Baseball: Return to Myth

“We’re No. 1!” The chant began in Shea Stadium’s leftfield grandstand. It rolled across the box seats and into the rightfield bleachers as New York Pitcher Nolan Ryan retired one after another Atlanta batter. Then, as 53,195 Met fans rose to their feet, Ryan got Tony Gonzalez, the last Brave hitter, to ground out. The New York Mets, those surrogates of the sorely afflicted, who in seven years lost 737 games and finished a total of 2881 games out of first place, had defeated Atlanta 7-4 to sweep the playoff series and become champions of the National League. Even Hank Aaron, the Braves’ venerable superstar, began believing. “You know,” said Aaron, “the Mets really are amazing.”

The Mets are amazing indeed, but they still must defeat the powerful, seasoned Baltimore Orioles in the World Series this week to prove they are No. 1. The Orioles coasted to the American League’s Eastern Division title by 19 games, while racking up 109 victories, nine more than the Mets and only two shy of the major-league record. To beat them, the harum-scarum young Mets may have to rediscover the good-pitch, punch-hit style that carried them to the Eastern Division championship.

The primary source of Met strength this year lay in the fluid arms of Pitchers Tom Seaver (season record: 25-7) and Jerry Koosman (17-9), who were backed up by a supporting cast of splendid young hurlers. But with the exception of Ryan, the 22-year-old righthander who tossed seven innings of brilliant baseball in the final game, the pitchers were way below par during the playoffs. In the first two games Seaver and Koosman compiled embarrassing earned-run averages of 6.43 and 11.56.

If their pitching falters once more, the Mets will have to repeat the devastating demonstration of power they displayed during the Atlanta series. While the Met pitching staff was being roughed up by the hard-hitting Braves.

Met batsmen took up the slack with muscular aplomb. The club’s big guns, Outfielders Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee, blasted three home runs and eight R.B.I.s between them; Rightfielder Art Shamsky batted .538 for the series. Overall statistics: 27 runs, 37 hits (including six home runs) and a phenomenal team batting average of .327.

Transformation. For all that, the Mets have never faced an outfit as tough as the Orioles. Man for man, the Birds are probably the finest baseball team since the New York Yankee juggernauts of the ’50s. In their playoff series with Minnesota, they broke the Twins’ spirit by taking two extra-inning contests, 4-3 and 1-0, then belted 18 hits as they rolled through the final game 11-2 for a swift playoff sweep. The Oriole pitching staff, headed by Mike Cuellar (23-11), Dave McNally (20-7) and Jim Palmer (16-4), is far superior to Atlanta’s. And the team boasts such established stars as Outfielder Frank Robinson, Third Baseman Brooks Robinson and First Baseman Boog Powell, who helped the Orioles build a solid .265 batting average for the season.

Whatever happens to the Mets this week, baseball is sure to profit by their stunning success during the season. All through the ’60s, baseball has been on the verge of transforming itself from the national pastime into the national bore; it has lost considerable stature as the more colorful and violent games of hockey and football have won increasing prominence. But with one brave stroke, the 1969 Mets reversed that trend. Their own exhilarating transformation from hopeless clowns to heroic champions has extricated baseball from its beer-and-TV tawdriness and elevated it to the realm of myth it occupied long, long ago.