Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Baltimore Orioles for Losing the 1969 World Series

[Terrence Clay]

https://unclemikesmusings.blogspot.com/2019/10/october-16-1969-miracle-looks-at-50.html

First, let's look at a couple of reasons that didn't make the cut: The Best of the Rest.

The Cubs' September Swoon. Even winning 38 of their last 49 regular-season games wouldn't have mattered for the Mets if the Chicago Cubs hadn't collapsed, losing 17 of 25 in one stretch, going from 9½ up on the Mets on August 19 to 8 games back at the end on October 2. That's a 17½-game swing.

If the Cubs had simply split those 17 losses, plus 1 win, going 17-8 instead of 8-17, they would have won the NL East, and the '69 postseason would have been a very different story.

Would the Cubs have beaten the Braves for the Pennant? Would they then have beaten the Orioles for the whole thing? They were the Cubs, so they would have found a way to lose, right?

Ah, but 1969 was the year the Cubs got that image in the first place. They weren't that team yet. Maybe, if their confidence hadn't been shattered, they would have beaten the Braves and the O's, too.

The Braves' pitching. The Atlanta Braves scored 15 runs in the 3 games of the National League Championship Series, or 5 per game. But they allowed 27, an average of 9. A 5-run 8th inning off Phil Niekro in Game 1, getting 11 runs off Ron Reed and 5 Brave relievers in Game 2, and 5 runs in the 4th and 5th to chase Pat Jarvis in Game 3 showed the Braves that the Mets were no fluke.

Would the Braves have beaten the Orioles in the Series? I doubt it.

Now, the Top 5:

5. Defense. The Orioles were known for their defense, their infield of Boog Powell, Davey Johnson, Mark Belanger and Brooks Robinson known as the Leather Curtain. And while Frank Robinson didn't get the headlines that the arms of right fielders Roberto Clemente and Rocky Colavito got in the 1960s, he was pretty good at the position, and, all-around, a better player than either one of them.

But it was the Mets who made the defensive headlines in this Series. The pair of catches by Tommie Agee in Game 3, and the Ron Swoboda catch in Game 4, got the headlines. But it wasn't just that the Mets' fielding was spectacular. It's that it was (almost) completely competent. They did commit 4 errors in their 8 postseason games, but no runs scored as a result.

The Mets allowed only 9 runs in the 5 World Series games, or 1.444 runs per game. None of those 9 runs scored as the result of a Met error. That's right: 5 games, no unearned runs. Throw in the NLCS, and in the '69 postseason, the Metropolitans allowed a total 24 runs in 8 games, or 3 runs per game, and none were unearned.

If your fielders can avoid betraying your pitchers, and your pitchers don't betray themselves, you're going to give your offense the chance to win the game. Which leads to...

4. "Good Pitching Beats Good Hitting." The O's collected only 23 hits, for a .146 batting average. Powell led the Orioles with 5 hits, all singles, no RBIs.

Don Buford collected 2 hits in the opening game, including the leadoff home run against Seaver, but went 0-for-16 the rest of the way. Paul Blair went 2-for-20, Davey Johnson 1-for-15 and Brooks Robinson 1-for-19. (Had Swoboda not made that catch... he would have been 2-for-19 going into Game 6.) The Baltimore offense, the best in the majors in 1969, only managed 4 extra-base hits off Mets pitching in the 5 games.

Earl Weaver described "The Oriole Way" as "Pitching, defense and three-run homers." The only home runs the O's hit in the Series were Buford's leadoff, a solo shot by Frank Robinson in Game 5, and, amazingly, a 2-run shot by McNally (a pitcher! At Shea!), also in Game 5. That's 3 homers, for 4 runs, in 5 games, from a killer lineup. Shades of the 2001-07 Yankees.

Frank Robinson had 1,812 RBIs in his long and distinguished career. He had 4 in 5 games in the '61 Series, 3 in 4 in '66, 4 in 5 in '70 and 2 in 7 in '71. The '69 Series was the only one of 5 he played in, including the other 3 that his teams lost, that he didn't come through.

In addition, the bullpen came through for the Mets. They only needed 5 2/3rds innings of relief, an average of 1 inning per game, which sounds staggering now. But Don Cardwell, Ron Taylor, and a young fireballer from Texas named Nolan Ryan allowed no runs. (Tug McGraw, who ended up having the best relief pitching career of anyone on the Met roster for this Series, did not appear in it.)

A 2.06 ERA for your starters is excellent, but if the bullpen blows it, it won't mean much -- as Met fans found out in the World Series of 2000 and 2015. But in that of 1969, the Met bullpen had a 0.00 ERA. In contrast, the Oriole bullpen blew Game 4 for Mike Cuellar and Game 5 for Dave McNally. If only one of those happened, the Series would have gone back to Baltimore for Game 6, and then, who knows? This might be a very different blog post.

Then again...

3. "Good Pitching Beats Good Hitting, and Vice Versa." Then-Met coach Yogi Berra once said that. Allegedly. One thing he definitely said, after this Series, was, "We were overwhelming underdogs." Unlike a lot of things Yogi allegedly said, this one is not weird at all, and was totally right.

The Mets faced Mike Cuellar in Games 1 and 4, Dave McNally in Games 2 and 5, and Jim Palmer in Game 3. Palmer is in the Hall of Fame, and Cuellar and McNally are not far from Hall-worthiness. Between them, these 3 men won 637 career games in the major leagues: Palmer 268, Cuellar 185 and McNally 184. But the Mets got the hits they needed when they needed them.

2. Gil Hodges. Earl Weaver, the Baltimore manager, ranted and raved and lost his cool. Gil Hodges never, ever lost his cool. Not in the 1952 World Series, when he went 0-for-21 for the Dodgers. Not in the 1955 World Series, when he redeemed himself with some big hits and caught the last out of the only Series that Brooklyn would ever win. Not in the Summer of '69, when the Cubs seemed like sure Division titlists at least, and Met fans would have been overjoyed with a strong, if not especially close, 2nd-place finish.

And Hodges kept his cool in the '69 postseason as well. As a result, he kept the Mets calm, on an even keel, and let them know that they were worthy of this moment, even when few people outside the New York Tri-State Area believed that (and 4 years before McGraw started using the slogan "Ya Gotta Believe").

And maybe that's it, the real reason the Mets won it all:

1. Nothing to Lose. If the Mets had finished 2nd to the Cubs in the new 6-team NL East, after 7 seasons of either 9th or 10th in the single-division 10-team NL, most Met fans would have gladly taken it. If they had won the Division but lost the Pennant to the NL West Champion Braves, it would have been a disappointment, but they would have gotten over it.

And if they had won the Pennant but lost the Series to the overwhelming favorite Orioles, it would have been fairly easy to take, as just being in the World Series is quite an honor – that is, so long as you don't lose it on a bonehead move or play, as the Red Sox did against the Mets in '86 (and I mean John McNamara's managerial decisions and Bob Stanley's wild pitch, not Bill Buckner's error), or as the Mets did against the Yankees in 2000 (the baserunning blunders and Armando Benitez's walk of Paul O'Neill).

Like the New England Patriots against the St. Louis Rams in their 1st Super Bowl win, or the Giants against the Patriots 7 years later, the '69 Mets acted as if there was no pressure, as if the pressure was all on the other guys. It really wasn't on the Mets.

They had fun. And their fans had fun. It was fun they did not expect to have. And sometimes, that's the best kind of fun of all. And that's why the win was not just glorious, but, to use the cliché, Amazin'.

It was also the last Major League Baseball game played before I was born, exactly 9 weeks later. So I was born with both the Mets and the Jets as defending World Champions.

But I still hate the Mets. But that's not why. I hate them because I'm a Yankee Fan.

*

The '69 Mets have been lucky, in that, 50 years later, 20 of their players are still alive: J.C. Martin is 82 years old; Al Weis and Ron Taylor are 81; Art Shamsky is 78; Cleon Jones is 77; Jerry Koosman, Jerry Grote and Jack DiLauro are 76; Bud Harrelson, Ron Swoboda, Bobby Pfeil and Jim McAndrew are 75; Tom Seaver, Ed Kranepool and Duffy Dyer are 74; Ken Boswell and Rod Gaspar are 73; Nolan Ryan and Gary Gentry are 72; and Wayne Garrett is 71. Coach Joe Pignatano is also still alive, at 90.

However, there is a cloud over that. This year, it was announced that Seaver had begun to suffer from dementia. And Harrelson has been dealing with it for some time. Kranepool nearly died of kidney failure before he got a transplant a few weeks. ago.

General manager Johnny Murphy died of a heart attack just 3 months later. Manager Gil Hodges died of a heart attack on the eve of the 1972 season, owner Joan Payson of natural causes in 1975, and Danny Frisella in a dune buggy accident while still an active player on New Year's Day 1977.

Coach Rube Walker died of lung cancer in 1992, Cal Koonce of lymphoma in 1993, Tommie Agee of a heart attack in 2001, Tug McGraw of brain cancer in 2004, Donn Clendenon of leukemia in 2005, Don Cardwell of Pick's disease in 2008, coach Eddie Yost of heart disease in 2012 (43 years to the day, today is the anniversary), coach Yogi Berra of old age in 2015, and Ed Charles of heart trouble in 2018.

Only Taylor, with the '64 Cardinals, had won a Series before. Only McGraw, with the '80 Phillies, would again. Harrelson would be the 3rd base coach on the Mets' '86 titlists, and thus the only man in a Met uniform for both. Johnson would be the manager, and Seaver would be in the opposite dugout, running out the string with the Red Sox. The last '69 player still with the Mets would be Kranepool, in '79. The last one still active in the major leagues would be Ryan, in 1993.

In 1986, the Mets needed several clutch plays in Game 6 of the NLCS against the Houston Astros to avoid a Game 7, in the Astrodome, against Mike Scott, who'd not only been one of the few players to beat them that season, but had really had their number. And they needed a meltdown by the Boston Red Sox in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 of the World Series, and another choke by the Sox in Game 7.

Talent-wise, the 1969 Mets were nowhere near as good as the 1986 Mets. But maybe the wrong Met World Series win is being called the "Miracle."

Certainly, the 1969 Mets are the better story. For all that the Yankees have achieved, for all that the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers achieved before moving to California, for all the joy brought to the New York Tri-State Area by the Super Bowl wins of the Giants and the Jets, the Knicks' 1970 NBA Championship, and the Stanley Cups won by the Rangers, the Islanders, and the New Jersey Devils, the 1969 New York Mets remain the most beloved single-season sports team in New York history.