The Mets were closing down Shea Stadium on the last day of 2008 season with a fitting gesture, Tom Seaver throwing one last ceremonial pitch to Mike Piazza, and what seems all too poignant now is a conversation I had earlier that day with Buddy Harrelson about his great friend known forever as The Franchise.
“Look at him,” Harrelson said with a chuckle, as Seaver walked by the two of us. “Like it’s not enough that he’s the greatest pitcher ever, for me at least. How can he still look so young at his age? It’s not fair. I don’t think he’s ever going to get old.”
Seaver was nearly 64 at the time, and it was true, he still had movie-star looks and a youthful exuberance that made you believe he could go out and mow down major-league hitters if he chose, famously dirtying his right knee with that drop-and-drive delivery that a million kids in New York imitated in the 1960s and ‘70s.
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All of that makes the news of his death on Wednesday night that much more difficult to come to grips with, because there was a time not so long ago when it did seem as if Seaver was practically ageless.
In truth, however, anyone who cared about him feared this day was coming from the moment we all got the shocking news in 2019 that Seaver was suffering from a form of dementia, and wouldn’t be attending the 50th anniversary celebration at Citi Field of the Mets’ 1969 world championship.
Time stopped still for so many people at that moment, especially the guys who played with him on that ’69 team.
“That’s when I remember thinking, ‘no, not Tom,’” Ed Kranepool was saying over the phone Wednesday night. “Even the last time I saw him, a few years ago, I knew he was having some problems but he really hadn’t changed much facially, and so I guess I just figured he’d be ok.
“I mean, he was Tom Seaver.”
The way Kranepool spoke, you knew what he meant. Seaver was larger than life even amongst his teammates. There has always been a reverence about the way those guys spoke of him, years after he led that famously underdog team to a championship, going 25-7 with a 2.21 ERA to win the first of his three Cy Young Awards.
“We’re not wearing those rings without Tom Seaver,” was the way Ron Swoboda put it on Wednesday night. “But it wasn’t just what he did on the mound. It was the way he carried himself. He was Hall of Fame from Day One. I’m just so thankful I was able to be his teammate.”
Yes, the pitching was only part of his greatness. Kranepool recognized it perhaps as quickly as anyone, having suffered through the Lovable Losers expansion era, making his debut as a 17-year old in that first season of 1962.
“We were a losing ballclub and we didn’t win right away with Tom, but everything started to change when he showed up,” Kranepool said. “He was a star from the first day he showed up. Just the way he handled himself. He had a professional approach, no-nonsense.
“You saw the way he pitched, the way he went about his work, and you just wanted to go to war when Tom Seaver was on the mound.”
You heard those kinds of stories from so many of those ’69 Mets over the years, and yet none of those tributes quite do justice to the magnitude of Seaver’s death. He wasn’t just a ballplayer; he was simply everything to millions of New Yorkers who grew up rooting for him and idolizing him.
As Gary Cohen said on SNY Wednesday night, “He represented our childhood.”
John Franco, the great former Mets’ closer who grew up in Brooklyn, made it more personal than that. Speaking on SNY he said, “As a kid you always wanted to be Tom Seaver.”
Plain and simple, the guy nicknamed Tom Terrific was to a generation of Mets’ fans what Mickey Mantle was to Yankee fans. There was something iconic about him that went beyond even his brilliance on the mound.
Perhaps some of it had to do with those same good looks and charisma that Harrelson referenced that day in 2008. Perhaps it was because he was the first star to come along for the Mets, the team so many National League fans in New York adopted after the Dodgers and Giants left for the west coast.
Whatever the It factor, Mets’ fans fell in love with Seaver, and fell even harder after 1969. They were crushed and outraged when M. Donald Grant made the unforgiveable mistake of trading him to the Reds in 1977, a mistake that doomed the franchise to years of irrelevancy yet actually made Seaver’s legacy all the bigger over the years.
Now he’s gone at age 75. In a sense dementia had already been taken him from his fans, his former teammates, from New York, but it was still painfully jolting to hear the news Wednesday night, especially for the people who knew him best.
“Even with what he was going through, I never expected this so soon,” Kranepool said. “I was shocked. We’ve lost a few guys from that ’69 team but this one is different.”
Kranepool paused then and said it one more time:
“He’s Tom Seaver.”