The New York Mets return to Baltimore this weekend for a three-game series, and the two teams are moving in opposite directions.
The Orioles, with the second lowest payroll in baseball, sit atop the American League East and appear poised for a deep postseason run.
That’s where the Mets thought they would be at the start of the season, with a payroll of $400 million and several certain Hall of Famers acquired as free agents. But the underperforming Amazin’s went on a fire sale at this week’s trade deadline, and look to be spectators when the playoffs come around.
So, there will almost certainly be no rematch of the 1969 World Series between the two teams, even though many in the ballpark may hold powerful memories of that remarkable year.
Saturday night’s second game of the three-game series will include a celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the 1983 World Series champion team with an on-field pre-game ceremony featuring players from the 1983 squad including Cal Ripken Jr., Jim Palmer and Eddie Murray.
But it’s the teams’ 1969 World Series run against The Mets that the weekends’ events bring to mind.
In that series, the favored Orioles’ team faced a disappointing loss, a loss that still stings for diehard fans.
Painfully, Baltimore’s own Ron Swoboda provided the highlight clip and signature imagery of the “Miracle Mets” improbable victory over the heavily favored Orioles in the 1969 World Series.
With the Mets ahead two games to one in the Series and a 1-0 lead in the top of the ninth inning of Game Four, Swoboda made a diving backhanded grab of a sinking line drive off the bat of Brooks Robinson with Frank Robinson on third base and Boog Powell on first. Frank tagged up and scored but Boog had to hold on first. Had the ball gotten past Swoboda the Orioles would have most likely taken a lead into the bottom of the ninth inning and perhaps have squared the Series at two games apiece.
“There’s a possibility that Boog Powell would have scored from first, but I always make a joke about his big fat ass not being able to score,” said Swoboda in a telephone conversation three decades later.
Some Orioles fans and former players still wish it was a hallucination but that’s just the way things were going for Baltimore versus New York in professional sports during the last year of the psychedelic 60s.
In January the upstart American Football League’s New York Jets 16-7 upset the NFL establishment’s Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III. Two months later the NBA’s New York Knicks easily eliminated the Baltimore Bullets from the NBA (1968-1969) Eastern Division Semifinals in a four-game sweep and did it again the following season en route to the 1969-1970 NBA championship.
The names associated with those nemesis New York teams still sting in infamy, for the Jets it’s “Broadway Joe” Namath, Jim Turner, and head coach Weeb Ewbank. Why did it have to be Weeb? Why did it have to come at the hands of the legendary former Colts Coach? For the Knicks, it was Willis Reed, Dave Debusschere, and Walt “Clyde” Frazier. Three seasons later Baltimore fan favorite Earl “The Pearl” Monroe would be inexplicably traded from the Bullets to the hated Knicks.
Baltimore writer/historian and Baltimore Fishbowl columnist Rafael Alvarez was a heartbroken 11-year-old “Ralphie” when the Orioles stunningly lost the 1969 World Series.
“F*ck Ron Swoboda and his ice cream cone catch. And Tommie Agee too,” says Alvarez who attended Memorial Stadium for Game One of the 1969 Series which the Orioles won 1-0 on a first-inning home run from Don Bufford off Mets ace Tom Sever.
“I remember walking into Game One with my mother’s brother Bill Jones; he worked for National Beer. There was an angry bird poster on 33rd Street with lettering that read: ‘The Mets are for the Birds.’ I watched the rest on TV. I remember Swoboda’s catch and not much else except a profound heartbreak. It was like the Titanic sinking. How could this be?” says Alvarez.
Alvarez must have also remembered center fielder Tommie Agee making two memorable catches in Game Three of the Series at Shea Stadium. Agee’s running backhanded snatch of Elrod Hendrick’s drive with two on and two out in the fourth inning prevented a pair of runs from scoring. Later he made a forward diving grab of Paul Blair’s blast to his glove side with the bases loaded in the seventh inning keeping another three runs from crossing the plate in the Mets’ eventual 5-0 victory. In what might be considered the game of his life Agee also hit a leadoff home run to put the Mets ahead in the bottom of the first inning.
Agee died of a heart attack at the age of 58 and is buried at the Pine Crest cemetery in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama where he and Mets teammate Cleon Jones grew up together and were both two-sport stars (baseball and football) in high school.
The Mets rattled off four straight victories and the end came swiftly for the Orioles in Game Five when a fly ball to left field off the bat of Orioles second baseman Dave Johnson landed in Cleon Jones’s glove. It was all over except for little Ralphie’s crying.
“I was inconsolable. Baseball broke my heart before any girl did. I would have bet my eyes we would have won,” said Alvarez. “It was a horrible year for Baltimore sports.”
Swoboda, now 79, was born in Baltimore and grew up in Sparrow’s Point in the shadows of the Bethlehem Steel Plant. He played Little League ball in Edgemere 70 years ago and graduated from Sparrow’s Point High School in 1962.
He played for the Gordon Stores Parks and Recreation league squad (14-16 age group) in Baltimore City under the legendary coach Sterling “Sherriff” Fowble. At 16, he hit a home run for the winning team in the Cardinal Gibbons Tournament championship game played at Memorial Stadium.
Swoboda attended University of Maryland on a workshop program where he played for the freshman baseball team and met his wife (of 58 years) Cecelia in a required ballroom dancing course. The summer after his freshman year Swoboda played for the Leone’s Boys Club team coached by another local legend Walter Youse, who doubled as a bird dog scout (not a full-time employee) for the Orioles.
“There was a lot of talk that I was going to get a contract offer from the Orioles. That seemed to make sense—Baltimore boy? Walter Youse discovery? But it didn’t quite work out that way. The Orioles splurged and gave a $70,000 bonus to a right-handed pitcher named Wally Bunker. Bunker played only nine seasons before arm trouble ended his career, but the Orioles can’t say they wasted their money. He won 19 games in 1964, and in Game Three of the 1966 World Series outdueled Claude Osteen and beat the Dodgers 1-0,” wrote Swoboda in his 2019 memoir: “Here’s the Catch.”
Swoboda thought he would return to the University of Maryland but when the Mets came calling shortly thereafter, he signed as an amateur free agent for $35,000 in 1963 and made his big-league debut with the team in 1965. On the way to the fourth straight last-place finish in the Mets’ fourth season in existence, Swoboda made his debut on Opening Day and immediately became the team’s starting left fielder hitting a team-high 19 home runs in 134 games.
The Orioles and Mets took vastly different routes to their convergence in the 1969 World Series. The Orioles’ acquisition of Frank Robinson in 1966 was a turning point in franchise history. Robinson brought confidence and swagger the likes of which the 12-year-old team had never seen. In his first year with the club, Robinson captured the American League Triple Crown, leading the league with 49 home runs, 122 runs batted and a .316 batting average all carrying the Birds to the World Series. The Orioles swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in four straight finishing with three consecutive shutouts.
Entering the Series, the Mets were decided underdogs to a Baltimore team that steamrolled to the American League pennant with 109 wins and a league-leading 2.83 ERA. The Orioles’ pitching staff was anchored by 20-game winners Mike Cuellar and Dave McNally, alongside Jim Palmer and Tom Phoebus, all turning in stellar performances. Outfielders Frank Robinson and Paul Blair combined with corner infielders Powell and Brooks Robinson to form the Orioles’ potent offense.
It’s easy to see why the Orioles may have been a little overconfident going into the World Series against the Mets. Upon recent reflection, Powell expressed his lingering disappointment on losing the Series to the Mets.
“I believe the 1969 Orioles team was the best team the organization ever had, so I wish we would have beaten the Mets in the 1969 World Series. Individually, it was a great year for me as I hit .304 with 37 home runs and 121 RBI. It would have been a great ending to finish on top,” said Powell, pulling the numbers right off the top of his head. It was the most productive year of his 17-year career, finishing second in AL MVP voting to Twins slugger Harmon Killebrew. But Powell would capture the MVP Award in 1970.
For their part, the 1969 Mets may have taken the National League by surprise but in retrospect perhaps it shouldn’t have been all that shocking. Part of the mystique of the “Miracle Mets” is their folkloric identity as loveable losers.
Casting the Mets as underdogs against the big bad Orioles better suited the Madison Avenue narrative. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why the team did so well. Led by the National League Cy Young Award winner Tom Seaver and rising star left-hander Jerry Koosman, the Mets won 100 games, outdistancing the second-place Chicago Cubs by eight games in Major League Baseball’s newly aligned National League East.
There weren’t a lot of big bats in the Mets lineup but just enough; left fielder Jones hit a career-high .340, third best in the NL. Slugging first baseman Don Clendenon was acquired before the trade deadline and added some needed pop. Agee hit a team-high 26 home runs and the right-field platoon of Swoboda and Shamsky combined for 23 home runs and 99 RBI.
The Mets, however, were slow out the gate hovering around .500 through the first two months of the season but remained in the hunt only four games behind the front-running Chicago Cubs as late as July 19. A late July/early August swoon found the Mets 10 games behind the Cubs on August 13. The real miracle occurred when the Mets battled back and moved into first place just about a month later, on September 10, winning 16 of the last 20 games to capture the team’s first NL Eastern division title.
“The Cubs blew it,” said Alvarez, “If it was the Cubs, we would have won the Series. The cursed Cubs and the Miracle Mets.”
Both the Orioles and Mets swept their respective opponents the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves in the newly adapted league playoff series in the first year of divisional play.
The Orioles approached their Series opponents with a haughty swagger. While celebrating the American League pennant championship in the clubhouse after defeating the Twins Frank Robinson stepped up on a chair and yelled that “Ron Gaspar has just said on television that the Mets will sweep us in four games. Bring on Ron Gasper, whoever the hell he is,” said Robinson confusing Gasper’s first name with Swoboda’s.
“It’s Rod stupid,” corrected Robinson’s teammate Merv Rettenmund.
“Bring on Rod Stupid,” said Robinson.
Three decades later during an impromptu interview through the open window of the driver’s seat in his car, Orioles Gold Glove centerfielder Paul Blair still had trouble giving the Mets their due.
“They got every break there was and they beat us, but I guarantee you – at least I feel —that if we played them 100 times we would have beat them at least 90. They just happened to beat us those four out of five,” said Blair, who died of a heart attack while in a celebrity bowling tournament in Pikesville, MD on December 26, 2013.
Upon hearing Blair’s remarks Swoboda responded:
“I doubt we would have won four out of five if we played 100 games, but Blair can be delusional. With that lineup that we had, in his heart of hearts, he knows that with our starting rotation and bullpen, we would have held our own. I don’t know if we would have won 50 but we would have held our own. We had depth and guys that could do it.”
Leave it to All-Time Orioles favorite Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, 86, to put the 1969 Series in proper perspective all these years later:
“The 1969 Mets outplayed us. Their pitching shut us down. Ron Swoboda made a nearly impossible catch on a ball I hit in Game 4 that could have turned things around – the tying run was on third base and the winning run was on first. The Mets went on to win the game and won the World Series the next day,” said Brooks.
