Tom Seaver
The family of Mets’ great Tom
Seaver announced this week that the 74-year old HOFer will be retiring from
public life because of dementia. My own
memories of the 1969 Miracle Mets aren’t all that reliable, either.
I remember the black cat at Shea
Stadium walking in front of Ron Santo in the on-deck circle, and I thought I
remembered Seaver’s perfect game ruined by Jim Qualls with a one-out single in
the ninth inning. I would have been
sixteen, working a summer job stocking shelves at Walgreen’s. Only baseball-reference.com says it was a
night game, and I only worked 9-5.
I also have this memory of hearing
Harry Caray on the radio for the first time; he was doing a Cardinals’ game and
I was at work. I actually heard—or
thought I heard—Caray say, “The Cardinals are coming, tra-la, tra-la,” after a
win. That also could have been against
the Cubs, but I don’t know when, exactly.
I also thought Seaver struck out 18 Cardinals in a game in ’69, but that
was Steve Carlton when he pitched for St. Louis, and it was 19.
We reach a point in our lives
where we’re all three degrees from Tom Seaver.
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