Farewell To The Franchise: Tom Seaver’s New York Mets Impact Will Never Be Matched

Baseball conditions its observers to never say never. But for the New York Mets, there will never be another player who delivers the impact of Tom Seaver, whose death at age 75 due to complications from Lewy body dementia and the coronavirus was announced Wednesday.

By WAR, Jacob deGrom is already the third-best pitcher in franchise history as well as one Cy Young away from matching Seaver’s total and trails him by just two-hundredths of a run in ERA. But he’s 130 wins, 1,228 strikeouts and 1,901 innings pitched behind the numbers compiled in Queens by Seaver.

The only two players in franchise history to collect even half of the 78.8 WAR Seaver accumulated in New York are David Wright and Dwight Gooden. Wright amassed 49.2 WAR in what amounted to 11 full seasons with the Mets, one fewer than Seaver, while Gooden (46.4 WAR) reached the majors as a stratospheric 19-year-old in 1984 and recorded 41 fewer wins, 666 fewer strikeouts and 876 fewer innings pitched than Seaver.

And without Seaver, there are no sky-high standards to be met by Wright, Gooden, deGrom and every single one of the other 1,104 players to suit up for the team. Forget about his impact on the Mets — a case could be made no player in history single-handedly changed his team like Seaver, who appropriately earned the moniker “The Franchise.”

The Mets were 258 games under .500 all-time and about to begin their fifth season of existence when they finally stumbled into some good fortune on Apr. 3, 1966. Fewer than four months earlier, Seaver was drafted out of USC and signed to a $40,000 deal by the the Braves.

But the contract was nullified by commissioner William Eckert because USC’s season had already begun. Eckert declared any team could enter a lottery for Seaver’s services as long as they matched the Braves’ contract offer. Just three teams — the Mets, Indians and Phillies — did so, and Eckert pulled the Mets out of a hat.

Seaver won the Rookie of the Year in 1967 and teamed up with manager Gil Hodges — like Seaver, a former Marine — to impose upon the Mets a higher standard. The Mets were over .500 twice in franchise history — after three games in 1966 and 1969 — before June 3, 1969, when Seaver threw eight strong innings and earned the win in a 5-2 victory over the Dodgers that lifted them to 24-23.

Afterward, per the New York Daily News, Seaver scoffed at the idea that a winning record was something of which to be proud.

“Champagne?” Seaver said. “Five hundred is nothing to celebrate. It’s mediocrity Maybe (1962 Mets) Marv Throneberry and Rod Kanehl will celebrate. But I had nothing to do with that. The only time for champagne is when we win a World Series.”

Fewer than five months later, Seaver and his teammates consumed plenty of champagne following the most stunning worst-to-first transformation in sports history. Seaver won the first of his three Cy Young Awards by going 25-7 with a 2.21 ERA and 18 complete games in 35 starts. He threw the “Imperfect Game” on July 9, when he was two outs shy of perfection before Jimmy Qualls flared a single to left-centerfield, and recorded complete game victories in each of his last eight starts as the Mets, who were 10 games back on Aug. 13, won the NL East.

Seaver won Game 1 of the NLCS, which the Mets swept from the Braves in three games, and lost Game 1 of the World Series against the Orioles. It was the last loss of the season for the Mets, who took a commanding three games to one lead when Seaver went the distance in a 10-inning Game 4 win before Jerry Koosman closed out the Series the next day.

Half a century later, the championship continues to define not only the Mets but their fans — a pairing linked by a shared belief in the face of long odds.

“What the Mets accomplished 50 years ago not only represented the fulfillment of a dream that for seven years had seemed unfathomable, they changed people’s lives,” Mets radio play-by-play man and Queens native Howie Rose said while emceeing last year’s 50th anniversary celebration. “They taught us that there’s nothing beyond our reach, no goal unobtainable, if we’re willing to put in the work — and, naturally, believe in our ability to get the job done.”

Seaver won two more Cy Youngs for the Mets, including in 1973, when he led the NL in ERA for the third time in four years while helping the Mets, who were in last place on Aug. 30, to an unlikely pennant and a trip to the World Series, where they fell to the dynastic Athletics. He threw a complete game on Sept. 21, when the Mets moved into first place for good, and earned the win in the decisive Game 5 of the NLCS against the Reds before taking a hard-luck loss in Game 7 of the World Series, when he allowed two runs over seven innings.

Seaver retired as one of just three pitchers with at least 300 wins, 3,000 strikeouts and an ERA lower than 3.00. He went into the Hall of Fame in 1992 with 98.84 percent of the vote, which remained the largest share of the vote ever earned by a candidate until Ken Griffey Jr. exceeded it in 2016.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing for The Franchise and the franchise.“The Midnight Massacre,” the night thousands of Mets fans lost their collective innocence, never should have happened. Seaver should have been working on a lifetime contract long before powerful New York Daily News columnist Dick Young wrote Seaver, making $325,000 a year following bitter negotiations with the Mets, was mad his friend and former teammate Nolan Ryan was making more money. Seaver demanded a trade and was dealt to the Reds, for whom he threw his only career no-hitter on June 16, 1978.

Seaver was 36 wins shy of 300 when the Mets re-acquired him from the Reds following the 1982 season. He went 9-14 for a 94-loss team, but the Mets left him unprotected in the free agent compensation draft and he was snapped up by the White Sox. 

Instead of spending his twilight as the sage of a generational rotation headed by Gooden and his fellow 20-somethings, Seaver earned his 300th career win in New York for the White Sox on Aug. 4, 1985, the same day the Yankees held Phil Rizzuto Day — the same Phil Rizzuto with whom Seaver would team up in the WPIX booth from 1989-93.

Seaver’s playing career ended in 1986, with him in the Red Sox’ dugout instead of the Mets’ dugout during the World Series. He didn’t work again for the Mets until 1999, when he moved into their broadcast booth and became a team ambassador.

And a prideful man should have had that statue built in his honor. People attending Mets games should do much more than simply drive a couple blocks along Seaver Way. Seaver and his family should have been able to do that before he stopped traveling due to a painful battle with Lyme disease and retired from public life due to his dementia diagnosis.

It’s complicated, and no one needs to explain it to those who had their baseball fandom shaped by what Seaver created. Perhaps in the future, there will be less to untangle in the relationships between the Mets and their best players.

Maybe DeGrom, whose pure mechanics and unyielding demand of excellence from himself and everyone around him would have endeared him to Seaver, can become the iconic Mets pitcher who never wears another uniform on his way to the Hall of Fame. Wright, the greatest career-long Met to this point, should have his no. 5 retired soon and raised to the Citi Field rafters alongside Seaver’s no. 41, Hodges’ no. 14, Casey Stengel’s no. 37 and the no. 31 worn by Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, who carries himself with a Seaver-esque regality and aura. Maybe soon, Gooden’s no. 16 — worn by 15 players since Gooden last pitched for the Mets in 1994 — will get the reverence it deserves.

But none of them are Seaver. No one ever will be.

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