Where Were You?

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

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

[Guest Edgy DC]

]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.

[Guest Edgy DC]

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]

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]

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.)

[Guest Edgy DC]

Nothing has to happen.

1. He could have been traded for a better package.


2. He could have stuck to his earlier position.


3. Dick Young could have written an honorable column.


4. 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.


5. 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.

[Guest iramets]

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]

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.

[Guest Edgy DC]

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

Part of the joke?

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

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]

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.

[Guest Edgy DC]

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.

[Guest iramets]

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
alone

[Frayed Knot]

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.

[Guest iramets]

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.

[Guest Edgy DC]

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]

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

[seawolf17]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

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]

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

And Lorn Brown does!

[Guest Edgy DC]

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.

[Guest Iubitul]

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

[Guest iramets]

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.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

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.

[Guest sharpie]

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]

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]

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.