shea Stadium as though they had spent the afternoon nipping at fermented mash.
Below, on what was once a neatly manicured playing field, thousands of delirious devotees of baseball screamed their hymns of praise for the New York Mets, the new, and incredible, champions of the baseball universe.
Seconds earlier, the laws of improbability had been rent asunder and the Mets enthroned as baseball's No. 1 team. The one-time symbols of ten-thumbed ineptitude had defeated the Baltimore Orioles, 5 to 8 favorites, in the 66th World Series and now their bug-eyed partisans were engaging in a harvest ritual.
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It was the third such demonstration in 23 days. On September 24, they celebrated the clinching of first place in the National League's East Division.
On October 6, they repeated when the Mets won the league's championship series with the Atlanta Braves, who were the Best in the West.
Home Plate Disappears
And now they were at it again, only this time they yelled louder and longer. They displayed more banners, signs like “We're No. 1,” “Cortland State Loves Nancy Seaver” and “The Mets Are World Champions.”
They scribbled success slogans on the outfield walls, they ripped away the three bases and dug up home plate.
And, of course, they gouged out huge chunks of turf where lately had trod such spiked idols as Jerry Koosman, Donn Clendenon, Cleon Jones, Al Weis and Ron Swoboda.
Shea Stadium was not the only scene of wild rejoicing in New York. Veteran observers of Gotham celebrations said they'd never seen anything to top this one, including the return of Charles A. Lindbergh after his New York-to-Paris flight in 1927, V-J Day in 1945 and the welcome for the Astronauts in 1969.
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In baseball's first 100 years, there was nothing to compare with the spectacular rise of the Mets.
The 1914 Braves' Series sweep over the lordly Philadelphia Athletics? Strictly second rate.
The Little Miracle of Coogan's Bluff in 1951? Forget it.
They All Remember
This was a hundred-million miracles rolled into one and, young as many of the celebrants were, they were not so youthful they could not remember how the Mets had languished in tenth place the first four years of their existence, then risen to ninth, fallen to tenth again and climbed to ninth before a second expansion program forged two six-club divisions and brought the Mets to the peak of affluence.
While the multitudes shouted and screamed, those who had fashioned the implausible blockbuster were whooping it up as though each had suddenly become $15,000 richer, which he had.
With champagne shampoos and ear-splitting shrieks, they toasted and teased one another in calculated tumult.
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Ron Swoboda, who drove in the title-clinching run and sparkled with his glove in the fourth game, shouted, “We're the saints of lost causes,” (St. Jude, please take note.)
Cleon Jones, who scored the deciding run, added: “Some people may not believe in us, but then, too, some people still believe the world is flat.”
Added Ed Charles, a key figure in the Mets' second-game victory: “This is the summit. We're No. I, and you just can't get any bigger than this.”
Gil Hodges found it difficult to compare the 1969 Mets with other world champions he had known as a player, the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers and the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers.
“It's the same and it's different,” said the former first baseman. “As a player and as a manager, it's different—it's hard to explain. I'm so proud of them all.”
Without naming names, Hodges had to be thinking of personalities like Clendenon. Last spring he was a cause celebre in a tug of war between the Astros and Expos.
Big Year for Donn
Traded by Montreal to Houston, the one-time law student announced his retirement from baseball to accept an executive position with a pen company in Atlanta.
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ordered Donn back to Montreal, which sent two other players to Houston in the big first baseman's place.
On June 15, the trading deadline, Clendenon was sold to the Mets. He batted .248 for the season, hitting 16 homers and batting in 51 runs.
In the Series, the 34-year-old giant clouted three home runs and was named the most valuable player in the classic.
Hodges had to be thinking, too, of Weis, his platooned second baseman, who batted .215 for the season, with two homers and 23 RBIs. In the Series, Weis batted .455, driving in the winning run in the second game and scoring the tying marker with a round-tripper in the final contest.
Hodges had to be thinking of Tommie Agee's two picture catches in the third game, Swoboda's diving stab in the fourth contest, the dependable performances of catcher Jerry Grote, shortstop Bud Harrelson, left Fielder Jones and the Mets' remarkable pitching.
Ah, yes, the pitching
Skimpy Hit Total
The team that won the American League East title with 109 wins and batted ,266, ranking fourth in the majors, collected a record low of only 23 safeties in the five games. They made six hits in the first game, which they won, and then in successive losses, registered only two, four, six and five hits respectively.
From the fourth inning of the first game, when Don Buford hit a double, until the third inning of the fifth encounter, when Dave McNally hit a home run, the Orioles did not make a single extra-base hit. Their extra-base collection for the Series consisted of one double and three homers.
Jerry Koosman, in winning two games, yielded seven hits; Tom Seaver, winning and losing one, allowed 12 hits, and Gary Gentry, who won the third contest, allowed three in six and two-thirds innings. The only other Baltimore safety was off Nolan Ryan, who pitched two and one-third shutout innings in relief.
The Met staff's earned-run average for the five games was 1,80; the Orioles' 2.72.
In winning four consecutive games after losing the opener, the Mets duplicated a feat last performed by the 1942 St. Louis Cardinals, who swept the New York Yankees off their feet. The only other club to turn the trick was the 1915 Boston Red Sox, who eliminated the Phillies.
If much of the baseball public wished to attribute the Met success to luck, Earl Weaver, Baltimore manager, refused to share the opinion.
“They're not lucky, they're a good ball club,” Weaver insisted. “You guys have been saying they are gremlins,” he told newsmen.
Super Hill Staff
“But let's face it. They have pitching and they have defense and they get hitting when they need it. I can tell you this—no other pitching staff contained us so well this season.”
Weaver said he thought the Red Sox and Tigers had better hitting than the Mets, but insisted that the Mets were a stronger club.
He said he'll be rooting for the Mets to win again in 1970.
“Revenge?” someone asked.
“You gotta,” Weaver replied. “It's always discouraging when you lose.”
“We're not shocked at losing, not by any means,” said Brooks Robinson, who gathered only one single in 19 at-bats. “We have nothing to be ashamed of. We didn't underestimate them. They just played better than we did.”
The Orioles' other Robinson, Frank, who had three hits in 16 tries, said he was not stunned, “just a little disappointed” at the outcome.
As the Orioles pulled themselves together for the somber return trip to Baltimore—a junket so many had expected them to make in triumph—and the Mets prepared for a winter of idolization, one observer recalled a brief tableau in Atlanta just 12 days earlier.
A Wild Forecast
The Mets had defeated the Braves, 9-5 in the first game of the Championship Series, scoring five runs in the eighth inning against knuckleballer Phil Niekro.
Just inside the Met clubhouse after the game, a visitor found Dave Grote, National League publicity director, in conversation with Yogi Berra, Met coach, and a long-time associate of victory in his years with the Yankees.
“I was just telling Yogi,” Grote volunteered, “that I'm convinced the Mets are sure to goal) the way. After the way they played today, nothing's going to stop them.”
The prognostication seemed unworthy even of Jeanne Dixon at the time. On October 16, it seemed worthy of Nostradamus.
