February 9, 2021: Helter Skelter

Next up in our Baseball Seasons viewing was 1969, a year that will always be remembered by Cubs fans alive at the time. This episode actually started off talking about the Cubs hot start that year. As we all know, they would lead the newly created NL East division into August, before their September/October slide. The Cubs went 9-18 down the stretch, but it wasn’t just their bad play that caused it. On the flip side, the Mets went 24-8! They finished 8 games clear of the Cubs when all was said and done. It wasn’t a total choke job by our Cubbies, but a combination of events, including the Mets red hot finish. The Mets would go on to win it all that year… the Miracle Mets, the Amazing Mets… yes, 8 years after they came into the majors, after averaging 109 losses for the first 5 years, the Mets surprised everyone, including the heavily favored Orioles in the World Series. They were no slouches… Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and Nolan Ryan leading the way on the mound was big for them. Gil Hodges, former Brooklyn Dodger player, was appropriately their manager. Remember, the Mets were welcomed when they arrived due to the recent departure of 2 of the New York baseball teams with the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. The Yankees were still kings, but the Mets got a lot of support, and rewarded their fans a short 8 years later.

It was a crazy time back then… MLK and Robert Kennedy had got shot the year before, you had the Chicago Democratic National Convention in late 1968, as well as, the ongoing Vietnam war. I know it’s crazy today with the pandemic and everything else, but back then… According to what I found, 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam war; I know a lot more folks have died from COVID, but there are a lot more people in general now too. Overall, over 2M people died in Vietnam, which is a huge number. One of the crazy things about it, related to baseball, was that players were on the National Guard, and thus, would have to leave during the season to serve a couple weeks before coming back to baseball; that’s pretty wild. And players today complain about stuff… Of course 1969 was also the year of Woodstock, when Snoopy’s friend held a big party in upstate New York… haha. Imagine being there… Then I read about something else happening at this time, not included in the episode. Yes, the title of this blog is not only a Beatles song, but was linked to Charles Manson who was doing “his thing” at about this time. Yeah, like I said, crazy stuff…

Back to baseball, and some other firsts in 1969. MLB welcomed 4 new teams: the San Diego Padres, the Montreal Expos, the Kansas City Royals, and the Seattle Pilots, who would eventually become the Mariners, who as of today, are the only MLB franchise to not have appeared in a World Series. This year was also the first year of divisional play, which also meant that there would be a Championship Series in both leagues prior to the World Series; I actually like that. That would make the regular season that much more meaningful, only having 2 teams from each league participate in the postseason. I would certainly make that series 7 games not 5 like back in 1969, but I like the concept. Now, you have double that right? I don’t think there’s any going back though… not going to lose that revenue. The hitting also recovered this year, after the mound was lowered. Having 7 pitchers with an ERA below 2.00 in 1968 which lead to the worst hitting year since 1908 wasn’t going to fly; baseball needed more excitement, more offense. They accomplished that goal in 1969.

It’s cool looking back and seeing how we got where we are today, in a lot of ways. Everybody is always so concerned with the right now and what next; looking back at how we got here feels like a worthy exercise, putting things in perspective, etc… but that will require reading more than X characters allowed on Twitter…