‘We Are a Band of Brothers’

Ask Rod Gaspar what moment he remembers most from the Mets’ 1969 season, and the backup outfielder with the powerful arm points to a head-spinning game in San Francisco at the end of August. And why not? It was a game in which he and Donn Clendenon combined to throw out three Giants runners at third base and home plate in the eighth and ninth innings before the Mets won it in the 10th.

Or, as Gaspar put it: “Typical Mets.”

Ask Ron Swoboda the same question and he graciously overlooks his famous catch in the World Series and instead cites a September game against the Chicago Cubs, with first place on the line.

In the bottom of the first inning, the Cubs knocked down the Mets’ invaluable leadoff hitter, Tommie Agee. Swoboda takes it from there:

“In the top of the second, Jerry Koosman throws a rocket right at Ron Santo’s coconut and he put an arm up. You want to play this game? I don’t think so. He hit Santo in the arm. Koosman was a warrior, he was an assassin. They threw at Agee, that’s all Koosman needed.

“After they knocked down Agee, I remember Tom Seaver yelling in the dugout, ‘You don’t want to do that.’ Koosman took care of the rest.”

Ask Koosman who or what stands out most 50 years later and he is quick to cite Gil Hodges, the manager behind the Mets’ miracle.

“Gil was the man — there was a lot of quiet management that went on,” he said. “Gil talked a little bit in code, but you knew what he meant. You knew where he stood and what he expected of you. And it worked great. We won, didn’t we? At 100-to-1 odds in Vegas before the season, and we end up winning.”

Ed Kranepool, who played 18 seasons for the Mets, remembers what it was like to be a platoon player in the World Series. In the five games it took for the Mets to upend the favored Baltimore Orioles, Kranepool and three other left-handed hitters — Art Shamsky, Ken Boswell and Wayne Garrett — were in the starting lineup just once, for Game 3.

“Did the left-handers want to play in the World Series?” he said. “Yeah, but you had to respect Gil and what he was doing. We did get to face Jim Palmer in Game 3 and we knocked him out. The next day, we sat down again. So we sat there, but we were winning.”

Jim McAndrew, who was in the back end of the 1969 starting rotation, was on the postseason roster and didn’t get to play a single moment. But he almost did.

“I was scared to death because Seaver gave up that leadoff homer in the first inning of the World Series, and Hodges immediately had me up in the bullpen,” he said. Still, he didn’t get into that game or any other in the Series.

“But you can’t gripe,” he said.

McAndrew, Gaspar, Swoboda, Koosman and Kranepool spoke to The New York Times early this month in connection with the 50th anniversary of one of the most remarkable moments in baseball history — the sudden ascent of the Mets to a championship after the team’s previous life as a laughingstock.

The five spoke with pride of what they accomplished, but with some sadness, too. Fifty years is a long time, and a half-dozen players from that team have died. Others have serious medical issues.

It is a somber scorecard that also includes Hodges, who died of a heart attack before the 1972 season, and the death of three of his four coaches. And Seaver, 74, the best player on that 1969 team, has advancing dementia.

The disclosure of Seaver’s condition was made shortly after the former Mets had spoken with The Times. But they were all aware that Seaver had been struggling with the effects of Lyme disease for years. More than anything, they were aware of how relentless time is.

“Casey was right when he said you get old very quick,” said Kranepool, referring to Casey Stengel, who was the Mets’ manager when Kranepool joined the team as a teenager. Now Kranepool is 74 and in need of a kidney transplant, although he remains intent on being part of the 1969 reunion the Mets will stage at Citi Field in June.

“It’s frustrating,” he said. “You would like to see everybody, but it doesn’t work that way. I don’t think I’m going to be around for the 100th, so I’m glad we’re doing this.”

Swoboda, who is also 74, said: “I don’t know where the 50 years went, but we are a band of brothers. Very few of us were involved in anything else of that magnitude.”

“It’s no fun seeing our guys go down,” said Gaspar, who is 72. “I hope we can have 15 of us at the reunion.”

Koosman said he planned to be there. He is 76, the oldest of the five, but still doing back-and-forth bantering with Swoboda. Except now it’s via email instead of in the clubhouse. And what do they jab each other about?

“Politics,” said Koosman. Swoboda, he said, is too liberal. “Tell him to get a life,” he said, joking. “Tell him to quit watching MSNBC and reading The New York Times. Tell him to read the sports section and stop there.”

Told what Koosman had said about him, Swoboda laughed. ‘I love the guy,” he said, “but he sends me all this stuff from the blogosphere.’’

McAndrew, amused by all of this, was willing to volunteer that he views himself as “socially compassionate, fiscally responsible.” Swoboda, he added, “is a non-backing-off lefty.”

A lefty who, in 1969, played right field, and not always that well. Hodges would take him out of games for defensive purposes and insert Gaspar, “which drove me crazy,” Swoboda said.

“I wanted to be good enough for Hodges not to have to do that,’’ he added. “And eventually, I was. Eventually, he left me alone.”

Right through the top of the ninth inning of Game 4 of the Series, when Swoboda’s do-or-die catch of Brooks Robinson’s line drive kept the Orioles from taking control of the game.

“Clendenon,” Swoboda noted sardonically, “called it the stupidest catch he ever saw because I went for it.”

Clendenon. Alert, tough, college-educated. A veteran voice in the clubhouse. And a central figure in that wild August game in San Francisco that Gaspar so vividly remembers. Here’s how he tells it:

“It’s the bottom of the ninth, tie score, one out, Bob Burda is on first, Willie McCovey is up and we have the McCovey shift on. Everyone is pulled over to the right. I’m playing left, but I’m almost in center. Tug McGraw is pitching and McCovey sticks out his bat and hits a high, nine-iron shot down the left-field line. I chase after the ball, pick it up and throw blindly toward home plate.

“I knew it was the game right there. I figured Burda was going to score easy. But you know what? I threw a rocket to Jerry Grote, all the way in the air, and Burda was out by 15 feet. And Grote was so stunned he rolled the ball back to the mound even though there only two outs. And McCovey, who had reached second, sees this and takes off for third. And Clendenon, who was always paying attention, picks the ball up and throws to third. Double play.

“The next inning, Clendenon hits a home run and we win the game.”

McAndrew said: “Clendenon could strap you on his back and get those big hits to drive in runs for a week or 10 days. All the low-scoring games, we won them.”

And all the crazy games — the Mets won them, too. Some mystical combination of talent, toughness, luck and magic conquered everything in its path. For one season.

“The next year,” Swoboda said, “we tried to make it happen, rather than let it happen. Something was missing. All it does it add more mystery to 1969 in my book.”

A magical, mystical mystery, actually. One that, 50 years later, still endures.

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