Terrific, Always
Tom Seaver, who died on Sept. 2 at 75, was the origin of generations of Mets fans.
There were few things as certain in my adolescent life as a summer Saturday at my dad’s house. The only escape from the heat during those soft, hazy afternoons was the basement of the split-level that he shared with my grandparents, so much of those slowly-decaying days were spent at both ends of the short staircase leading to that bottom floor — checking on dinner in the kitchen, and checking on the Mets in the air-conditioned haven.
Even after the ballgame had finished, even after dinner was cleaned up, even after the TV flipped over to college football, the topic of discussion inevitably turned to baseball. Countless hours were spent postulating on the major topics of the day — are the Mets really better than the Yankees? Is Ryan Howard a Hall of Famer? Will Bonds break the record? It felt like the sort of father-son sports fandom that Rockwell would envy.
The conversation always moved beyond the basics and into detailed analyses of the ins and outs of the game — swing breakdowns, fielding scenarios and, of course, pitching mechanics. My dad played the role of the sage veteran coach, and I was the eager student of the game.
More often than not, the pitching portion of every week’s session focused on the way certain guys would drop their lower bodies down and drive off the pitching rubber to generate as much power through their legs as possible. The model for this, he told me, was none other than Tom Seaver — the greatest player in the history of our New York Mets. He told me how, as a kid, he was amazed that Seaver’s right knee would actually have dirt stains on it from getting so low, becoming almost one with the mound as he rocketed his body forward and fired the ball to home plate.
That’s how he earned 311 wins, three Cy Youngs, a World Series title and, for nearly three decades, the highest Hall of Fame voting percentage ever — he became one with the mound; as synonymous with the craft of pitching as the very lump of dirt from which he peered down on his withering opponents.
No one, my dad always told me, was better than Tom Seaver.
Seaver died Wednesday after a year-long battle with Lewy body dementia and complications from COVID-19. In a year wrought with heartache and pain, the very heart and soul of the Mets franchise is gone. It’s well known that Seaver was much more than just a great player for the Mets. He was The Franchise, a nickname that captured how perfectly he embodied what it meant to be a New York Met — and how much the organization owed him for recharting its history from chumps to champs.
As heavy as it may seem, Seaver’s legacy is even more than that, too. It goes beyond what he meant to the Mets as an organization and what he meant to baseball as a whole. His importance stretches past the foul lines and into the stands in Flushing and TV sets around the tri-state area, as inexorably linked to the fanbase as the team’s colors.
Seaver was, essentially, the beginning of the thread of fandom that binds together generations of Mets fans. He was the origin point to which you can trace basically every Mets fan’s beginnings. He was sui generis, a talent unlike any before him, and yet a commonality among all those that live and die with the Amazin’s.
Sure, there were good players on the squad before Seaver showed up in 1967. Ron Hunt made a couple of All-Star teams for those early Mets. Ed Kranepool was a steady presence as a young first baseman during those fruitless mid-60s. And on the mound, Al Jackson was perhaps the franchise’s first “ace,” providing workhorse-like production prior to Seaver’s debut.
No one that donned the orange and blue before Seaver could have possibly delivered his kind of near-mythical prowess, though. It seemed as if the Baseball Gods sent him down to little old Queens, charged with turning the most hapless franchise in baseball around through the magic that emerged from each crouching, lurching delivery. And the prophet delivered upon what the Scriptures had planned, bringing the first World Series title to Queens and producing one of the greatest careers in the history of the game, a Hall of Famer on the innermost of circles.
From that unexplainable arc sprouted an entire legion of people devoted to the Mets’ every move. Of course, the team had supporters before Seaver arrived—many of them just excited to be rooting for a National League team in New York since the Giants and Dodgers left, or thrilled to have a local team to root for that wasn’t the big, bad Yankees. What Seaver was able to do, though, was use his gifts to turn those casual supporters into die-hard fans. Queens hadn’t seen anything like him before; not only did he make Mets baseball interesting, he made it vital.
Watching Seaver pitch, and consequently watching the Mets, became required viewing. The uniquely Metsian style of fanaticism was born out of the need to witness his greatness on a daily basis — and that unwound the thread that is carried between Mets fans today, some 50-plus years later. Lifelong friendships forged through rooting for the Mets. Sparsely-seen relatives bonding thankfully over the orange and blue. A dad and his son, sitting in the basement on a summer night, nourishing their relationship through the game that they both love so dearly.
My dad was right. No one was better than Tom Seaver.
