They landed late on a Friday afternoon in San Francisco,
intending to drive up that day. Shamsky phoned Nancy.
The news was bad.
“He’s not feeling great,” she said.
Shamsky’s heart sank. He knew that left only Saturday
before their return flights on Sunday.
The next morning, a fearful Shamsky called Nancy for
the verdict. “You lucked out,” she said. “Get over as soon
as you can.”The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought
the greatest artist has.
—MICHELANGELOA
S A PITCHER, in form and function, Seaver was
impeccably carved. When longtime major league player
and manager Harry Walker taught pitching, he used still
images of the righthanded Seaver as his template. He hadthe leg strength of a running back, the balance of a ballet
dancer and the will of a marathoner. The hands over the head,
the “drop and drive” of the lower body, with legs, hips and
glutes firing like cannons, the back knee hitting the ground
hard enough to need a pad there under his uniform pants,
the arm bursting through last... so familiar... perfection
on repeat. Watching Seaver uncoil was like standing next
to t he t ra in t rack s as a 200-ton diesel locomot ive roa red by,
the speed and power leaving a wake of awe.
“When he showed up in 1967 [in the big leagues] he was
the same guy,” says Swoboda. “He was the same Hall of
Fame guy, same stuff, same bearing on the mound. There
was no break-in period. He came out of the box Tom Seaver.”
Tom Seaver had power and command in elite portions.
He said in 1969 that he threw seven pitches: three types
of fastballs (“It sinks, sails or runs in”), two curveballs
(one slow, one fast), a changeup and a slider. All behaved
as well as children on Christmas Eve. He once said if
he threw 125 pitches in a game all but about a handful
ended precisely where he intended. So good was Seaver
that Reggie Jackson once said of him, “Blind men come
to the park just to hear him pitch.”
Seaver was the happiest accident that ever happened
to the Mets. Growing up in Fresno, Seaver didn’t make
his high school baseball team until his senior year. He
went to Fresno City College, where he was a good pitcherB
ECAUSE OF THE granite reliability of his pitching
and his steady persona in a turbulent time, Seaver is
the touchstone to that 1969 magic. The numbers speak to
the passage of time. He was 25–7 with a 2.21 ER A. As the
young Mets ran down the more seasoned Cubs in the Na-
tional League East, Seaver went 10–0 with a 1.34 ERA in
his last 11 starts. He was nearly perfect in six September
turns: no home runs, no stolen bases allowed, no losses
and no relievers.
Astoundingly, Seaver was 12–5 that year when New York
scored just three runs or fewer (.706), the highest winning
percentage in such low-scoring games in the live ball era
(minimum 14 games since
1920). No better testament
to his will exists than this:
Seaver pitched the ninth
inning 18 times and never
surrendered a run or even
an extra base hit. Seaver
and Virgil Trucks (’49) are
the only starting pitchers to
do that.
Seaver, Harrelson, Koos-
man, Shamsky and Swobo-
da all were between 24 and
27 that year. When they re-
united in 2017, those young
boys of summer knew mortality too well. Harrelson was in
the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Seaver had battled Lyme
disease, and now word had spread among his former team-
mates that his cognition was waning. Shamsky wanted to
write a book about that team. He knew time and memory
were slipping away. “I would say more books have been
written about that team than any team in history,” Sham-
sky, who published After the Miracle (coauthored with Erik
Sherman) earlier this year, says. “We wanted to write a
book not about the game, but about the relationships we
developed. We already lost 10 members of that team. I
knew I wanted to talk to Tom, but I didn’t want to do it over
the phone. I said, ‘We’ve got to do it face-to-face.’ ”
Says Swoboda, “I wish none of this was happening: Bud
Harrelson, Tom... two of the smartest guys on the team.
God, it’s an awful thing.”
Shamsky first telephoned Seaver.
“Look, talk to my wife,” he said. “She’s making my
schedule.”
Tom put Nancy on the phone.
“There are good days and bad days,” Nancy told Sham-
sky. “I can’t guarantee you anything. You could get all the
way out here and he might not feel well that day.”
Shamsky and the teammates coordinated their trips
for a weekend: Shamsky and Harrelson from New York;
Koosman from Wisconsin; and Swoboda from Louisiana.30
SPORT S ILLUS TR ATED OC T OBER 21–28, 2019
1969 METSTom and Nancy were the couple
smart and in love. They gave Am
JAMES DRAKE