First Taste

by Greg Prince on 18 February 2025 7:17 pm

For years, I never forgot where I was when J.C. Martin laid down the bunt that led to the winning run that gave the Mets Game Four and a commanding Three-One lead in the 1969 World Series. I was in the Cozy Nook, the all-purpose luncheonette where I bought most of my baseball cards, magazines and occasional Milky Way bars. My mother was in a booth that afternoon with a friend of hers, the two of them no doubt drinking coffee and one of them surely smoking cigarettes. I got bored and wandered up front toward the cashier. Then I rushed back to tell them what I had just learned happened in Game Four: Martin bunts, the Orioles pitcher picks up the ball and throws, the throw flicks off J.C.’s wrist, the ball bounces away, and Rod Gaspar scores. What a memory.

Except it never happened that way. Oh, I was in the Cozy Nook, along with my mother and her chimney of a chum Betty when I saw Martin in the 1969 World Series, and the Mets did win Game Four that way…except what I was remembering for the longest time was the day in 1970 that I opened a pack of baseball cards I had just purchased at the cash register and was so delighted to find the card with the Sporting News; logo on top and the caption “MARTIN’S BUNT ENDS DEADLOCK!” on the bottom that I was compelled to dash back to the booth and announce it to Mom, while Betty puffed away. Further details — Gaspar on second, pinch-running for Grote; Grote having blooped a double into left to start the rally; Pete Richert making the errant throw; Martin running within the baseline, possibly illegally on a path then immune to the vagaries of yet-to-be-fathomed replay review — came together in the early 1970s as I studied further accounts and descriptions. Eventually, I filled in all the gaps of what I may not have been cognizant of at the moment I pulled the World Series card. It was Moratorium Day. Vietnam protests intertwined with Tom Seaver starting at Shea. Seaver pitched ten innings. Donn Clendenon homered. Ron Swoboda made a catch that he said was “as big a surprise” to him “as it was to anyone in the stands”. I did my 1969 homework diligently from 1970 onward. It’s the kind of homework I didn’t have to be nagged into doing. Somehow I convinced myself I saw everything when everything happened.

As for what I really remember about Game Four of the 1969 World Series in real time, I remember nothing. Nothing at all. I was six then. I had just discovered the Mets in the weeks prior to the World Series. I remember a little of this and a little of that directly from 1969. I don’t remember a whole lot of anything from having experienced it. Yet before I neared adolescence, I decided I was fully Met-conscious for one of its signature moments, and treasured knowing that I was. But I wasn’t.

Sociologists refer to this phenomenon as the J.C. Martin Effect.

***8. 1969
If I’d been born a few years earlier, 1969 probably would be way the hell up in this countdown. WAY the hell up. If I’d been born even a year earlier, I bet I’d remember Game Four, not to mention Games Three and Two, plus a lot of what led up to October. A birth of a few months earlier likely opens my eyes to the Mets a few months sooner, and my reminiscences of 1969 are ‘x’ percent more tangible now and forever.

Instead, I was born when I was born, and I don’t regret that, because if a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, maybe I think baseball is stupid. I was born right on time, just in time. I opened my eyes to the Mets whenever I opened my eyes to the Mets, sometime in late summer of 1969, to the best I can determine. I love telling the story. My dad would bring home the Post from the city, where he worked at some job that required riding a train, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. There was a recurring cartoon on the back page, the Mets as a lovable duck, the Cubs as a fearsome bear. There were standings inside providing a geographical and numerical explainer: Chicago (the bear) ahead of New York (the duck, and where I knew we lived), but the gap was closing daily. That was enough to pique my interest so that I wanted to examine the paper every night. Things begin to get specific in September. The Mets pass the Cubs. The Mets clinch the division. The Mets play the Braves. The Mets win the pennant. Then come the Orioles, with my lived experience of Game One and Game Five that I recall from reality, and the ultimate World Series outcome that certified the 1969 Mets as the best, and me as hooked for eternity.

I knew what was going on, kind of. I caught on to what it meant, sort of. I loved it all at once, truly. Still, my personal 1969 Metwise is scant in the mind’s eye. I can’t help it. I was six. I didn’t know enough to take notes. I didn’t even know how to take notes. Did I mention I was six? I was as present for the 1969 Mets as Ed Kranepool was for the 1962 Mets. Eddie played three games at the end of the Mets’ first year, but for the rest of his days, he didn’t correct those who identified him as an Original Met.

Presence is presence. I’ll always tell you I’ve been a Mets fan since 1969. Geez, look at the title of this series: MY FAVORITE SEASONS, FROM LEAST FAVORITE TO MOST FAVORITE, 1969-‘PRESENT’ (with 2024’s slotting TBD). This all had to start somewhere. Could it have started anywhere better?

It feels odd as a lifelong Mets fan, never mind a self-styled Mets historian, to rank 1969 at No. 8 among MY FAVORITE SEASONS, because, c’mon, it’s 1969! It was always 1969 from the instant I adjusted my antenna toward Flushing. Details I had to piece together, but the headline was always the headline. The Mets won the World Series! The Mets were the world champions! People were thrilled! I was thrilled! That I remember with clarity. That is actual. Everything that came after 1969 for me materialized because 1969 arrived first.

The Miracle Mets — not that I understood why they were called that while they were being called that — contained all the qualities that make for a personally dear season. It was influential. It was formative. It was meaningful. I’ll throw in historically resonant and, obviously, quite Amazin’. Yet eighth is where it must rank for me. My 1969 is light on counting stats. To rate it any higher, given the seasons I’m going to write about from No. 7 to No. 1, would amount to stealing valor. I lived the bejeesus out of those later seasons. In 1969, I wasn’t doing more than dipping my first toe, hence I can’t tell you much about it first-hand. I feel almost guilty about that. Maybe if I were more like Marilu Henner (even more, I mean), I’d remember more about 1969 for myself rather than through books and such. “For God’s sake, Alvy,” a classmate told young Woody Allen in Annie Hall, “even Freud speaks of a latency period.” Fifty-six years later, I’m still grappling with mine.

I didn’t take stock of Gil Hodges’ projections in Spring Training that we were gonna be a much better team this year, or have any notion of what the Mets had been before this new, promising year.

I wasn’t watching or listening when the expansion Expos came in for Opening Day and therefore didn’t cringe that we lost to them, 11-10.

I didn’t exult in us reaching .500 after thirty-six games, something no previous Mets team had done after two games.

I didn’t faint from joy at the Oedipal eleven-game patricidal winning streak that came mainly at the expense of the Giants and Dodgers; I also didn’t know the backstories of those teams from San Francisco and Los Angeles.

I didn’t pump a fist at the news that we acquired a legitimate slugger in Clendenon.

I didn’t jump up and down when Don Young didn’t catch two fly balls.

I didn’t feel my heart break when Jimmy Qualls singled to left-center.

I didn’t begin to lose hope when the Astros spanked us so hard that Hodges had to take star left fielder Cleon Jones out to send a message to his entire squad.

As I began to wade in to the shallow end of my duck pond in September, I wasn’t granular enough to absorb the 19-strikeout game in St. Louis or the pair of 1-0 wins versus Pittsburgh. The black cat may been genuine to Ron Santo and Leo Durocher, but it was merely mythic to me. I could LOOK WHO’S NO. 1, but not elaborate on why that was so astounding, only grasp that NO. 1 was a big deal.

I’m missing the depth, texture and personal context to process 1969 as a season I lived through with my heart and soul. I know it was A Magic Summer, even if my version was not much more than a sneak preview of the summers that would highlight my years ahead. When I look at who’s No. 7 through No. 1 on my MY FAVORITE SEASONS list, I’m grateful I lived through those with my heart and soul, something I can’t imagine would have happened without coming in where I came in. My heart and soul were invented on the spot in 1969. No runway, no preamble. Just an inner voice urging me on. This is your favorite sport, this is your favorite team — GO!