The Minnesota Twins made the divisional playoffs in 1969. It was
the first season of the divisional playoffs. It was about time. A
ten-team league in which only one team advances offers too little hope
for the second-tier teams.
Each league expanded to 12 teams for the '69 season. Our Twins were
a dominant team in the A.L. Western Division. It was the year we had
Billy Martin as manager. Minnesota fans formed an odd bond with the
firebrand Martin. I never thought he was worth the trouble. In the '70s
his eccentricities grew while his managing acumen showed some tarnish.
In '69 he was at the helm of a Twins team that had the established names
of the 1960s: the likes of Killebrew, Oliva etc.
Twins fans were not as excited as you might think. Really, there
was nothing like the homer hanky-waving mania that swept us in the late
1980s.
It was nothing new for the Twins to win. We had won the pennant in
1965 and nearly won it in '67. The 1968 season was aberrational for
baseball because pitchers took over. I'm mystified why the powers that
be permitted that. There are ways to control this, just as how the
Federal Reserve controls the economy (to a certain extent). Mainly this
is through the strike zone. Compress it and you force pitchers to hit
that narrow spot which can restrict what they can do.
We saw soccer-like scores in 1968. The powers that be lowered the
pitching mound for '69. This was deemed a step to help hitters. Hitting
indeed picked up. Tony Oliva hit with abandon. Harmon Killebrew had his
best season in 1969.
But Minnesota as a state was not transfixed as it would be in 1987
through 1991. I can even recall a sense of defeatism, like we knew
there'd be a good chance we'd lose to the Baltimore Orioles in both '69
and '70. We did indeed lose and we lost by sweep. The Orioles had Frank
Robinson and Boog Powell.
Baseball players were still very restricted in their freedom and
ability to negotiate better contract packages. Baseball owners were
sportsmen who believed to a certain extent in the purity of the sport.
Oh yes, they were businessmen who understood the bottom line, but they
didn't do a cost-benefit analysis on everything. If they had, night
baseball would have begun sooner for the post-season. (We'd eventually
get Bowie Kuhn and his long underwear - remember? - so as to make fans
think he was comfortable wearing just a suit and tie on a chilly fall
night.)
There was a time we assumed World Series games would be played in
daytime. You might be distracted at school wondering how the game was
going. I don't recall being excused from class to watch a World Series
game, but I do recall such an accommodation for the state high school
basketball tournament. In those days it wasn't necessary to say "boys
basketball." It was "basketball" and it was one class.
We romanticize those days today. Thus we're attracted to the movie
"Hoosiers." (Gene Hackman didn't actually get the girl, did he?)
Our answer to the fictional "Hickory" was Edgerton, a tiny burg
that was a giant killer. In reality the one-class tourney was of course
very unfair. But we had eyes glued to TV screens as each year's tourney
was televised from Williams Arena at the U of M.
Our Morris High School team made state in the one-class system in
1955. We then lost rather badly to a metro team in state. The loss
shouldn't take any luster from what that team did. Envision that team
playing in the old elementary auditorium which still stands but has been
abandoned for some time, crumbling as years pass. It wasn't called the
elementary auditorium in 1955. Morris High School had its home in that
place. Will it be mercifully razed this coming summer?
In 1969 this nation was feeling the stress of tumult caused largely
by the Viet Nam War. Boys had to grow up fearing the draft. The
generation gap was a very real phenomenon. The civil rights movement had
to push past stubborn obstacles.
The Twins and Billy Martin found their place amidst all that was
going on. Metropolitan Stadium was still a grand structure. (A large
beer was "dollar size.")
The Mets: Koosman rears back
Franklin Roosevelt once proclaimed baseball had to go on. This was
said amidst the strife of World War II. It reflected wisdom. Baseball
persevered as a diversion through wars, Viet Nam included. And in 1969
we not only had the winning Twins commanding our attention, we had the
fascinating New York Mets.
I have read baseball described as an exception to the generation
gap. Whatever rifts grew between generations, whether it had to do with
politics, personal attire, musical tastes or whatever (OK, drugs),
baseball was a tie that could bind. And in 1969 we were mesmerized by
the Mets.
Once the Twins lost, we here in West Central Minnesota could focus
on the Mets and their light blue theme color, because in their ranks was
"one of ours." Jerry Koosman was a graduate of the West Central School
of Agriculture. The school was the predecessor to UMM. It served
agriculture interests in a bygone time, when "farm kids" had to compress
their schooling into fewer months of the year than non-farm kids. Farm
labor would tie them up.
Koosman was the big lefthanded starting pitcher for the New York
Mets, No. 2 behind Tom Seaver. Seaver always wore the mantle of
celebrity better than Koosman. Koosman didn't seem to seek celebrity at
all. He would later be quoted saying he "just wanted to win." Spoken
like a true sports gladiator.
The Mets were a darling team because just a few years earlier, they
struggled badly. They were an expansion team in 1962. New York City had
lost the Dodgers and Giants, and finally got the National League back
again. But the Mets were a truly floundering group at the start, going a
pathetic 40-120 in 1962. This isn't to say all their players were bad.
They had some who might do well in a particular statistical department.
But they absolutely could not jell into a consistently competitive
product.
Such teams typically have a mixture of players on the way down and
kids not quite ready. Don Mincher said this about the 1969 Seattle
Pilots, another first-year expansion team. The Mets languished for a
long time, never placing higher than ninth in the ten-team league over
their first seven seasons.
Koosman was integral in helping the Mets escape their futility.
They weren't sizzling at the start of '69, in fact going 18-23 out of
the starting gate. For most of the season they trailed the Chicago Cubs
in the National League East. Chicagoans talked about "the year of the
Cubs."
The Cubs were managed by the crusty old Leo Durocher, clearly a
representative of baseball from another era. Durocher couldn't keep the
momentum going for Chicago. This in spite of the fact his Cubs enjoyed a
rather gaping lead as late as mid-August. Koosman's Mets were in third
place, trailing by 9 1/2 games.
Maybe there was divine intervention. George Burns as God said to
John Denver on the big screen: "The last miracle I performed was the
1969 Mets."
Whatever force intervened - let's call it destiny or talent - the
Mets under Gil Hodges won 39 of their last 50 games! Hardly anyone
remembers that the Atlanta Braves won the N.L. West that season. We were
transfixed by the Mets. Koosman had a 17-9 won-lost record with a 2.28
ERA and 180 strikeouts. He won eight of his last nine decisions. He did
get beat up a little by Atlanta (with Hank Aaron and Orlando Cepeda) in
game #2 of the divisional playoffs. Of course no one remembers that.
Hey, New York won that game! The Mets went on to win that series and
then beat Baltimore in the World Series.
Koosman was the pitching star of the 1969 Series. He was inducted
into the Mets Hall of Fame in 1989. He attended the 40th anniversary
reunion of the '69 team at Citi Field on August 22, 2009.
We may have loved "the amazin' Mets" of the Casey Stengel era. But
we loved the '69 Mets more. All that excitement helped take our minds
off the more unpleasant things going on in our country at that time.
Indeed, baseball survived wars. Its biggest threat came from the strike
of 1994. I have never viewed baseball the same since '94.
But I'll always cherish those memories of an earlier time when
baseball, despite its imperfections and unfairness, gave a glorious
backdrop for each summer us boomers were growing up.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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