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Johnny Dickshot Jun 11 2007 10:35 AM

Thirty Years Ago this Friday? I heard about the trade(s) on the radio in my parents' kitchen and subsequently threw something across the kitchen and got yelled at. I had just turned 11. Looking back at it now I guess the thing that really set me off wasn't that Seaver went necessarily, but that Seaver went AND Kingman went. It was like, "Hey Seaver fans! Fuck you! And those of you who agree Seaver was a money hungry ingrate? Here's a big F U for you too!! Ha ha!" I defenitely tried very hard to put the best face on this -- and was a big Steve Henderson fan in no time. Pulled hard for Paul Sieber too. NY Post article: ]SUMMER OF SEAVER By BRIAN COSTELLO June 10, 2007 -- Just saying the date is enough to make Mets fans queasy: June 15, 1977. It is the nadir of the organization, the day the team traded away Tom Seaver, whose nickname is all you need to know about his importance: “The Franchise.” Thirty years later, memories of that day are fresh for Mets fans who lived it. It is the most emotional trade in New York history. Seaver, now 62, is philosophical when asked about that day. “It was actually a relief,” Seaver said last week from his home in Calistoga, Calif. “I was getting away from a guy who didn’t like me, who didn’t appreciate me. You can look at it as a negative or as a positive. The positive is, I was traded to a pretty good ballclub. “For me, it was a positive. It was a sense of rebirth.” THE BUILDUP You did not have to be inside the Mets clubhouse to see the Seaver trade coming. The dislike between Seaver and Mets chairman M. Donald Grant was well known. The two had been warring over Seaver’s desire to renegotiate his contract for more than a year before the trade. It was the dawn of free agency, and owners and players were far from seeing eye-to-eye. Grant, who died in 1998, dug in his heels and said he would not renegotiate. Seaver then said he wanted to be traded. The two exchanged barbs in the press, and the situation got ugly. “He called me a communist,” Seaver said. “I think it was his mentality toward his players. In his eyes, we were not on a par with him mentally, socially or professionally.” The Mets talked seriously with the Reds, Dodgers, Pirates and Phillies about dealing Seaver. Teams lined up for a chance at the three-time Cy Young Award winner. “I heard that Grant was not happy about certain things and might be interested in trading Seaver,” the Reds ‘general manager at the time, Bob Howsam, said last week. “Of course, I had a great interest. I thought Seaver was one of the greatest pitchers ever to play.” The Reds eventually pulled off the trade with a package of pitcher Pat Zachry, who had shared the Rookie of the Year in 1976; utility infielder Doug Flynn, who had played sparingly; and outfield prospects Steve Henderson and Dan Norman. Joe Torre was named the Mets’ player/manager two weeks before the trade. For a 36-year-old first-time manager, having a disgruntled star was a lot to deal with. At one point, Torre thought Seaver might be sent to the Dodgers for future all-star Pedro Guerrero. “There were a lot of distractions because we knew a bomb was going to fall,” Torre said. “We didn’t know where it was going to fall. We didn’t know what team we were going to deal with. We talked to the Dodgers about Guererro, but at the time Pete Guerrero was in a cast in the minor leagues. He had done something to his leg. I remember it vividly.” THE BOMB DROPS The night before the trading deadline of June 15, it looked like Seaver might remain a Met. He told GM Joe McDonald he wanted to stay with the team. The next day, though, legendary columnist Dick Young wrote a scathing column that said Seaver and his wife, Nancy, were jealous of the money Nolan Ryan and his wife received from the California Angels. The column by Young, whose son-in-law worked for the Mets, drove Seaver to call Grant and tell him: “Forget what I told Joe McDonald. I want out.” The Mets were in Atlanta on June 15 when the trade was finalized. Torre sent Seaver home to New York before the game began. Seaver left a goodbye note, which Torre read on the team bus when it reached the airport. “The worst part was leaving your teammates,” Seaver said. “You had this idealistic view that you would play for one team. You come to realization that’s not going to be true. I thought I would be in that organization forever.” His teammates knew the trade was probable but still could not believe it. “The whole team was in shock,” pitcher Jerry Koosman said. “It was quite a changed team without him there. It seemed like we were half-naked.” Most fans found out the following morning in the newspaper. The Mets also traded Dave Kingman that night, and it was dubbed the “Midnight Massacre.” The Shea Stadium switchboard lit up with calls from angry fans. That night, the Mets had a home game with Houston. Extra security was on hand to deal with protests. Only 8,915 fans showed up. The fans placed the blame on Grant, and sparsely attended Shea came to be known as “Grant’s Tomb.” He was forced out as chairman of the board 18 months after the trade. Seaver said his farewell at Shea earlier that morning. He broke down when speaking about the fans and had to write his feelings on a notepad because he could not talk. Mets fans felt just as emotional. Current Mets broadcaster Howie Rose, then a 23-year-old getting started in radio, remembers sitting at a gas station when the news came across the radio, crushed that the trade happened. “I was very emotionally attached to it,” Rose said. “I just remember that at that time I still felt, naive as it might have been, Seaver was a Met the way (Mickey) Mantle was a Yankee. I always thought of Seaver as the Mets’ Mantle or (Joe) DiMaggio.” It didn’t take long to realize there would be no championships at Shea for a long time. “It was a complete overhauling of the team greater than just Seaver,” said Gary Cohen, now the TV voice of the Mets. “It was the realization that whatever chance there was going to be of reliving what happened in ’69 and ’73, it wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon.” THE OTHER GUYS Steve Henderson remembers flying over New York, amazed at how big everything looked. He was a muscular 24-year-old from Houston who had been a Reds minor leaguer for three years. Now he was making his major-league debut in New York after getting traded for one of the greatest pitchers in the game. Awaiting Henderson, Zachry and Flynn (Norman went to Triple-A) in the Mets clubhouse that day were nearly 100 reporters. “It was scary,” Henderson said. “I had never been around that many reporters.” Little was known about any of the players except Zachry, who won 14 games the year before. Flynn played behind Joe Morgan and Davey Concepcion with the Reds. Flynn remembers the morbid feeling when they arrived. “All those guys had won in ’69 and had come up the hard way, weren’t supposed to win,” Flynn said. “They bonded. They were a family; now, all of a sudden, you’re breaking up the family.” Fans were shocked that this was all they got in return for the great Seaver. Flynn remembers walking on the field that first day when a young fan yelled, “Mr. Flynn!” “I thought, ‘Mr. Flynn. I could get used to this,’” Flynn said. Then the fan said, “You (stink).” All four players would be traded after new GM Frank Cashen took over the team and began rebuilding it in the early 1980s. 30 YEARS LATER Seaver would go on to win 122 more games (311 total), including nine when he returned to the Mets for the 1983 season. After moving to the White Sox as a free-agent compensation pick, he entered the Hall of Fame in 1992 with what is still the highest voting percentage ever (98.83). Looking back, Seaver says the trade was for the best. He’s not sure if he would have won 300 games had he played for those dismal Mets teams. “I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now,” Seaver said when asked if he wishes he spent his entire career with the Mets. “I’m damn glad that didn’t happen.” Today, he tends to his vineyard in Calistoga. He bottled his first 2007 vintage wine last week and said he doesn’t miss being around baseball. “My commute to work is a minute-and-a-half, on foot and with my dog,” Seaver said. “I’ve got brand new challenges that are equally as rewarding. “I get to work every day, not every fifth.” Additional reporting by George King. brian.costello@nypost.com

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 10:53 AM

]At one point, Torre thought Seaver might be sent to the Dodgers for future all-star Pedro Guerrero. I read recently that the package was Guerrero and Rick Sutcliffe. I pointed out in the Suits thread th eoddity that Grant lost his chairmanship --- but remained on the board --- the last year before the sale. I thought it was a remaneuvering to set up the sale, but the implication of that article is that he lost his influence. A big part of the struggles of the Torre era seems to me that Henderson (and Stearns to a lesser degree) initially showed the beginnings of what then passed for middle-of-the order power, but it mysteriously vanishing thereafter. Hendu slugged .480 as a rookie and never came close to that again.

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 11:02 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jun 11 2007 11:09 AM

Seaver, by the way, is missing a few opportunities to say something nice there. I get the idea his most recent seperation from Metsville could have been more amaicable as well.

Frayed Knot Jun 11 2007 11:05 AM

I remember being pissed off because I didn't understand why it [u:89821d44da]had to[/u:89821d44da] happen. It all just seemed like a big ego-driven pissing contest which, in effect, it was.

Benjamin Grimm Jun 11 2007 11:15 AM

I wonder what why playing his entire career with the Mets would have prevented Seaver from tending to a vineyard in 2007? I remember Tom Seaver's farewell press conference. It was played on Channel 5 news and I taped the audio on my cassette recorder. I probably still have that somewhere, but I have no clue where to begin to look for it. I also remember sitting on a curb with my friends the next day (looking back it was like a Charlie Brown and Linus moment) contemplating the bleak future ahead for the Mets. It's also easy to forget how many 69ers were still on the team at the time of the trade: Koosman, Harrelson, Grote, Kranepool, and (maybe) Boswell. I was 14 when the trade happened, an age where time unfolds much more slowly than it does for me now. The 1973 World Series was already a distant memory. The period between 1977 and 1983, with the seven consecutive losing seasons, seemed to last forever. (Much longer than the interval between 2000 and 2006, for example.) I don't think Mets history was altered in any appreciable way by the trade. The Mets were doomed to a long period of suckiness whether Seaver stayed or went. I have to wonder what the Pirates, Phillies, and whoever offered, and if they might have ultimately been better deals. (Who knows? A good young player arriving in 1977 might have put them over the top in 1984, for example.)

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 11:17 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jun 11 2007 11:19 AM

Nothing has to happen. He could have been traded for a better package. He could have stuck to his earlier position. Dick Young could have written an honorable column. They could have confronted their renogtiation impasse the way other GMs confronted by stars bigger than the team have — save face by holding the star to his contract, but offering him more money in the form of an extension. McDonald and Torre could have stood up to Grant. OK, that last one is desperately improbable and likely wouldn't have made a difference. And the one above that wouldn't really matter if Grant wasn't going to offer an extension at market value. But it seems Seaver's stated willingness to endure the situation beaing undone by Young's column was something of an unlikely spanner in the works that didn't have to happen. Dick Young, by the way, has no wikipedia entry.

iramets Jun 11 2007 11:18 AM

Yancy Street Gang wrote: I wonder what why playing his entire career with the Mets would have prevented Seaver from tending to a vineyard in 2007? I remember Tom Seaver's farewell press conference. It was played on Channel 5 news and I taped the audio on my cassette recorder. I probably still have that somewhere, but I have no clue where to begin to look for it. I also remember sitting on a curb with my friends the next day (looking back it was like a Charlie Brown and Linus moment) contemplating the bleak future ahead for the Mets. It's also easy to forget how many 69ers were still on the team at the time of the trade: Koosman, Harrelson, Grote, Kranepool, and (maybe) Boswell. I was 14 when the trade happened, an age where time unfolds much more slowly than it does for me now. The 1973 World Series was already a distant memory. The period between 1977 and 1983, with the seven consecutive losing seasons, seemed to last forever. (Much longer than the interval between 2000 and 2006, for example.) I don't think Mets history was altered in any appreciable way by the trade. The Mets were doomed to a long period of suckiness whether Seaver stayed or went. I have to wonder what the Pirates, Phillies, and whoever offered, and if they might have ultimately been better deals. (Who knows? A good young player arriving in 1977 might have put them over the top in 1984, for example.) Boswell was long gone by 1977. he went to Astros, I think in the very early 70s. He wasn't on the the '73 team, I know that for sure.. If only there were a Mets database you could look such stuff up on.

Willets Point Jun 11 2007 11:20 AM

I was 3 and totally clueless. Now I'm 33 and not much has changed. Honestly, when I first heard of Tom Seaver he was a Red and I was given an indication that a long time ago he played for the Mets. Obviously in retrospect his Mets years were much more recent than my childhood mind imagined.

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 11:22 AM

iramets wrote: He wasn't on the the '73 team, I know that for sure. Part of the joke?

Johnny Dickshot Jun 11 2007 11:24 AM

The Boz was too on the '73 team, hit 1.000 in the World Series (3-for-3). Still waiting to hear where yas were, cept YSG, when you found out.

Benjamin Grimm Jun 11 2007 11:25 AM

I did find a database where I could look it up. Boswell was with the Mets through 1974. The 69ers on the 1977 Mets once Seaver was traded were just Koosman, Harrelson, Kranepool, and Grote.

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 11:26 AM

I don't know where I was. My fandom blossomed from passive to passionatey active in the weeks following the trade. Very Charlie Brown-like.

iramets Jun 11 2007 11:26 AM

Edgy DC wrote: ="iramets"]He wasn't on the the '73 team, I know that for sure. Part of the joke? Nope. Early Alzheimer's. I woulda sworn that Millan played 2B pretty much [url=http://ultimatemets.com/profile.php?PlayerCode=0133] alone [/url]

Frayed Knot Jun 11 2007 11:33 AM

I was home, hoping that midnight would arrive without a deal. And for a while it looked like that was going to happen (wishful thinking mostly) but then around 11:30 or so there was an announcement that the team had called a press conference. Once you hear that you don't have to wait for the morning papers. Then when I did read the papers the one thing that summed it up best was the line about the Reds adding Tom Seaver while not touching anyone from their everyday lineup. At that point I think I went from mad to depressed.

iramets Jun 11 2007 11:46 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jun 11 2007 12:04 PM

Ya know, Seaver for Pedro Guerrero would have been a good trade. Seaver for Guerrero and Sutcliffe woulda been a great deal, and it would have been about as popular as the trade with the Reds at the time. I have no idea where I was, but I do remember thinking that maybe Seaver's best days are behind him. I was down on the '77 Mets, and in favor of some radical steps to shake things up. Also, I remember not being too wild about Kingman at the time. I don't see where the gamble hurt them very much. It's not as though if he'd stayed, the early 1980s Mets would have been a decent team or anything. OE: the forgetting about Boswell is part of a pattern. I won a Mets trivia contest on Friday night (got a nice "Mets" drinking cup) but had some wrong answers. "Name the Four Mets ROTY winners, and the years" which I thought was a slamdunk, turned out to be a slamdunk George Tenet-style. I named "Ron Hunt, 1963," when for decades I've been brooding over the unfairness of Hunt losing the 1963 ROTY to a punk named Rose. Maybe I should just start shutting up.

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 12:00 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jun 11 2007 12:03 PM

Well, the stronger notion would be that if he stayed, the attitude that sent him yonder wouldn't have prevailed. Koosman and Matlack went a year and a half later. Matlack faded after a wonderful 1978 in Texas in which he logged a 2.27 ERA over (perhaps relevant to his downfall) 270 innings. He saw no Cy Young support. Scrapple8 might tell you that's because he didn't know how to win. Koos would win 20 again after in 1979 after winning 20 in 1976 and losing 20 and 15 in 1977 and 1978. I have no idea what Scrapple8 would make of that. The gamble hurt them.

metsmarathon Jun 11 2007 12:02 PM

i was but a mere fetus, several months away from my first gasp of fresh air.

seawolf17 Jun 11 2007 12:11 PM

I was about as old then as MiniWolf is now. So obviously it didn't register at the time. The big crushing trades of my childhood are dealing Kevin McReynolds to the Royals and Lenny Dykstra to the Phillies. Tom Seaver was (is?) definitely a washed-up old guy to me, pitching for the White Sox. That said, if the Mets traded Mr. Met right now, MiniWolf would probably be pissed.

Benjamin Grimm Jun 11 2007 12:23 PM

The reason I don't think the trade of Seaver ultimately mattered is because the Mets were going to be disassembled anyway. The turning point for the franchise was probably the death of Joan Payson, which left the team in the hands of people who were more interested in saving money than in running a winning team. Seaver and Kingman were just the first to go. Anyone who was going to earn a high salary were sure to follow. The Mets, from 1977 until the team was sold after the 1979 season, were a small market team, operating much like the Royals or Pirates do now. They were actually probably in small market mode earlier than that, but it wasn't until June of 1977 that it became more apparent. The 1976 team won 86 games, and, 13-year-old that I was, I thought it meant better days were ahead. Their failing to participate in that first big season of free agency (after the 1976 season) should have been a clue. I actually entertained thoughts of Reggie Jackson coming to the Mets.

Willets Point Jun 11 2007 12:52 PM

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Their failing to participate in that first big season of free agency (after the 1976 season) should have been a clue. I actually entertained thoughts of Reggie Jackson coming to the Mets. Heh, it was the second time they missed out on him.

Farmer Ted Jun 11 2007 01:36 PM

I was still in Little League. A bunch of my friends liked the Phillies and I all I could think of is "now who do the Mets have to go against Carlton?" The Flynn combo with Taveras set league-highs for double plays which was exciting until my brother pointed out that they led the league because the pitching sucked and kept letting batters get on base.

metsguyinmichigan Jun 11 2007 01:45 PM

I was 13 and Seaver was my hero and the Mets were everything. It was one of the most painful times of my life, which, of course, says that I've had it fairly easy. But when you are 13 and in full Met devotion and they trade your favorite player for a bunch of guys you've never heard of, the feeling of betrayal is enormous. It's a pain that stayed with me for a long time. When Dick Youg died, I laminated his obit and hung it on the fridge and it stayed there for years. And when I was having a bad day, I'd say "On the bright side, Dick Young is still dead."

Benjamin Grimm Jun 11 2007 01:47 PM

And you can still get solace today from the fact that he has no Wikipedia entry. And Lorn Brown does!

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 01:50 PM

Farmer Ted wrote: The Flynn combo with Taveras set league-highs for double plays which was exciting until my brother pointed out that they led the league because the pitching sucked and kept letting batters get on base. Your brother was only partially correct. From 1977-1981, the Mets were more or less middle of the pack, pitching-wise. It was the hitting that done 'em in.

Iubitul Jun 11 2007 01:50 PM

What Metsguyinmichigan said, minus laminating Dick Young's obit, which is a nice touch.

iramets Jun 11 2007 02:04 PM

I liked Dick Young. He had a cool name, he always looked relaxed in Spring Training photos with his shirt off or wearing one of those cabana-style shirts and a cigar in his hand, he wore his gray hair stylishly long and combed back, and he wrote with some panache, as opposed to other beat writers who wrote fairly dull stories, giving the facts but not much more. I thought he he was behaving like a jerk in the Seaver-Grant affair, and worse than I knew (as it turned out), but up until that point he'd accrued a lot of style-points with me.

metsguyinmichigan Jun 11 2007 02:05 PM

Iubitul wrote: What Metsguyinmichigan said, minus laminating Dick Young's obit, which is a nice touch. Well, a little over the top. :) I might have been a little more eloquent when I talked about seeing the 300th win in person, and how that brought some healing. http://metsguyinmichigan.blogspot.com/2005/08/forces-that-heal-tom-seavers-300th-win.html I still get emotional talking about both of those days.

sharpie Jun 11 2007 02:10 PM

I was living in California and in the middle of about a 5-year period where I didn't pay much attention to baseball (roughly '73 to sometime in '78). I remember hearing the news and thinking "wow" but no real specific memory.

Frayed Knot Jun 11 2007 02:23 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jun 11 2007 02:24 PM

I was thinking about Dick Young a week or so back. The return of Guillermo Mota brought a lot of talk-radio chatter from fans - about how they were going to boo his return on account of his drug use and all - and it reminded me that that was exactly what Young was calling on Shea fans to do upon the first re-entrance of another NYM druggie ... Dwight Gooden: Boo him when he first takes the field to show your disapproval, then cheer his exit to show that we all can be forgiving. And the kicker to the whole thing is that Young was roundly castigated by Met fans for even suggesting a harsh reception. Now I realize that the type of drug use probably has something to do with it; recreational and addictive vs performance enhancing and "cheating". But, of course, a larger part is that fans are often selectively outraged depending on the popularity of the player and his relative BA/ERA. I listened to see if anyone remembered enough to bring up the contradiction but no one did.

G-Fafif Jun 11 2007 02:24 PM

In those final days of eighth grade, I struggled to stay awake Wednesday night to get final word but nodded off. When I awoke Thursday morning: Seaver AND Kingman AND for the hell of it, Mike Phillips. You knew it was coming but when it happened, it was as stunning as an assassination. Tune into Flashback Friday this week for a deeper exploration.

Benjamin Grimm Jun 11 2007 02:33 PM

I should also point out that June 15 isn't all bad. The Mets made one of their best trades ever on that same date in 1983.

cooby Jun 11 2007 06:35 PM

Just graduated. Would you believe, I was more upset about the Mike Phillips trade than Seaver or Kingman

SteveJRogers Jun 11 2007 06:56 PM

metsmarathon wrote: i was but a mere fetus, several months away from my first gasp of fresh air. Heh, I wonder if m.e.t.b.o.t. was under the same conditions, about to be born from some first year toy! Seriously, I was just turning 4 months old. Jody McDonald often tells this story on whatever radio station he works for, that he actually had a hand in getting Dan Norman in the deal. Basically McDonald (mid teens at this point) was a baseball junkie so he knew the top players in other teams organizations. Anyway, the Reds were giving up Flynn, Zachry, Henderson and Rawly Eastwick who was adamant about not wanting to be traded to New York (Reds sent him to the Cards but lo and behold he signs as a free agent with the Yankees that off season) So the Mets needed one more player to add to the deal, Joe Mac decided to let his baseball crazed son do the picking, and Dan Norman was the guy. Guess thats why McDonald is now a sports talk radio host!

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 09:04 PM

Everything I've read about Young suggests that he was a groundbreaker and important iconoclast when he came on the scene. Nonetheless, he was frustratingly retrograde by the time I could tell the difference. And, as you could tell, it wasn't until late 1977 that I was paying attention. Still, such figures fascinate me and I love to read up on them, searching for a tipping point, trying to see if he changed, we did, or some combination of the two. In fact, if you scratched out Young and wrote in Ratzinger, I'd probably let my post stand.

Valadius Jun 11 2007 09:07 PM

I wouldn't be born for nearly another 10 years.

Johnny Dickshot Jun 11 2007 09:08 PM

Young got worse every year. The other day I was looking up the earliest mentions of Strawberry in the Sporting News -- most of the hits were Young, ALL of them bemoaned that he got 200,000 to sign (except the more accurate ones where he says 180,000). tool.

Batty31 Jun 11 2007 09:13 PM

I was 9 at the time, and to be honest, it didn't phase me one bit. I was not big on Seaver and I could not stand Kingman (my brother had a friend who would talk about Kingman 24/7, enough to make me not like Kingman!) I remember my brother being upset about Seaver. You're probably all going to throw things at me for saying this, but I ended up becoming a big Flynn fan...ok, had a big crush. :P I also was a Zachry fan (no crush there, just always had a respect for pitchers).

cooby Jun 11 2007 09:16 PM

Batty31 wrote: You're probably all going to throw things at me for saying this, but I ended up becoming a big Flynn fan...ok, had a big crush. :P . Pete?

Batty31 Jun 11 2007 09:20 PM

Ha ha, cooby. You know I meant Doug!

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 09:20 PM

I dug pretty much all the guys we got for Seaver ('tweren't their faults). But, when it came to digging pitchers, Seaver was the best pitcher in a New York uniform since Christy Matthewson, and I immediately felt stupid for being too young to realize what we had lost until ten minutes later.

Frayed Knot Jun 11 2007 09:43 PM

The problem with Young is that - although he was considered almost an anti-establishment writer in his early days - he became the symbol of old-school status quo as time went on and his "Young Ideas" became anything but towards the end. That retro outlook put him dead against the free agency era - despite his jumping from the News to the Post (or was it vice versa?) at a hefty salary increase during that time - and he spent much of the rest of his career railing against the new era and the players who used it to do exactly what he did for his career. He, like Grant, was too fond of the decades-long rigged system that kept the player compensation "in line" and resented the new breed getting rich via the new rules. Not surprising then that, in addition to taking Grant's side in the Seaver dispute, he also harped on the Strawberry bonus money.

Edgy DC Jun 11 2007 09:47 PM

I'm more of the belief that he took Grant's side for whatever reasons, and then spent the rest of his career married to that angle just for the sake of consistency.

cleonjones11 Jun 12 2007 12:12 AM

Dick Young reminded me of the biased "reporter" in The Natural. He was a tool. Seaver day..I was smoking pot.... Seaver is and was my alltime favorite and I find it ironic the one time I met him he was a total dick.

G-Fafif Jun 15 2007 06:52 AM

Still trying to make sense of it. Still can't. http://faithandfear.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/6/15/3023768.html

iramets Jun 15 2007 07:17 AM

G-Fafif wrote: Still trying to make sense of it. Still can't. http://faithandfear.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/6/15/3023768.html The hindsight in this traumatic deal still runs amazingly high. I've been mulling over the concept of getting Guerrero and Sutcliffe from the Didgers for Seaver: if that would have been the structure of the trade, and we would have improved the club vastly, I wonder if we'd be remembering our initial feelings with such justified outrage, or if it would just be "I was a little ticked off, but clearly it was a great move, LGM, etc."

MFS62 Jun 15 2007 07:54 AM

iramets wrote: The hindsight in this traumatic deal still runs amazingly high. I've been mulling over the concept of getting Guerrero and Sutcliffe from the Didgers for Seaver: if that would have been the structure of the trade, and we would have improved the club vastly, I wonder if we'd be remembering our initial feelings with such justified outrage, or if it would just be "I was a little ticked off, but clearly it was a great move, LGM, etc." To many Mets fans of the time (there are fewer and fewer of us now) who had felt the pain of losing our team to Los Angeles, losing "the franchise" to that same city would have been unbearable trauma. Later

Edgy DC Jun 15 2007 07:56 AM

Zachry was a past Rookie of the Year and Sutcliffe a future one, but I don't think Sutcliffe would've necessarily given the Mets more than Zachry. His freak Cy Young Award was two trades down the road. He could've stayed healthier, though Zachry was less healthy. Zache put up better relative ERAs while Sutcliffe pumped out more innings (as AL pitchers did back then). Now Guerrero giving the Mets more than Flynn, Henderson, and Norman, yeah, that's a pretty safe bet. But he was a role player on the Dodgers until 1981-82, when the Cey-Russell-Lopes-Garvey mafia was breaking up. So he would've had to wurvive the late seventies as a Met. Ws Lasortda bringing him along slowly in '80 or was he hurt? He seems to have been grossly underused.

iramets Jun 15 2007 08:15 AM

I think he would have played on the Mets--the late 70s Met team sucked pretty badly, and the Dodgers were in hot contention all the time. LA had good corner outfielders in 80 (they played Guerrero in CF at first, which is nightmarish to imagine) and I suspect we have used him exactly as we used Henderson, only he would have improved as his career advanced. I suspect if you put Sutcliffe's career, post 1977, next to Seaver's, Sutcliffe would come out ahead. (OE: 171 wins after 1977, as opposed to about 120 for TS.) He was a pretty good pitcher apart from the Cy Young year. It was a career year, sure, but I would have gladly taken several of his other years to [url=http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/sutclri01.shtml]boot[/url].

Benjamin Grimm Jun 15 2007 01:00 PM

Pat Zachry is getting a lot of attention on the UMDB today, 30 years later. When I was at Shea on June 2, they played the "Where are they now" video segment that Joe Figliola mentions in his post at the bottom of the page. It was nice that the Mets checked in with a guy who's probably not anybody's favorite Met. If I saw Pat Zachry on the street today I'd never recognize him as the former Mets pitcher. (He's 57 years old now! How time flies!) I also like the Vin Scully quote that "Ramblin' Pete" posted on October 4, 2006: "He was towering, scowling, shaggy looking, bearded... When he entered a game vs. the Dodgers one time, announcer Vin Scully questioned whether Zachary had 'arrived by raft...'" Looking at Zachry's stats, I notice that he had 20 complete games and 6 shutouts as a Met. That probably doesn't rank him all that high on the all-time Mets list, but there's a decent chance that in the future nobody will ever pass him in either category.

Johnny Dickshot Jun 15 2007 01:08 PM

Raft. ... That's a good line. I think the first thing anyone remembers about Zachary, other than his beard, was the fact that he kicked a dugout step in frustration and broke a foot. We should get Joe Figiola to post here in the event he doesn't already.

Edgy DC Jun 15 2007 01:09 PM

I'm (1) assume Sutcliffe doesn't stay with the Mets his whole career, and (2) reject wins in favoor of Wins Above Replacement Player. His ERA was above league average. Seaver's (even old Seaver's) and Zachry's were below. what he had going for him was that he was really a horse some years.

Johnny Dickshot Jun 15 2007 01:22 PM

The name that hasn't come up but I certainly recall reading about in trade speculation was Don Sutton. That at least would have been an apples-for-apples kind of trade. Only we weren't shopping for apples.

Benjamin Grimm Jun 15 2007 01:25 PM

I remember the Sutton rumors too, but for some reason I seem to think that those rumors came up about a year earlier, perhaps before the 1976 season? Maybe they appeared again in 1977, but Sutton/Seaver smells like 1976 to me. It's the Mets' closest thing to the Yankees/Red Sox, DiMaggio/Williams deal that never happened.

smg58 Jun 15 2007 01:33 PM

I was still 6, and rooted for both local teams equally. In hindsight, I think it's interesting that I continued rooting for the Mets after that despite the large disparity in success they had with the Yankees during that stretch, but gave up entirely on the Yankees when they let Reggie go. I was too young to have good opinions on the trades, I guess. I remember the previous year getting mad when they traded Del Unser and Wayne Garrett -- they were up among my favorite Mets because I had their baseball cards. (What kind of name is Pepe Mangual, anyway?) I knew Seaver and Kingman were the stars, so I didn't understand why the Mets would want to trade them. But Steve Henderson made a good first impression, and life went on.

Johnny Dickshot Jun 15 2007 01:40 PM

The Pepe Mangual trade bummed me out every bit as much, if not more, than the Seaver trade did.

SteveJRogers Jun 15 2007 06:36 PM

From the 2005 Parody Acrhives: mlbaseballtalk Oct 21 2005 10:39 PM The Mets Traded Seaver Today More Brush up with The Possum The great George Jones and one of the greatest country music songs of all time, "He Stopped Loving Her Today" Grant was mad that he was called "The Franchise" He told him he just could not be signed As the months went slowly by, The deals were rolling through his mind That 69 pennant hung on the wall Drove the Mets brass crazy now and then. But the fans still loved him through it all, Hoping Tom would still pitch again. Then came an offer from the Reds, For Zachry, Flynn and Hendu So on June 15th Seaver's run came to an end Dick Young's response was "What can you do?" The magic of 1969 died that day, It was hard to fight back the tears. The team's heart and soul had gone away Last time you'd see Shea smile for years. The Mets traded Tom Seaver today, Got him for Flynn, Zach, Henu and Norm, And soon the fans will stay away, The Mets traded Seaver today. You know, he did come back one last time. Oh we all wondered if he would. And it kept runnin' through my mind, Mets fans will never be over that trade for good. The Mets traded Tom Seaver today, Got him for Flynn, Zach, Henu and Norm, And soon the fans will stay away, The Mets traded Seaver today.

MFS62 Jun 15 2007 07:00 PM

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Pat Zachry is getting a lot of attention on the UMDB today, 30 years later. Pat Zachry was announced as an upcoming guest on one of the NY Sports talk stations today, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the trade. It may have been the Beningo/Evans show. I had to go to work before I heard him. Later

metirish Jun 17 2007 08:45 AM

Pat Zachry has a funny memory of his time in NY..... [url=http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2007/06/17/2007-06-17_the_true_story_of_the_midnight_massacre-1.html]The Midnight Massacre[/url]

Johnny Dickshot Jun 17 2007 09:30 AM

Good job by Madden though I'm not sure what makes it any "truer" than the other stuff. I'm glad he tracked down Geary. Awesome Zachry story.

iramets Jun 17 2007 11:48 AM

An angle of Madden's story that I find interesting is how the blame finally rests on Seaver for forcing the deal after they had worked out a contract extrnsion. The Young story that supposedly pissed him off so much really doesn't seem so bad: Young implied that Seaver (and his wife) resented Nolan Ryan's generous salary in LA. Even if Seaver was happy as a pig in shit that Ryan was making much more than he was (which I doubt, knowing how competitive, egocentric, and sensitive Seaver was and is), Young had every right to say that in print if he wanted to. Seems to me Seaver is still on his high horse of "How dare he write bad things about me and my family in hte newspaper" and so cost the Mets his services. If he'd wanted to, he could have stayed, it says right here: the Mets had locked Seaver in with a three-year, $675,000 deal, making him baseball's highest paid pitcher - temporarily - with a base salary of $225,000. That distinction was short-lived as the first wave of free agents hit the market over the 1976-77 winter, 11 of them, including Yankee pitcher Don Gullett, signing multi-year contracts of $1 million or more. And although Ryan, Seaver's friend and former teammate (whom the Mets had also traded in 1971 before his brilliance could even begin to be realized), was not eligible for free agency until after the 1979 season, notoriously generous Angels owner Gene Autry was already paying him $300,000. [jump ahead a half-year].... In the days leading up to the deadline, a concerned Lang, who didn't want to see Seaver traded, suggested to the star pitcher that he go over Grant's head and call Mets owner Lorinda deRoulet in an effort to resolve the impasse. And in a series of phone calls between the two, a deal was worked out the night of June 14. Instead of getting a salary increase, Seaver's contract would be extended by three years, at $300,000 the first year and $400,000 the next two. Seaver then called McDonald, who had been engaged in trade talks with the Cincinnati Reds, and told him not to proceed any further. He was staying a Met. But the next day, as he sat in the coffee shop of the hotel where the Mets were staying in Atlanta, Seaver was informed of the column Young had written on the "battle page" - in particular a paragraph toward the end of it - that sent him into a rage. "….Nolan Ryan is getting more now than Seaver," wrote Young, "and that galls Tom because Nancy Seaver and Ruth Ryan are very friendly and Tom Seaver long has treated Nolan Ryan like a little brother." Bolting from his chair in the coffee shop, Seaver stormed back to his room and rang up Mets public relations director Arthur Richman. "Get me out of here, do you hear me?" he bellowed. "Get me out of here!" He then told Richman to call Mrs. deRoulet's daughter, Whitney, and inform her that the contract deal was off. "And tell Joe McDonald everything I said last night is forgotten."

Johnny Dickshot Jun 17 2007 11:55 AM

Well, it wasn't what Young wrote, per se, but the idea that Grant and/or others in the organization were providing Young these quotes. I think the "family" thing was a nice sturdy peg for Seaver to hang his indignation onto. He may also have figured that going over Grant's head and getting "his" wasn't going to help the organization in the long run and could in fact inspire a small-minded "sportsman" like Grant to continue starving the org for talent to spite him. I think the only thing that could have saved Seaver was Grant's resignation.

iramets Jun 17 2007 01:46 PM

If Grant had offered his resignation immediately, Seaver might have left anyway, and then you'd be writing "Well, the only thing that would have saved Seaver was Grant's crucifixion." I hate being an apologist for Mets' management (no, really! I'm not comfortable in that role!) but I don't think most people see Seaver as causing this crisis, as Madden argues. Probably 99% of Met fans see Seaver as a victim of evil Mets' management, a helpless peon being treated contemptuously by a money-focused ballclub run by a stockbroker who didn't understand the game of baseball. If you ask the average Met if Seaver demanded to be traded after having all his contractual demands satisfied, they'd look at you cock-eyed and ask if you were looped. I certainly wasn't aware until I read Madden's article that Seaver had been offered, and agreed to, a contract extension that, for its time, was quite generous. I also didn't remember specifically what bad, bad things Young had written about Seaver's wife and Ryan's wife--turns out it was pretty much nothing, but Seaver spun it as "Young wrote that my wife was a spread-eagled whore, and I was pimping her out to Ryan's dyke wife etc. and I couldn't work here anymore and how dare he talk about my family like that blablabla." And yeah, Young was a fairly trashy, petty man, but remember the definition of a good sports column--"entertaining and slightly short of libel."

Johnny Dickshot Jun 17 2007 02:00 PM

I'm all about Seaver's complicity in his trade. We had this same discussion years ago when Cookie made me type out the whole fucking Young column.

iramets Jun 17 2007 02:08 PM

I'm getting older (tomorrow I turn 54) and I forget things, like conversations I've had and people I had them with and who are you again? As you get older, btw, three things happen to you 1) You forget things 2) you repeat yourself a lot 3) you repeat yourself a lot Is that hand-typing post archived somewhere? Maybe I should read it again.

MFS62 Jun 18 2007 08:40 AM

In his book The Long Season, ex-player now sportswriter Jim Brosnan mentioned Young. He said Young was one of a group of irreverent young reporters nicknamed "the Chipmunks". IIRC others in that group included Leonard Koppett and Leonard Schecter. Brosnan states that they were the first to go into the clubhouse, listen to the chatter, then report on the behind the scenes side of baseball. I got the impression that the players really liked, and opened up, to them. Brosnan also said (I paraphrase) that management can buy the sportswriters by giving them a free lunch. Later

Frayed Knot Jun 18 2007 08:58 AM

Except that many believe Young abandoned that irreverence in his later years as he began to resent the money athletes were making, the independence it gained them, and also the fact that, with the rise of television, newspaper men were no longer the dominant force in sports that they once had been. By that point, Young was increasingly taking mgmt-friendly and other "establishment" viewpoints as he railed against the new world order of free-agency (though not for him), network announcers (esp Cosell), and basically the state of the world.

MFS62 Jun 18 2007 09:04 AM

FK, as someone who read Young over the years, I can say that seemed to be true. Later