It Was Forty Years Ago Today....

[Guest themetfairy]

It was the end of an era. And for those of us of a certain age, it marked the end of our childhoods.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I always associate June 15 with the day the Mets traded Tom Seaver.

Happily, I also associate it with what happened on the same day, six years later.

[Guest 41Forever]

Pretty devastating to me as a 13-year-old kid.

Looking back on it now, it's hard to imagine how this could have happened, and how utterly tone deaf and out of touch M. Donald Grant was with a fan base.

[G-Fafif]

Mike Vaccaro plumbs the tabloid archives deeply. Be reminded all over again how much you hated Dick Young, not to mention his son-in-law's patron.

[dinosaur jesus]

A black day. I'm still upset. But I wonder if things could actually have gone even worse. This way it was a clean break--there was an obvious villain, Seaver was still terrific, and even on the Reds (at least it wasn't the Yankees) he could still be the good guy. But that Mets team was collapsing, and he wasn't going to save it. By the next season things could have gotten really ugly, and he'd have been right in the middle of the ugliness. It wouldn't have been fun. Not that it was fun anyway, of course.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Yeah, the main problem wasn't that Seaver left, it was that M. Donald Grant and Lorinda deRoulet didn't leave.

I was just a few weeks past my 14th birthday when that trade was made, and I was just stunned that it actually happened. I hated seeing him in a Reds uniform, and it really bugged me when I saw a happy Nancy Seaver being interviewed on TV, saying everything was the same except for the color of his uniform.

[Guest cooby]

I know I often swim against the tide here, but for me it was the day they traded Mike Phillips, my favorite player at the time

[Benjamin Grimm]

That's about as against the tide as it's possible to be!

[Guest cooby]

But it was 1977 and my sights soon turned to Lee Mazzilli...

And I was about to turn 18 so the younger cuter guys were in my scope. No offense to Tom and Nancy

[Frayed Knot]

No Gary, NOT the entire ballpark was rooting for Seaver in his return.
I was in the park that day and [u:35q8k5wm]I[/u:35q8k5wm] wasn't rooting for Seaver!

[Frayed Knot]

I suppose the booth could try to be a little more positive by focusing on the anniversary of Keith's trade instead of Seaver's, except that if Keith is being honest he'd have to admit that he hated the
trade and briefly threatened to retire rather than report.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Frayed Knot wrote: No Gary, NOT the entire ballpark was rooting for Seaver in his return. I was in the park that day and I wasn't rooting for Seaver!

I was there too, and I was totally rooting for Koosman.

[Frayed Knot]

Were you the bald guy with the beard sitting in front of me?

[Batty31]

cooby wrote: But it was 1977 and my sights soon turned to Lee Mazzilli... And I was about to turn 18 so the younger cuter guys were in my scope. No offense to Tom and Nancy

Ahhh yes...I was a big Mazz fan myself. I wasn't a Seaver fan at that tender age either and I'll admit I was excited to land my other big crush in that trade..Doug Flynn.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

No excusing the organization for refusing to participate in any and every way they could have looked to improve the club and see to it it's best players were also happy ones but Seaver had 5-and-10 rights and tied their hands and made it clear he was an unhappy camper from the start. I think in the final analysis the newspapers we're a secondary reason it went down like it did. The first was the free agency snub by the club that cost Seaver's faith in the org

[Frayed Knot]

The papers were the secondary reason but it was specifically Young's column mentioning Nolan Ryan and the wives that made the situation irreparable.
There was a chance to still fix things, and then there wasn't.

[Edgy MD]

I got the idea that Grant probably thought he could get away with saying that Seaver requested the trade, which everyone naturally knew he was provoked to do, leaving Grant wondering Trump-like why the public had him as the villian.