{"id":61090,"date":"2020-09-05T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-05T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/my-all-time-favorite-tom-seaver-story\/"},"modified":"2020-09-05T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-05T18:00:00","slug":"my-all-time-favorite-tom-seaver-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/my-all-time-favorite-tom-seaver-story\/","title":{"rendered":"#My all-time favorite Tom Seaver story"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_89 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6afa3d800c5d0\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6afa3d800c5d0\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/my-all-time-favorite-tom-seaver-story\/#Vacs_Whacks\" >Vac\u2019s Whacks<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/my-all-time-favorite-tom-seaver-story\/#Whack_Back_at_Vac\" >Whack Back at Vac<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;<strong>#My all-time favorite Tom Seaver story<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n                        We have all been busily organizing our thoughts and our memories about Tom Seaver these last few days. If it\u2019s possible, the thing that made Seaver matter so much to us has almost taken a backseat \u2014 the fact that he was, almost certainly, one of the 5-10 greatest pitchers ever.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite story is the first one he ever told me, the first time I ever interviewed him. This was in 1998, and I was doing a story about the 15th anniversary of the Mets acquiring Keith Hernandez. My premise was that Hernandez\u2019 arrival in 1983 was the same change agent that Seaver\u2019s in 1967 had been for the first Mets champions.<\/p>\n<p>Seaver eagerly agreed with my premise.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRemember, I was in that team when Keith got here,\u201d Seaver said. \u201cBut by then I was of the old school. Players would seek my advice, but I was already a museum piece to them, even if they wouldn\u2019t say those words to me. But Keith got here and it was like the air was restored to the room. He was so serious. And all business. I liked that. And I knew things were about to change for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then Seaver shared a story of his own, and this has stayed with me ever since. On the evening of May 21, 1969, Seaver threw a three-hitter at the Braves\u2019 Fulton County Stadium. The Mets won, 5-0, and improved to 18-18 on the season. It was the first time they had ever been .500 that late in the season. This was a big story for the New York <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>papermen waiting outside the busting clubhouse.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_16252066\"><img alt=\"Mets\" data- data- height=\"441\" width=\"662\"><\/img><figcaption><span>Tom Seaver in 1983.<\/span><span>AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Seaver was all of 24. And he knew, by instinct, this was as big a moment as he\u2019d ever faced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hated \u2014 hated \u2014 the idea that we were always looked at through the prism of how bad the team had been. I was serious. This was my life. I wasn\u2019t pitching to be a punchline for anyone. And even though I was a kid, I wanted my teammates to feel the same way. And by \u201969 I had a lot of kindred spirits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So he gathered them around him as soon as they returned to the clubhouse. And he delivered his orders.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese guys are gonna want to celebrate that. I say [nonsense] to that. We haven\u2019t done a thing yet. We\u2019re .500 \u2014 that\u2019s mediocre. I don\u2019t want to be mediocre. We need to treat this as just another <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">game<\/a>. One step on the way to where we want to get. Who\u2019s with me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They were all with him.<\/p>\n<p>The writers entered, tried goading and coaxing the players so they could write purple rivers of praise and left with notebooks blander than grits.<\/p>\n<p>The late Maury Allen covered that game for The Post. I asked him about it once.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey didn\u2019t give us a thing!\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cSome of us had been waiting seven years to write about them as a legitimate baseball story, and we were ready to blow them up and just write glowing stuff. And they wouldn\u2019t let us. And not just the players.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, even manager Gil Hodges followed the lead of his young star.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll drink champagne,\u201d he told the writers, \u201cbut not tonight. We\u2019ll wait until we win the pennant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Allen said years later: \u201cWe thought Gil had lost his mind. Because how could you think otherwise?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The funny thing was, the Mets im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>tely went into the tank, lost five straight, fell to 18-23, and the writers figured they\u2019d blown their one chance ever to write nice things about the Mets. But Seaver knew a message had been sent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey never treated us like a bunch of loveable clowns after that,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom then on when we lost they criticized us, but that was a lot better than when they felt sorry for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019d reached legitimacy. Under Seaver they would soon reach even greater heights, of course, but even years later Seaver was proud of the night he\u2019d demanded to be treated like a real baseball team. And who better to execute that maneuver? He wasn\u2019t The Franchise for nothing.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Vacs_Whacks\"><\/span>Vac\u2019s Whacks<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Intellectually, I think everyone knows that when Edwin Diaz and Aroldis Chapman smile after allowing killer home runs, they are neither h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>y about it nor minimizing what just happened. But, man, it would be good if they could stop doing that. (The smile, I mean. But also the killer home runs.)<\/p>\n<hr>\n<\/hr>\n<p>Every good thought you can muster, please, for one of the genuinely good sporting people in our midst, Hofstra basketball coach Joe Mihalich.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<\/hr>\n<p>Alex Rodriguez thinks he was cheated? I mean \u2026 does that even need a punch line?<\/p>\n<hr>\n<\/hr>\n<p>If you grew up around here in the \u201980s, then you surely left behind huge chunks of skin at Action Park. \u201cClass Action Park\u201d on HBO Max will bring your back to those days pretty easily. And from the safety of a couch.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Whack_Back_at_Vac\"><\/span>Whack Back at Vac<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Vac: <\/strong>It\u2019s only right that The Franchise takes over ownership of the WhackBacks this week.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Roland Chapdelaine: <\/strong>All day I was expecting it. I watched SNY and MLB, saw all the videos, the interviews, the memorials. Then the Mets took the field, and all these twenty-somethings who weren\u2019t born until after Seaver was a Hall of Famer, had brown dirt on their right knee. And then I lost it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tony Giametta:<\/strong> It says something that even the greatest Met player of all time, who gave them their first taste of credibility, could not escape the malpractice of upper management in losing him not once, but twice, in his career.<\/p>\n<p><strong>John Buonagura:<\/strong> There\u2019s one word that describes Tom Seaver\u2019s career: unforgettable<\/p>\n<p><strong>Denis Fenton:<\/strong> We knew it was coming but it still hurts. I, like so many of our generation (born in 61) who are Met fans, idolized Tom Seaver. Yes, I got lucky the way so many New York kids of the \u201960s and \u201970s got lucky. A bit of my childhood died last night.<\/p>\n<p><strong>@JoeDeeee: <\/strong>My first sports hero and still is. Classy, courageous and more perfect than Mary Poppins herself. I cried at the age of 10 in 1977 and doing the same at the age of 57. R.I.P. Tom, you were truly Terrific. Thanks for everything.<\/p>\n<p><strong>@david_troyan:<\/strong> Tom Seaver not only is the greatest Met, he defines what the team does best: starting pitching. The thread runs through Seaver and Koosman to Gooden and Darling to deGrom and Thor. He truly epitomizes the franchise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Greg Doyle:<\/strong> Every kid growing up a Met fan on Long Island wanted to be Tom Seaver. We waited for him to pitch then scoured the newspaper for his stats. We were devastated when he was traded, but our love for the franchise never faded. His passing is the very sad end to an era.\n            <\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Sports News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>if you want to <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">watch Movies<\/a> or Tv Shows go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/dizi.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dizi.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a> <\/span> for forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/09\/05\/my-all-time-favorite-tom-seaver-story\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#My all-time favorite Tom Seaver story&#8221; We have all been busily organizing our thoughts and our memories about Tom Seaver these last few days. If it\u2019s possible, the thing that made Seaver matter so much to us has almost taken a backseat \u2014 the fact that he was, almost certainly, one of the 5-10 greatest&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65111],"class_list":["post-61090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-my-all-time-favorite-tom-seaver-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}