R.I.P. Tom Seaver

Tom Seaver, who led the Miracle Mets’ pitching staff to New York’s surprising 1969 World Series Championship, died on September 2nd, 2020. He was 75. The announced cause of death was complications from Lewy body dementia and Covid-19.

Seaver made his major league debut with the Mets in 1967, going 16-13 with a 2.76 ERA and 170 strikeouts on a Mets’ team that finished 61-101. He was voted the National League Rookie of the Year. He won 16 games again in 1968 on a 73-89 club.

Then in 1969, the Mets, a club that had not finished anywhere near a winning record in its previous seven years of existence, finished the regular season 100-62, then beat the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS before dispatching the Baltimore Orioles in five games in the World Series. Seaver was 25-7 with a 2.21 ERA and won the first of his three Cy Young Awards that year.

In the middle of the 1977 season, Seaver was traded to the Cincinnati Reds for four players in a shocking trade. Seaver had been working on renegotiating his contract, and was portrayed by Mets owner M. Donald Grant and certain members of the New York sports media, particularly New York Daily News columnist Dick Young, as being greedy. Seaver demanded an immediate trade.

If Grant thought the 32 year old Seaver was on the decline, he was dead wrong. Seaver went 14-3 with a 2.34 ERA in 20 starts for the Reds. He would win 75 games for Cincinnati in five and a half seasons, including the only no-hitter of his career in 1978.  Seaver  was traded back to the Mets in 1983, and then was picked up by the Chicago White Sox in 1984. In the middle of the 1986 season, the White Sox traded Seaver to the Boston Red Sox. Seaver’s final appearance in the majors was on September 19th, 1986. Although the Red Sox made it to the World Series, Seaver did not pitch in the post season, thereby not appearing against his old team, the National League and eventual World Series champion Mets.

In 20 big league seasons, Seaver was 311-205 with a 2.86 ERA and 3640 strikeouts. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1992, his first year of eligibility.