Jordan Goes One-On-One With Seaver

[G-Fafif]

Pat Jordan. Tom Seaver. Sports On Earth.

Go. Now.

[G-Fafif]

Then he told me a third story, from his earlier years with the Mets. Again, he was pitching in the later innings with runners on base. Before the catcher threw the ball back to him, Tom crouched like a quarterback in the huddle, propped his elbows on his knees and stared at the dirt. His pitching coach, Rube Walker, came hustling out to the mound. Rube said, "Tom. Tom, you all right? You hurt? Maybe you should come out." Tom looked up at him, as if he had no idea why Rube was there. He said, "What the hell you doing here? This is my mound, get the fuck off it." Rube said, "But Gil [Hodges] thought you may be in trouble." Tom said, "Trouble? I was fucking thinking. Now get the fuck out of here."

[fimg=240]https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/bf/ac/75/bfac75bbcdbca4e71cc53dbe565cd33e.jpg[/fimg]

[G-Fafif]

Tom Seaver's Rules for Pitching, as methodical as a CPA. Another rule was: A pitcher should never get beat in a crisis situation with anything but his best pitch. Tom's best pitch was a 98-mph fastball that he could throw wherever he wanted to. Finally, a pitcher must always avoid his W.C.S. He told me, "I always tried to avoid my Worst Case Scenario, and if I couldn't, I had to have a plan on how to deal with it when it came up. This one game against the Giants, you can guess what my W.C.S. was." I said, "Willie McCovey, with the bases loaded." He said, "Thank you very much. So what do you think happens in the late innings?" I smiled. He said, "Thank you very much. Willie McCovey, up with the bases loaded. So I'm saying to myself, 'OK, big boy, you think you're so hot, a couple of Cy Youngs, what do you do now?'" There, by the side of a road between vineyards in Calistoga, 30 years later, he looked at me as if he were seeing that moment right now. Big Willie McCovey, waiting at the plate, the bat on his shoulder. Tom said, "This is my all-time favorite moment in baseball. I managed to get 3-2 on Willie, and all of a sudden, it came to me. I'm in my stretch, and I keep checking the runner on first. Now, everyone knows the runner can't go anywhere, the fucking bases are loaded, so what is Seaver doing? I keep checking him, refusing to make eye contact with Willie, throwing him a little birdseed, getting him to think, 'What the fuck is Seaver doing?' I wanted him to be anxious, confused." He stopped talking. I blurted out, "So what happened!" "I struck him out on a changeup. Twenty years later, we're at the Hall of Fame, and Willie says to me, 'Tom, why the hell did you throw me a changeup in that game?'" "Why did you?" I said. "You broke your own rule." "That's the point, big boy. Everyone knew how methodical I was. How this pitch had to be a fastball. I was Tom Seaver. So this time, I went on instinct." He looked at me with a grin. "Even Tom Seaver has to acknowledge mystery in life."

[Edgy MD]

Change-up was his third pitch, too. He couldn't have gone to a slider, because McCovey might well at least have fouled it off and then the element of surprise is gone.

OE I have another great essay this guy wrote about Seaver.

[Lefty Specialist]

Good stuff. Seaver in twilight, enjoying his life.

It's troubling that his short-term memory is shot though. Lyme disease is a bitch.

[Zvon]

Ya know, I don't think I ever heard him curse or have a curse in a quote. The the older he gets (& the older I get) the more I love George Thomas Seaver. He's like a fine wine himself.


Here he is about to catch the pop up off Hunts Helmet.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Love Pat Jordan's stuff.

[Frayed Knot]

I don't think I had ever heard even about the existence of Tom's brother Charles, much less of his early-ish (55) death.
IIRC, their father, also Charles, lived into his 90s meaning he probably out-lived Charles Jr. - and jeez that's a pattern I'm finding all too common lately.

[Zvon]

iirc these are photos of Tom and Charles.

[A Boy Named Seo]

That was brilliant.

[Edgy MD]

In the earlier Jordan/Seaver story I was referring to, he goes more deeply into the circumstances behind that autograph Seaver sent to his grandson. That he was estranged from his daughter and hadn't met his grandson or had only just met him maybe once in passing. One day his daughter calls him out of the blue and said his grandson was just discovering baseball and was nuts for it and asked if he knew any ballplayers that he could get an autograph from. He had been sort of out of circulation and didn't have any contemporary figures he could call on, so he calls Seaver, they shoot the shit for a while, and he coyly asks if he could send his grandkid an autograph. He didn't come right out and say that his reconciliation with his daughter and grandson was on the line, but the gravity got across, and somehow Seaver, who has little time anymore for all the sorry saps who worship him, went overboard for this guy who calls him every now and then only to bust his balls. Sends his grandkid the full package: autographed photo and personal letter with references to his respect for the kid's grandfather, and how he hears the kid has a great future. (Moral of the story: If you meet Tom Seaver, give him hellish grief instead of the sycophancy. He'll respect that.)

My other memory was that Tom mentioned a favorite dog (a lab, surely) he had from his playing days named Slider. Jordan decided to bust on him and told him if he had another dog named Curveball, he'd have won 400 games. Seaver, who rarely threw a curve and almost never for strikes got all serious and introspective and said, "I could never grasp the philsophy of the curveball."

[dinosaur jesus]

There's only one problem with that McCovey story. Seaver never struck out McCovey with the bases loaded in the late innings. Or in the early innings either. In fact he struck him out with more than one runner on base exactly once. And I think that's the game he's talking about. It was on June 30, 1979. The Giants had runners on second and third with one out, and Seaver struck out McCovey swinging on a 3-2 pitch. Even with a base open, Seaver had to throw a strike; if he walked him, it would load the bases for Darrell Evans with still only one out. As it turned out, he retired Evans and went on to shut out the Giants on three hits.

So all that stuff about worst case scenario and messing with McCovey by checking the runner on first--he just threw it in to make a better story. Nothing wrong with that. It's pretty funny, though, that he'd call it his all-time favorite moment in baseball.

[Frayed Knot]

I think we've learned (or at least we should have) from stories like this that ballplayers' memories of even their own careers and specific plays from them are somewhat flawed at best, and often a lot worse than that.
This one, differing by one baserunner and one out, is at least within spitting distance of accuracy.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

If Justin Verlander isn't on the next plane to wine country then I don't know what.

[Ceetar]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: If Justin Verlander isn't on the next plane to wine country then I don't know what.

See, this is the perfect story for ESPN, who are basically the TMZ of sports. Why not set this up?

From Verlander's standpoint, I'm not sure I'd want to go out to the middle of nowhere to be berated by Tom Seaver and basically told I'm soft.

[G-Fafif]

Author's and protagonist's first meeting.

Despite Seaver's weight lifting, there are certain parts of his physique that are noticeably undeveloped. His waist, for instance, is thick. It is a constant subject of kidding for his wife, Nancy, who will say, "He has an old man's waist. Really, he does. He is a lot like an old man, you know." This kidding does not bother Seaver, since he knows a tightly muscled waist will add nothing to his talent, and as with most things that do not add to his talent, he gives the matter little attention. (The perfect way to chill a relationship with Seaver is to make a slighting remark about his talent. No matter how much in jest that remark might be, he will grow silent as a stone while the laugh dies in the jester's throat.) Seaver is not a vain man. He could no more lift weights in front of a mirror to build an Adonis' physique than he could tell an obscene joke. He dresses neatly but without distinction in the clothes he receives from Sears, Roebuck and Co., with whom he has a contract. He seems to have no desire to call attention to himself, and if he is at all conscious of the image he presents in public, it is only up to, never beyond, the point when it offends his own sense of propriety. The only attention he seeks is on a pitcher's mound, and even there he does not demand it for himself, but for his superb and unquestioned skill.

[Frayed Knot]

Ceetar wrote: John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: If Justin Verlander isn't on the next plane to wine country then I don't know what. See, this is the perfect story for ESPN, who are basically the TMZ of sports. Why not set this up?

Well, ESPN might be the TMZ of football and basketball -- Hey Golic, did you see what [Kobe / Brady / LeBron / Romo] tweeted about what [ESPN analyst] said on [ESPN show] and then what [other ESPN guest] said in response during the [ESPN post-game show]? -- but they wouldn't touch a baseball story like this much less clear a half-hour or so of programming time for it (certainly not during the winter) and that's even assuming they were somehow able to locate a producer on that campus of theirs who actually knows and/or cares who Tom Seaver and Justin Verlander are.

MLBN, on the other hand, should be all over this to the point of arranging the flight for Verlander and their camera crew. Hell, they're paying Costas to do, well .. somethin'or other for that network, let him tag along.