NewsMiracle at Shea turns 40
Johnson reflects on his part as final out of '69 Series
By Marty Noble / MLB.com
10/16/09 12:42 PM ET
NEW YORK -- The bat and baseball collided violently, and the ball abruptly changed direction. For a moment, the chance that the course of the World Series also would change flashed into the batter's mind. The Orioles had a pinch-runner on first base and a two-run deficit when Davey Johnson swung and scared the Shea out of the ballpark. Flushing trembled with apprehension, and as the ball sailed, the ballpark inhaled.It whispered "Oh no!" and began blitzkrieg calculations: "Let's see; now the score is tied and if the Orioles win, the series is 3-2, and it goes back to Baltimore, and. . ."
Before another syllable in the worst-case scenario could be conjured, Cleon Jones had wrapped his leather around the menacing fly ball Johnson had hit in the general direction of a Game 6, and Shea Stadium exhaled. The tremble morphed into rumble and the apprehension into celebration. Miracle accomplished. Tell the Ed Sullivan Show the Mets are coming.
Johnson had approached second base when Jones reverently dipped to one knee to acknowledge whatever assistance the unseen hand had provided the Mets that delicious day, that wondrous week, that momentous month, that surreal season.
"As I was running, I saw 50,000 people jumping over the dugouts," Johnson says now. "It was the most frightening feeling I ever experienced on a ball field. I still have no idea how I got back inside."
Those who witnessed the final instant of Game 5 of the 1969 World Series, 40 years ago on Friday, wanted nothing more from Johnson, though. He had provided the 27th out, and that was enough. Few among the gathered 57,000-plus cared which opponent had been vanquished. The Mets were made men. Little else mattered.
Next stop for the '69 Mets was the Canyon of Heroes, followed by decades of recognition and life on a pedestal. Next for the Orioles, the favored but flummoxed Birds, were years of wonder. How did that happen? How did a team that led the American League in ERA and defense and ranked second in runs, batting average and slugging lose to a team that had achieved statistical mediocrity in its first seven seasons? And in five games, no less.
Man on the moon made more sense than Mets in a hail of ticker tape.
To this day, the Orioles know how the Mets won -- Tommie Agee's catches, Donn Clendenon's power, J.C. Martin's bunt, the shoe polish, Ron Swoboda's Hail Mary catch and all those hissing fastballs. What they don't know -- what they have been unable to fathom -- is how in the name of Wally Bunker they lost.
"We were pretty confident," Johnson said. "We beat [Tom] Seaver the first game and we said, 'Man, we've got a good chance.' When we swept the Dodgers in '66, we beat [Sandy] Koufax and [Don] Drysdale. So when we beat Seaver, it was like starting out the same way again."
The Orioles knew all there was to know about Seaver and Jerry Koosman, who would start the second game, and that Nolan Ryan kid who threw harder than calculus in Chinese.
"Our scout, Jim Russo, had us prepared for Seaver and Koosman and we knew about Ryan's arm," Johnson says. "But we didn't know diddly squat about [Gary] Gentry. And against us, he threw the ball better."
Koosman allowed one run in 8 2/3 innings in Game 2 before Gentry and Ryan shut out the Orioles on four hits -- and seven walks -- in Game 3. Seaver allowed one run in 10 innings in Game 4, won with Martin's successful run to first base after his sacrifice bunt. And Koosman's performance in Game 5 became a complete-game victory when the Orioles' No. 6 hitter flied to left.
Johnson was the Orioles' second baseman, one quarter of a remarkably reliable and often brilliant inner defense that helped produce 109 regular-season victories and a three-game ALCS sweep of Billy Martin's Twins in 1969. When he set foot in Shea Stadium on Oct. 14 that year for Game 3 of the World Series, it was nearly 14 years to the day before he would be introduced as the Mets' manager. His baseball identity is a mix of his accomplishments and distinctions -- Gold Glove winner, Koufax's final batter, Braves slugger Hank Aaron's teammate, successful big league manager and all-around bright guy.
In New York, he is recognized for making that final out against Koosman and for being in the Mets' dugout 17 years later when the Red Sox couldn't get the final out. His managerial success in New York is no salve for what happened in 1969, however. Johnson doesn't complain -- but he does lament. To this day, he is convinced the Mets' first World Series championship shouldn't have been clinched until Jesse Orosco struck out Marty Barrett on Oct. 27, 1986.
So, ambivalence about Shea Stadium exists in him. Johnson noted as much when he was presented as the Mets' manager late in November 1983.
"My memories of this place aren't real good," he said. "I hope we can make some good ones before I'm through here."
What he learned in 1969 was confirmed during his tenure as Mets manager.
"The one thing I gleaned from '69 was. ... I don't think I realized until that World Series how much momentum, fate, chance or whatever you call it does in a short series," Johnson says. "It plays a big part in who wins. It did in '69. Every ball they hit blew away from us, and every one we hit blew toward them. Swoboda making that catch. Martin was a yard inside the base line when that throw hit him. No one called anything. And the shoe polish on the ball. You name it, it happened.
"We started looking at each other saying, 'What's going on?' The ball I hit that Jones caught. I knew I hit it pretty good. It had a chance to go out. But it got knocked down.
"Same kind of thing happened in '86. [The Red Sox] needed one strike and we were two runs down. We were destined to win. And I guess the Dodgers were destined to beat [us] in '88."
The miracle-making Mets were destined to beat the big bad Birds in 1969, too.
"Doesn't make me feel any better about it now," Johnson says. "They were good, and they got every break."
Marty Noble is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
