TOM SEAVER
By Bill Madden
The year after
Russell was
Sportsperson,
the honor went
to Tom Seaver,
the ace of
the champion
Miracle Mets and
the subject of a
new biography by
longtime New York
Daily News writer
Bill Madden.
Around the time
Seaver was
honored by SI, he
was with six of
his teammates in
Las Vegas, singing
“The Impossible
Dream” twice a
night in comedian
Phil Foster’s show.
Seaver ruffled
feathers by being
the only Met who
brought along his
wife. As Madden’s
biography shows,
the straight-
laced Seaver
believed the keys
to success were
living rightand working hard.
(Seaver, who died
in August, likened
the 1969 Mets
to his favorite
book as a kid: The
Little Engine That
Could.) The book’s
most compelling
chapter deals with
the Hall of Fame
righthander’s ugly
exit from New York
in 1977: Before
the Mets shipped
Seaver to the
Reds, he finally
broke character
by dropping an
f-bomb on the
team’s penny-
pinching front
office. —M.B.READGAMEPLAN
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