RIP Tom Seaver

[RchW]

Sad to hear this.One of my favourites.

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/m...uary-1.5710292

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by RchW

Sad to hear this.One of my favourites.

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/m...uary-1.5710292

Dementia and covid-19 complications

1000ish other Americans died today of covid-19
And thousands of people around the world
Most were not famous baseball players

[Curve Ball Dave]

He was one of my idols

[Buster Cherry]

Saw the first game Seaver ever pitched with the Reds. Unfortunately, he came up short as Tommy John pitched a four hit shutout for the Dodgers against the powerful Big Red Machine. The Reds didn't hit a ball in the air all evening. All their outs (and hits) were grounders.

[Brad K]

I liked Seaver as the underdog, the lead up years to what became the Miracle Mets

[Amazin69]

I swear, they're TRYING to make me finally man up and commit suicide the way I've been threatening to do since 1982. (Depression is a beast, yo.)

First I lose my Raiders.

(The Las Vegas Vermin are NOT the Raiders. And the part where they gave away their best players for two rolls of used athletic tape because they WANTED to lose as much as possible really killed any interest I had in watching Marky Davis chase that casino $$$.)

Then I lose baseball.

(Haven't watched an inning this season. Have no idea how the Mets are doing. Don't care. DH-ball isn't baseball. I hardly cared when it was confined to the AL, but I'm not going to watch Overpaid Has-Been take his four swings and sit down without contributing to the defense, day after day after day. The whole point of the game is that EVERYBODY has to play both offense and defense. Pitchers don't get to pitch without trying at the plate [last season, FOUR different Mets starters hit home runs] and used-up 'roid-heads don't get to play Home Run Derby without being exposed in the field. At least not in MY sport. And 16-team playoffs? What is this, the NHL? The whole point of the long season is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now some mediocrity can half-ass through the regular season, essentially stealing the fans' money [assuming fans ever get to attend again] and then get lucky in the post-season. Ugh.)

And now, the Franchise. Tom Terrific. The greatest pitcher ever to pitch since the game was integrated. (The five ahead of him on Wins Above Team are all pre-WW2.) The hero of my youth. The guy whose daughters I went to private school with. (Tom came for a book signing for his 3rd book "How I Would Pitch to Babe Ruth", in 1975 or so. Seemed nice.)

In 1985, I got to watch him win #300 at Yankee Stadium, pitching for the White Sox. I bought a top-deck ticket, yawned through the Phil Rizzuto Day ceremonies (never could stand Scooter, sorry), scoped out an empty seat in the front row box by the visiting dugout, and after a few innings to make sure it wasn't being taken by a late arrival, went down and watched the rest of the game from ground level.

(This was very easy to do at Yankee Stadium II, because the levels weren't separated by gates or anything. You could just go down, hit the concession stands, buy something and "return to your seat" with your food, completely unsuspected. At Shea, you used to have to bribe an usher to get in the boxes.)

So there I am, watching #41 do what he had done 299 times before, just an aisle away from Nancy and Sarah right behind the Sox dugout. (Sarah didn't recognize me, I was a few grades ahead of her.) In the 8th inning, somebody hits a foul ball grounder (I want to say Don Baylor, but I'm not 100%) and it comes right to me and I lean over to get it…and I flub it, and the guy next to me gets it instead. Damn. The perfect souvenir, gone.

(It took me 31 more years to get a foul ball. In 2016, Brian Dozier sent the 3rd pitch of the game into an almost unoccupied Delta Club [or whatever] section behind home plate…and I completely lost it coming down, but it lodged right in my very own seat that I had just stood up from, and there was nobody around to snag it from me. This turned out to be the "Granderson switch-hits HRs in extra innings" game, so it was fairly significant, being a memorable Mets win in a key playoff drive, but nothing like Tom's 300th would have been as keepsakes go. Oh, well.)

Farewell, Tom. I adored you so much that "41" has been a part of virtually every PIN code I've ever had. That the Daily News back page of the "Midnight Massacre" was on the back of my bedroom door throughout high school. (No wonder I was depressed…) That I used to get angry when visiting pitchers would wear 41 at Shea. (Even though they might have been wanting to honor him, I didn't care. Get lost, Jeff Shaw! Up yours, Ugueth "What U Pay For" Urbina! Drop dead, Braden Looper! [Who later wore 40 as a Met].)

I knew this was coming. That doesn't mean I was prepared.

In 1965, Tom was drafted in the 10th round by the Dodgers, after pitching at Fresno City College. He had transferred to USC for [presumably] the next two years and was also enrolled at their school of dentistry as a fallback.

Tom's Fresno neighbor and rival, Dick Selma, had just signed with the Mets for a $100,000 bonus. Since Seaver knew he was better than "Mortimer Snerd" Selma, he wanted a similar bonus.

The Dodgers were unimpressed by Tom's dominance on the Fresno HS circuit and offered him a signing bonus of…$2000. When Tom tried to get the Dodgers to at least come up a bit on their offer, the Dodger scout handling the negotiations told Seaver, "good luck on your dental career" and refused to budge.

That Dodger scout? Tommy LaSorda. To quote Chevy Chase in Fletch, "I hate Tommy LaSorda". (For being a hokey blowhard self-promoting phony, for decades before I heard that story.)

Tommy LaSorda will turn 93 in less than three weeks. Live long and prosper, Tommy. Adieu, Tom. (Sigh.)

[Westheim]

Not Tom Terrific. No. No-no-no. I don't allow it.

[rjl518]

5 Days Left (I posted this in this year's OOTP21 Countdown to Release Thread) (additions in ())

4 and 1 equals five!
Every year, we must show the respect due this pitcher.
Greatest pitcher/player in Mets history!
Top 10 pitcher in baseball history!
If Sandy Koufax is my Opening Day starter, this guy pitches on Day 2!
3xCy Youngs, 12xAll-Stars, 1969 WS Champ, RotY and 3xERA Titles!
311 Wins, 2.86 lifetime ERA, 3640 Ks!
Led the NL in strikeouts five years!
Led the NL in wins three years!
Posted 1.76 ERA in 1971!
Maybe the greatest wind-up in baseball history?
Now he has been diagnosed with dementia!
(Now he has left us to go pitch in Heaven.)
(Horrible and so devastated by this loss.)
EVERY baseball fan should know his name!
But I am just going to call him, "TERRIFIC"!
RIP Tom Seaver
Baseball became a better game when you arrived!
We have lost a Legend!
Sincerely, Mets Nation!

[Leo_The_Lip]

What I'll always remember:

1) Mets pulling his name out of a hat.

2) The near no-hitter against the Cubs in the Miracle run-in.

3) Everyone making jokes about him wearing Sears suits--because of his ads for Sears.

4) His hat falling off when he threw as hard as could.

[Déjà Bru]

I just read this:

Beginning in 1976, Seaver, who saw pitchers on other clubs being paid far more than the $225,000 he was, engaged in acrimonious negotiations over his salary with the Mets’ chairman, M. Donald Grant.

Their feud was fueled by Dick Young, the powerful columnist for The Daily News who had sided with the owners in their battle with the players over free agency. Aggressively taking on Seaver, who was the Mets’ union representative, Young declared the Mets’ golden boy not so golden after all: “Tom Tewwific,” he wrote, was a “pouting, griping, morale-breaking clubhouse lawyer who is poisoning the team.”

Seaver was having a good early season in 1977; he was 7-3 in mid-June as rumors swirled that he would be traded to Cincinnati.

Yet he was just about to sign a satisfying contract extension with the Mets when Young wrote a column suggesting that Seaver’s wife, Nancy, was jealous that Nolan Ryan, a former Met who had been traded to the California Angels (now the Los Angeles Angels), was earning more money than her husband.

Outraged at the mention of his wife and suspicious that Mets management was the source of Young’s story, Seaver refused to sign his contract and demanded a trade.

Grant was just being another greedy owner but Young was a jerk. I wish three things:

1) It was 1977 again.
2) I was the kind of man who would punch a bozo in the nose because he deserved it.
3) I met Dick Young in the street.

[RchW]

Dick Young was notorious as an owners' stooge.

[Déjà Bru]

Amazin69, that post of yours is amazin'. Thanks for it. Regarding the "d," it's great to have stories like that but my advice is to live in the present and go with the flow as much as you can. Live each day just for and in itself. Platitudes, yes, but effective principles if you stick closely to them.

[swoboda]

If your nickname is "The Franchise" that has got to be an overstatement. Yet, in Seaver's case it was not an overstatement. I would have to think long and hard to come up with a player in any sport who 180'd the history of the team. ....upon his arrival, from day 1.
He was a great player right away, and he was the first player that made you feel like the Mets will win today when he pitched. I attended many , too many, Mets games during the 60s and 70s and Seaver made that team a real team instead of the laughable losers they had been before he got there.

As you can see by looking to the left he was not my favorite Met, but he deserves all of the accolades he is getting now as well as those he received before he died.
During his prime he was the best RHP in baseball.

"The Franchise" indeed.

[Rasmuth]

The best pitcher in his generation...a literal generation of Hall of Fame hurlers. His mechanics and motion was flawless.

And a good announcer too. This one hurts.

[Amazin69]

Dick Young was able to turn a phrase ("This is the obit on the Brooklyn Dodgers. Cause of death was greed, with political complications.") but by the 1970s he was a sad excuse for a human being. This is the fellow who called Jim Bouton "a social leper" over Ball Four and when they found themselves seated in the hallway outside Commissioner Kuhn's office and Ass Eyes managed to feign civility, tried to downplay it by going "I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally", thus giving Bouton the title for his sequel. Young crawled up management's butt big time, becoming the parody of the once-rebel turned conservative conformist. Blech.

Other memories of Seaver include the dirt on his right knee, from all that dropping and driving (I used to copy his motion in my family room, as probably half of NY area youth did) and his striking out 15 Phillies on the final day of 1974 to keep his 200-K seasons streak alive, despite the sciatic nerve that had hobbled him for much of the campaign.

And of course Art Howe flying out to left field to end what turned out to be Tom's final game as a Met (bar the 1983 return). The emotional address Seaver gave to the press afterwards (knowing his likely fate) is or was on YouTube, somewhere.

[Buster Cherry]

Dick Young was enemies with Howard Cosell and Mike Lupica. He couldn't have been that bad.

[LouisSVillano]

Tom Seaver passed away today.
Forever Young !

[swoboda]

Young also disliked Namath and Ali as I recall.
Seaver will be remembered long after DY is forgotten.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Other memories of Seaver include the dirt on his right knee, from all that dropping and driving (I used to copy his motion in my family room, as probably half of NY area youth did) . . .

Players in tonight's Mets-Yankees game purposely dirtied the right knee of their uniforms before the game in tribute. Ultra cool.

[BBGiovanni]

Sad news, but I had no idea he'd ended up with Covid to go with his dementia and Lyme disease. One tough customer, and I'm glad he and his family can now be at peace in their own ways.