Presented by BACON BOISE.
This Day In Sports…October 16, 1969:
They went into the season as 100-to-1 shots to win the World Series, but the New York Mets shock the world by beating Baltimore 5-3 to take the championship four games-to-one. The manager was one of the original Mets, Gil Hodges, and he made his players believe. Hodges cultivated young talent, like Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman on the mound and Tommie Agee and Ed Kranepool in the field and at the plate.
The Mets, in only their eighth year, had never achieved so much as a winning season. They debuted in 1962 with a record of 40-120, among the worst in modern major league history. In the ensuing six seasons, the Mets lost more than 100 games three more times. They showed signs of life in 1968 with a 73-89 mark, but nobody saw that as a precursor to a World Series championship.
The 1969 season that ended with history began with some, too, as the Mets and the expansion Montreal Expos played the first-ever international game. At the time, it looked like the same ol’ Mets, as the Expos won an 11-10 slugfest at Shea Stadium. But New York did score four runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. So, in hindsight, was that the omen? The Mets started 9-14 but reached .500 on May 21. After slipping back again, the Mets launched an 11-game winning streak late that month.
On August 14, the Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs by 10 games in the National League East, but they won 14 of their next 17 games. The Mets than caught the Cubs and passed them in September, winning the division by eight games and finishing 100-62. Underdog New York went on to sweep the Atlanta Braves in the first NL Championship Series, as the winning pitcher in the NLCS clincher was a rookie named Nolan Ryan.
Game 1 of the World Series went to Baltimore. It was all Mets from there, though. Koosman won two games, and Seaver, the NL Cy Young Award winner, won one. Symbolizing the “Miracle Mets” moniker that the team earned that season, the Mets rallied from a 3-0 deficit to win the decisive Game 5. The surge began when the Mets’ Cleon Jones was awarded first base after shoe polish on the ball proved he was hit by a pitch. Jones then scored on a two-run homer by Donn Clendenon, one of three he clubbed during the Series.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
