Remembering the Terrific Tom Seaver

Tom Seaver, arguably the greatest and most beloved player in the history of the New York Mets, recently passed away at the age of 75. Seaver died peacefully at his home in Calistoga, California on August 31, 2020, due to complications from Lyme disease, dementia, and the Coronavirus.

Seaver, known affectionately as “Tom Terrific” and “The Franchise,” was the cornerstone player that turned the Mets from a laughing-stock expansion team into World Series champions. Seaver was known for his powerful legs and “drop-and drive” motion that dirtied his jersey around the right knee as he dragged it across the dirt on the mound. The 6’1″ right-hander won 311 games and the N.L. Cy Young Award three times.

Two years after his N.L. Rookie of the Year campaign, in the miraculous 1969 season, Seaver went 25-7 with a 2.21 ERA, leading the Mets to 100 wins, an N.L. East title and improbable World Series victory against the 109-win Baltimore Orioles.

Seaver would lead the Mets back to the Fall Classic in 1973 although New York would fall to the Oakland A’s in 7 games. Four years later, thanks to a contract dispute, The Franchise was traded to the Big Red Machine. In what would be a bitter irony for Mets’ fans, Seaver pitched a no-hitter for the Reds in 1978 after having tossed five one-hitters for New York.

Seaver returned to the Mets in 1983 and should have finished his career in New York but he was left unprotected in the free-agent compensation draft. The Chicago White Sox selected him, ending the happy reunion in Queens. Seaver pitched for 2+ seasons for the Chisox before being traded to the Boston Red Sox in June 1986. Of course, most baseball fans will remember that the ’86 Sox faced the Mets in the World Series. Because of a sore right knee that eventually required surgery, Seaver did not participate in the postseason.

At 42, Tom Terrific attempted a comeback with the Mets in 1987 but never appeared in a game. He retired on June 22nd. Six years later (in 1992), The Franchise was awarded a plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Seaver received 98.8% of the vote from the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America). At the time it was the highest vote percentage in the history of the Hall of Fame balloting.

Cooperstown Cred: Tom Seaver (SP)

• Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1992 (1st year on the ballot, 98.8% of the vote)
• New York Mets (1967-77, 1983), Cincinnati Reds (1977-82), Chicago White Sox (1984-86), Boston Red Sox (1986)
• Career: 311-205 (.603), 2.86 ERA
• Career: 127 ERA+, 106.0 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 3,640 career Strikeouts (6th most in Major League Baseball history)
• 3-time Cy Young Award winner (1969, 1973, 1975)
• 12-time All-Star
• Won 20+ games 5 times
• Led N.L. in ERA 3 times; led N.L. in Strikeouts 5 times

(cover photo: Associated Press)

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Seaver’s death is particularly sad for me as a lifelong Mets fan so I will start this piece with some personal thoughts before going through a recap and homage to his Hall of Fame career.

Rememberances of Tom Seaver

I grew up in New York City and started following baseball in the mid-1970s. In what would become a strange personal conflict in 1986, I was a fan of both the Mets and the Boston Red Sox. I rooted for the BoSox in the first World Series I ever saw in 1975. Since that made being a Yankees fan impossible, I chose the city’s other hometown team to root for in ’76.

Strangely, the first time I ever saw Tom Seaver pitch was not in Queens but in Montreal. I was 9 years old when my parents packed up the station wagon and drove me and my brother to the City of Saints to see the 1976 Olympic Games. As a recently converted rabid Mets fan, I found a pocket schedule and saw that my new favorite team was going to be playing the Expos while we were there. For one night, the Olympics would have to take a back seat to the Mets and Les Expos.

Jarry Park was a small, intimate ballpark with a seating capacity of about 28,000. On a Friday night in July, in front of 11,134 fans, the Expos hosted the Mets. The pitching matchup featured the Expos best pitcher (Steve Rogers) against Seaver, the reigning N.L. Cy Young champ. Both hurlers gave up 2 runs, with Rogers going ten frames to Seaver’s nine. I walked away as a crestfallen kid when the Expos won in the bottom of the 11th on a walk-off home run by former Met (Del Unser) off the Mets’ closer Skip Lockwood.

Sadly for me, this was the only time I ever saw Tom Terrific in person in a Mets uniform. Less than 11 months after that game in Montreal, on June 15, 1977, Seaver was traded to the Cincinnati Reds. In what was another irony for this young Mets’ and Seaver fan, I got to see him pitch in person again, but in a Cincinnati uniform. The 1977 All-Star Game (on July 19th) was at Yankee Stadium and an elementary school friend’s father had tickets and invited me and my brother.

The Big Red Machine, the two-time defending World Series Champions, had a total of seven All-Stars, six members of the starting lineup along with Seaver. The newest member of the Reds’ rotation gave up two runs in two innings of work but the National League won (as usual during those years) by a 7-5 score.

Tom Terrific’s 300th

My favorite personal memory of Tom Seaver was in his second to last season. Seaver was pitching for the Chicago White Sox and, at the age of 40, having an excellent campaign. On August 4th, the White Sox were playing the Bronx Bombers at Yankee Stadium. It was Phil Rizzuto day in the Bronx so the game may have sold out anyway. With Seaver on the hill for the opposition, 54,032 Yankees and Mets fans packed the yard. Looking at the schedule in advance, a friend of mine and I planned ahead and nabbed some box seats in the upper deck right behind the plate, a perfect view of the field just above the press box.

Seaver entered the game with an 11-8 record and 3.02 ERA. The 11 victories gave Tom Terrific a total of 299 W’s for his career. The ’85 Yankees had a prolific offense, led by future Hall of Famers Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield, with Don Mattingly in the midst of a monster season in which he would win the MVP. On this sunny afternoon, Mattingly stroked two singles off Seaver but the rest of the Yanks managed only four hits and one run. In the bottom of the 9th, the White Sox had a 4-1 lead but a walk and a single put the tying run at the plate with two outs. Veteran Don Baylor, a former A.L. MVP who was pinch-hitting in this spot, flew out to left field to end the game.

As a now 18-year-old Mets fan who never saw The Franchise pitch at Shea Stadium, it was as if the baseball gods had granted me the ultimate mulligan, giving me a chance to witness the final iconic moment of Seaver’s Hall of Fame career.

Tom Seaver: Career Highlights

George Thomas Seaver was born on November 17, 1944, in Fresno, California. After high school, Seaver pitched for Fresno City College before getting noticed by USC’s legendary coach Rod Dedeaux, who recruited the talented right-hander to spend his sophomore year in Los Angeles pitching for the Trojans.

Before landing in the organization of the New York Mets, Seaver was drafted (in 1965) in the 10th round of the Amateur Draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers (he did not sign) and then in the first round (by the Atlanta Braves) in 1966 in what was the January “Secondary Phase” draft. Although Seaver had yet to pitch that year, USC’s season was officially underway; MLB rules at the time prohibited teams from signing college players while their seasons were in progress.

Still, because he had signed a contract with the Braves, Seaver was now ineligible to pitch at USC for his junior season. Seaver’s father threatened to sue MLB and Commissioner William Eckert, who had voided the contract. A compromise was born: a lottery was held in April in which three teams made contractual offers, the Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, and Cleveland Indians. Baseball history could have been irrevocably changed if Eckert had reached into a hat and picked a different team name. It was the Mets who were the big winners; they signed their future franchise ace for $50,000.

Seaver, at 21, spent only one season in the minor leagues. Pitching for the Jacksonville Suns in the International League (AAA), Seaver went 12-12 with a 3.13 ERA.

Rookie of the Year and No Sophomore Slump

In the early years of the franchise that had been born in 1962, the New York Mets were quite terrible. The ’66 Mets won 66 games, which was 13 more than the team’s best in the previous four seasons. There was no reason for the franchise to wait to put The Franchise in a big league uniform. Wearing #41, the only uniform number he would ever wear in Major League Baseball, Tom Seaver made his MLB debut at Shea Stadium on April 13, 1967. He gave up 2 runs while striking out 8 in a no-decision. In his next start (also at Shea), Tom Terrific tossed 7.1 innings of one-run ball against the Chicago Cubs to earn the first of his 311 career victories.

It was in his 3rd start that Seaver put the baseball world on notice that he was going to be a star. On April 25th (the day I was born, incidentally), Seaver matched up with Ken Holtzman and the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Seaver pitched a complete game, going 10 innings while giving up just one unearned run on four hits. The Mets won 4-1.

By the time the season reached its midpoint, Seaver was 8-5 with a 2.65 ERA, earning him a spot on the All-Star team. This particular Mid-Summer Classic (played in Anaheim, California) was one of the game’s most famous. The leagues were tied at 1 after 14 innings. In the top of the 15th, Tony Perez of the Reds hit a solo home run off Catfish Hunter in a matchup of future Hall of Famers. The 22-year old Seaver, the 7th pitcher used by the N.L., came into the game in the bottom of the 15th and retired the A.L. to get what would be one of only two saves he would earn in his 20-year MLB career.

Seaver finished the 1967 campaign as by far the best player on the Mets and as the N.L. Rookie of the Year: he logged a 16-13 record (for a 61-win team) with a 2.76 ERA.

Tom Terrific followed up his brilliant rookie season with a 16-12 record and 2.20 ERA in his sophomore campaign. 1968 was the “year of the pitcher” and so Seaver’s 2.20 ERA was only good enough to finish 7th in the N.L. (Bob Gibson led the way with his famous 1.12 ERA).

As for the team, with a new manager (Gil Hodges) and a couple of talented rookie starters (lefty Jerry Koosman and flame-throwing Nolan Ryan, a future Hall of Famer), the Mets improved to a 73-89 record in ’68. The 73 wins were a franchise-high but still only good enough for 9th place in the 10-team N.L.

Again, a highlight of the season for Seaver was the All-Star Game. Seaver was the 4th pitcher used by the N.L., following Hall of Famers Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal, and Steve Carlton. With the N.L. clinging to a 1-0 lead, Seaver pitched two scoreless innings in the 7th and 8th, striking out five batters (including future Cooperstown inductees Carl Yastrzemski and Mickey Mantle). Interestingly, for the second year in a row, a Mets rookie got the save; it was Koosman’s turn in ’68.

1969: The Miracle Mets

The 1969 season is notable in baseball history because of the historic four-team expansion and first-ever split of each league into two divisions, the East and West. Juxtaposed with the structural changes in the game (which included lowering the mound) was the emergence of the most unlikely World Champion team in baseball history.

Sometimes a team has an unexpected season that is pure magic. For the first few months of the 1969 campaign, the New York Mets showed that they were clearly an improved team but didn’t look like they were any threat to be a postseason contender, even with only five teams to beat (in the N.L. East) instead of the nine teams required to beat in the game’s previous “win the league, win the pennant” format.

As of Tuesday, May 27th, the Mets were 18-23, putting them 9 games behind the Chicago Cubs and tied for 4th in the East. The only teams with a worse record in the entire N.L. were the expansion Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres. Starting on May 28th, however, the Mets went on an 11-game winning streak. That put New York in 2nd place in the East but still 7 games behind the Cubs. Two months later (after the games on August 13th), the Mets were a respectable 62-51 but 10 games out of first place.

The highlight for Seaver in the first half of the year was early in July (at Shea against the Cubs) when he carried a perfect game into the top of the 9th inning. After getting Randy Hundley to tap out to the mound, light-hitting rookie center fielder Jim Qualls singled to center to break up the no-no. By retiring the last two batters, Seaver finished what would be the first of his five one-hitters in a Mets uniform.

Anyway, starting with back to back weekend doubleheader sweeps against San Diego at Shea, the Mets won 12 out of 13 games. Following up with a 10-game winning streak in September, the Mets found themselves in first place by September 10th and wound up winning the division by 8 games with a 100-win season. During the Mets’ final 49 games (in which they went 38-11), Seaver went 9-0 with a 1.24 ERA. In his final 8 starts, he went 8-0 (all complete games) with a 1.00 ERA. All told in 1969, he went 25-7 with a 2.21 ERA. For this, he was a nearly unanimous choice for the N.L. Cy Young Award.

The Franchise wasn’t quite as dominant in the postseason but the team blitzed through the inaugural NLCS with a 3-game sweep over the N.L. West champion Atlanta Braves and followed that up with an improbable 5-game World Series win over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles. The highlight of Seaver’s first playoff opportunity came in Game 4 of the World Series in which he tossed 10 innings of one-run ball, leading the team to a walk-off win in the bottom of the 10th.

Besides winning the Cy Young, Seaver was named Sports Illustrated‘s “Sportsman of the Year” and finished a close second to Willie McCovey in the N.L. MVP balloting.

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1970-72: A Pair of N.L. ERA Titles

In his first three MLB seasons, Tom Seaver was a Rookie of the Year winner, Cy Young Award winner, and World Series champion. What would he do in his next three? The answer was simple: more of the same.

The 1970 Mets were a disappointment (83-79, 3rd in the N.L. East) but Seaver remained an All-Star. He went 18-12 while leading the N.L. in ERA (2.82) and strikeouts (283). In his fourth start of the season (at home against San Diego), he struck out 19 Padres, including the final 10, the closing streak being a record that still stands. Five starts later, he pitched his second career one-hit shutout against Philadelphia. For the first time, Tom Terrific was the N.L.’s starting pitcher in the All-Star Game. He tossed three innings of one-hit ball while striking out four (including Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew, Luis Aparicio, and Frank Robinson).

With a 17-6 record as of August 1st, Seaver looked like he would easily win 20 games again. Uncharacteristically, he slumped down the stretch, going 1-6 with a 4.14 ERA in his final 10 starts.

In 1971, Seaver rebounded for one of the best seasons of his career: he went 20-10 with a career-best 1.76 ERA. That 1.76 mark led both leagues; his 289 strikeouts led the N.L. Using statistics that didn’t exist at the time, Seaver also led the majors in WAR for pitchers (10.2), ERA+ (194), and WHIP (0.946). Still, he finished just 2nd in the Cy Young vote to Ferguson Jenkins, who won 24 games. For the third straight season, Seaver tossed a one-hitter; this one was in late September (he did give up a run in the victory).

The ’71 campaign (in which the Mets won 83 games again) was the last under Gil Hodges. The Mets’ skipper tragically died of a heart attack during spring training in early April 1972. Although he wasn’t quite as dominant, Seaver still posted a 21-12 record (2.92 ERA) for new manager Yogi Berra. The highlight of Seaver’s ’72 campaign came in the first game of a doubleheader against San Diego on Independence Day. The Franchise carried yet another a no-hitter into the 9th inning. After getting Dave Roberts to ground out to lead off the top of the 9th, Leron Lee singled to end the no-no. Seaver induced a double-play by Nate Colbert to end the game and complete his third career one-hit shutout and fourth one-hitter overall.

1973: Ya Gotta Believe

1973 was an odd year in the National League. The N.L. West had two 95+ win teams (the Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers) but the N.L. East was full of mediocrity. It was a division nobody wanted to win. On August 30th in St. Louis, Seaver tossed 9 scoreless innings but was matched by the Cardinals’ Reggie Cleveland. Leading off the bottom of the 10th, Lou Brock doubled off The Franchise and scored in walk-off fashion two batters later on a single by Jose Cruz (who would later star with the Houston Astros). Although the loss put the Mets in last place (with a 61-71 record), they were just 6.5 games out of first place in the East.

Seaver had been brilliant to that point in the season: the loss dropped his record to 15-8 while he sported a 1.71 ERA. A few weeks before this tough loss, reliever Tug McGraw famously stood up in a team meeting and shouted “Ya Gotta Believe.” The Mets went 21-8 after the tough walk-off loss in St. Louis, winning the N.L. East by 1.5 games with an 82-79 record. Ironically, Seaver was not quite his terrific self in September and early October, posting a 3.94 ERA in his final 7 starts.

Regardless, the Mets were back in the playoffs, matching up in the NLCS against the Reds, who had won 99 games in the N.L. West. Seaver drew the start in Game 1 (at Riverfront Stadium). He yielded just one run in his first 8 innings of work (while striking out 13 Reds) but gave up a walk-off home run to Johnny Bench (a future first-ballot Hall of Famer like Seaver) in the bottom of the 9th.

The Mets eventually tied the series at 2 games. In Game 5 (at Shea), Seaver drew the start in the win-or-go-home contest. He tossed 8.2 innings of 2-run ball, leading the Mets to a 7-2 win and their second pennant in five years.

As it was in 1969, the Mets faced the defending World Champions in the Fall Classic. This time it was the Oakland Athletics. After the teams split the first two games, Seaver faced off against another future Cooperstown inductee, Catfish Hunter. Neither ace factored in the decision, a game the A’s won 3-2 in 11 innings. (For the record, Seaver tossed 8 innings of 2-run ball with 12 K’s).

The Franchise had the opportunity to close out the series in Game 6 in Oakland since the Mets had a 3 Games to 2 series lead. Seaver gave up two RBI doubles to Reggie Jackson (another future Hall of Famer) while Hunter, Darold Knowles, and Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers combined to give up just one run: the Mets lost 3-1 and Game 7 the next day.

For the regular season, Seaver’s 19-10 record (with an MLB-best 2.08 ERA and NL-best 251 whiffs) was good enough for his second Cy Young Award.

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1974-76: Cy Young Three-Peat

After 7 superb seasons, Tom Seaver finally had an off-year in 1974. His “slump” down the stretch in ’73 was caused in part by shoulder woes, which persisted into the 1974 campaign. The Franchise missed the All-Star Game for the first time and went just 11-11 with a 3.20 ERA (the lowest of his career until 1980). Seaver did become the first pitcher in N.L. history to strike out 200 batters for seven consecutive seasons, hitting 201 in his final start. Before that final start, Seaver had received a couple of osteopathic sessions which alleviated issues he had from a sciatic nerve and dislocated pelvis structure.

Seaver was rejuvenated in 1975: he went 22-9 with a 2.38 ERA and 243 strikeouts (best in the N.L. for the fourth time). In his second to last start of the season, Seaver had yet another chance at a no-hitter but gave up a 2-out single to the Cubs’ Joe Wallis in the bottom of the 9th. Adding insult to injury, Rick Reuschel was also tossing a shutout so Seaver did not get a win. He gave up two singles in the 10th but did not allow a run to score. The Cubs won 1-0 in the bottom of the 11th.

For the seasons, Seaver’s 200+ whiffs set a new N.L. record for consecutive campaigns with 200 K’s. For this, Tom Terrific won his third N.L. Cy Young Award, becoming the first pitcher other than Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax to achieve a Cy three-peat.

During an era in which pitchers were judged by won-loss records, 1976 appeared to be an off-year: Seaver went just 14-11. (The Mets scored only 15 runs in his 11 losses). Still, his ERA was solid (2.59) and 235 strikeouts best in the league once again.

1977: The End of Camelot

The game of baseball after the 1976 season was changed forever by the full implementation of free agency. Some teams chose to play the game; others declined. In what has been an oft-recurring irritation for Mets fans in the last 34 seasons, the Mets (and Chairman M. Donald Grant) decided not to play. While George Steinbrenner, the brash owner of the crosstown New York Yankees, was signing Reggie Jackson and pitcher Don Gullett, Grant signed no available player to help the club.

Steinbrenner had signed Gullett to a six-year, $2 million deal. The left-hander, who had won two World Series titles with the Reds, was a solid pitcher but not in Seaver’s league. All of a sudden, Seaver’s three-year, $675,000 deal seemed a pittance. What ensued was a tabloid feud between Seaver and many of the scribes who were sympathetic to his frustration against Grant and the prominent New York Daily News columnist Dick Young, who labeled The Franchise a “troublemaker” for regretting not having the chance to be a free agent.

The squabble escalated (Young called Seaver a “pouting, griping, morale-breaking clubhouse lawyer poisoning the team”) and, on June 15th, in what would be known as the “Midnight Massacre,” Seaver was traded to the Reds for four decent but much lesser players (pitcher Pat Zachry, outfielders Steve Henderson and Dan Norman, and infielder Doug Flynn). A little over a month later I saw Seaver pitch at Yankee Stadium in the All-Star Game in a uniform that didn’t seem to suit him.

Pitching for Hall of Fame skipper Sparky Anderson, Seaver was immensely successful in his first half-season with Cincinnati, going 14-3 with a 2.34 ERA. The 14 victories (combined with his 7 with the Mets) gave him 21 wins overall (his fifth 20-win season). Ironically, this edition of the Reds wasn’t as good overall as the 1975 & ’76 versions: the team finished 88-74, 10 games behind the Dodgers in the N.L. West.

1977-1982: Tom Seaver’s Cincinnati Years

Tom Terrific got off to a terrible start to the 1978 campaign with Cincinnati: he was 0-3 with a 6.52 ERA in his first 6 starts. For the rest of the season, he was brilliant, going 16-11 with a 2.42 ERA. The highlight of the season was the thumb in the eye to Mets fans in that Seaver finally completed a no-hitter.

Seaver had thrown five one-hitters with the Mets (the last in April 1977) but had never completed a no-no. So, of course, on June 16th against the St. Louis Cardinals, he finally finished 9 innings without allowing a hit, delighting the 38,216 fans at Riverfront Stadium. Seaver finished the season with a 2.88 ERA and 226 punch-outs, the 10th and final time he would surpass 200 whiffs. For the season, Cincinnati again finished second in the N.L. West to the Dodgers.

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Under a new manager (John McNamara) the Reds returned to the playoffs in 1979; Seaver led the rotation with at 16-6 record and 3.14 ERA. Seaver drew the Game 1 start in the NLCS (against the Pittsburgh Pirates). Both he and the Bucs’ John Candelaria gave up 2 runs in 8 innings before turning the game over to the teams’ respective bullpens. The Pirates won in 11 innings thanks to a 3-run tater by Hall of Famer and N.L. MVP Willie Stargell; the Bucs would go on to sweep the Reds in 3 games. This would be Tom Seaver’s final postseason start.

After an off-year in 1980 (10-8, 3.64 ERA), the 36-year old Seaver had a big year in the strike-shortened 1981 campaign. He went 14-2 with a 2.54 ERA while reaching the 3,000-strikeout milestone in his third start of the season by striking out the Cardinals’ Keith Hernandez.

The Reds, with a 66-42 record, had the best overall record in the National League (by four games) but, in the split-season format, missed the eight-team playoffs because they finished a half-game behind the Dodgers in the first half of the season and 1.5 games behind the Houston Astros in the second half.

Seaver’s efforts nearly netted him a 4th Cy Young Award: he barely finished behind the Dodgers’ rookie phenom, Fernando Valenzuela. Both pitchers earned 8 first-place votes but Fernando had slightly more votes overall, edging Tom Terrific by a 70-to-67 point final tally.

The 10-year run of excellence for the Reds ended abruptly in 1982. The team went 61-101 in ’82 with Seaver having easily the most miserable campaign of his career: he went 5-13 with an unsightly 5.50 ERA (his previous career-worst had been 3.64). With the Reds eager to unload the aging veteran, there was one team (under new ownership) eager to welcome The Franchise home: the New York Mets.

1983: Back in Gotham

Since trading Tom Seaver in June 1977, the New York Mets franchise had once again become basement dwellers in the National League. After winning 86 games in ’76 (Seaver’s final full season in Queens), the team’s best effort was 67 wins in 1980. The December 1982 trade for the 38-year old Seaver brought a jolt of energy to Mets fans even if the most optimistic didn’t expect The Franchise to turn a 65-win team from 1982 into a pennant contender in 1983.

46,687 fans attended Opening Day at Shea to watch Seaver take on the Philadelphia Phillies and Steve Carlton, another future Hall of Famer. Seaver and Carlton matched zeroes for six innings, with Seaver being lifted for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the 6th. The Mets scored two runs off Carlton in the bottom of the 7th to earn a 2-0 win (with Tom Terrific getting a no-decision).

Overall, this would be another lost season for the Mets (they went 68-94). Seaver got off to a solid start in his return (5-6, 2.80 ER in his 15 outings) before tailing off with a 4-8 record (4.18 ER) in his final 19 efforts.

Still, the return of Seaver along with the midseason acquisition of Hernandez and Rookie of the Year campaign of Darryl Strawberry gave Mets fans hope for 1984.

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Oops: Tom Seaver Heads to Chicago

At the end of the 1983 season, Tom Seaver had 273 career wins. It was assumed that he would finish his playing days and reach the 300-win milestone in a Mets uniform. But it was not to be.

On January 21, 1984, the headline in the sports section of the New York Times read “White Sox Take Seaver; Mets Are Stunned.” The New York Daily News headline was harsher: “Tom-foolery lets Chisox nab Seaver.”

How did this happen? Well, the 1983 Chicago White Sox (under Hall of Fame skipper Tony La Russa) were the A.L. West Champions, winning 99 games. Their saves leader was veteran right-hander Dennis Lamp. Having concluded his 7th MLB season, Lamp was granted free agency. On January 10th, 1984, Lamp signed a free-agent deal with the Toronto Blue Jays. And so, 10 days later, the White Sox got Seaver from the Mets as compensation for losing Lamp to the Jays. Huh?

If you’re under the age of 40, you’ve got to be scratching your head. Well, at issue in the player strike of 1981 was the owners’ demand that teams receive compensation for the loss of free agents. The players felt that if the team acquiring a free agent was required to compensate the team who lost the player that it would restrict the market. And so, ultimately, a compromise was reached: if a team lost a “premium” free agent, they would be entitled to pick any player from a pool created from all the other teams in baseball. Each team had the right to protect 26 of its players from the compensation pool. Frank Cashen, the General Manager of the Mets, gambled that no team would select a 39-year old pitcher and thus did not include The Franchise on the list of 26.

White Sox GM Roland Hemond was surprised to see Seaver’s name on the list of available players. He told the Daily News, “I jumped out of my chair. In our opinion, he was clearly the best player available. We took him, not only because our scouts assured us that he is still a first-rate pitcher, but because he is the sort of class person we want on our ballclub.” Cashen, crestfallen that his gamble had blown up in his face, owned up to the mistake: “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I had the final decision. I made a mistake. We made a calculated and regrettable gamble.”

Seaver was shocked and briefly considered retiring rather than report to the White Sox but ultimately decided to continue his career. In the ironies of ironies, after the players had fought so long to gain and protect free agent rights, a 39-year-old superstar under contract was shipped halfway across the country against his will.

1984-86: Tom Seaver’s Final Three Years

The White Sox scouts were correct: Tom Seaver was still a first-rate pitcher. Since multiple players on the Chisox regressed from their division-winning form of 1983, by most statistical measures Seaver was either the first or second-best pitcher on the team in 1984. He went 15-11 with a 3.95 ERA. Those 15 victories were the most on a team that fell from 99 wins in ’83 to 74 in ’84.

In 1985, at the age of 40, Seaver emerged as the ace of the ChiSox. He was the team’s Opening Day starter, won his 300th game in New York, and finished the season with a 16-11 record and 3.17 ERA. By the modern metric of WAR, Seaver’s 5.0 was the best on the team.

Seaver struggled early in 1986 (2-6, 4.38 ERA) and, at 41, asked to be traded closer to his home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The White Sox accommodated his request by dealing him to the Boston Red Sox for utility-man Steve Lyons. Seaver pitched respectably for the BoSox (5-7, 3.80 ERA) but, with an aching right knee, did not pitch after September 19th. In what turned out to be the final start of his 20-year career, Seaver lasted just four innings and lost to the Jays’ Dave Stieb by a 6-4 score at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.

The Red Sox won the A.L. East in ’86. Because of the bum knee, Seaver was left off the postseason roster. The Sox outlasted the California Angels in the ALCS and famously lost in 7 games in the World Series to the Mets. In the ironies of all ironies, Tom Seaver was at Shea for the final days of his official playing career, but not in a playing capacity and not in a Mets uniform.

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Post-Playing Days

Tom Seaver attempted a comeback with the Mets in 1987 but, after the aborted attempt, officially retired on June 22nd. A year later, his uniform #41 was retired by the club.

Having moonlighted as an analyst on postseason coverage for NBC sports while he was an active player, Seaver replaced Joe Garagiola as NBC’s lead color commentator in 1989. That gig didn’t last, however, as NBC lost the rights to Major League Baseball after that season. Seaver called games for the Yankees from ’89 to 1993 and for the Mets from 1999 to 2005.

Seaver sailed into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot and was inducted into Cooperstown in the summer of 1992. You can watch the speech at the link below:

Seaver spent the final years of his life with his wife Nancy in Calistoga, California. The man who had been a vintage MLB hurler spent his final years making wine. Seaver vineyards produced 400-550 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon for over a decade.

In March 2019, Seaver’s family announced that he was retiring from public life due to the onset of dementia. He passed away on August 31, 2020, in part due to COVID-19, making him one of the most prominent people in the world to die with causes that included the virus.

How Tom Terrific Ranks Among the All-Time Greats

It seemed as if, from the moment he first stepped onto the mound at Shea, Tom Seaver was an obvious Hall of Famer. As a 311-game winner who earned 3 Cy Young Awards, Seaver is in the elite of the elite. Among the 167 pitchers since 1919 with at least 2,500 innings pitched, Seaver’s 2.86 ERA is tied for second best (with Jim Palmer) behind only Whitey Ford. Seaver’s 106.0 pitching WAR is second only to Roger Clemens in the post-World War II era and 7th best in the history of baseball.

Even today in this strikeout-happy game, Seaver’s 3,640 whiffs are the 6th most ever (behind Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Clemens, Steve Carlton, and Bert Blyleven).

Baseball historian and sabermetric pioneer Bill James, in his 2001 Historical Baseball Abstract, ranked Seaver as the 6th best pitcher of all time (behind Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Pete Alexander, Cy Young, Warren Spahn). He started his piece by claiming “there is actually a good argument that Tom Seaver should be regarded as the greatest pitcher of all-time.”

“Of the five pitchers rated ahead of him, four pitched before World War II, the other just after World War II. Three of those four had their best years before World War I, at a time when big pichers dominated the game much more than they do now. Where Seaver rates relative to those pitchers, then, depends to a large extent on how steep one believes the incline of history to be.”

— Bill James (The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract), 2001

(Note: James ranked Roger Clemens #11: The Rocket was still active and had “only” won 260 games through the end of the 2000 season).

James noted that Seaver’s won-loss record (.603) was especially impressive because he pitched for “eight losing teams, several of them really terrible, and four other teams which had losing records except when Seaver was on the mound.”

Hall of Fame expert Jay Jaffe, in The Cooperstown Casebook (2017), also ranks Seaver #6, behind Johnson, Young, Clemens, Kid Nichols (another pre-WWI hurler), and Alexander.

Final Thoughts

As fond as my memories are of Tom Seaver, as a native New Yorker and Mets fan, I’m perpetually saddened by the fact that The Franchise spent over eight seasons pitching for other ballclubs. It was especially sad that the Mets lost him due to a stupid compensation rule just one year after his return to Queens.

After years of mediocrity (including the ’83 campaign with Seaver), the Mets of 1984 were a really good team; the ballclubs in ’85 & ’86 were among the best in baseball. Led by 20-year-old Dwight Gooden (24-4, 1.53 ERA), the ’85 edition won 98 games, finishing 3 behind the Cardinals in the N.L. East. Could Seaver (who won 16 games with a 3.17 in Chicago) have closed that gap? His 5.0 WAR (compared to the Mets’ 4th starter Ed Lynch‘s 2.5) says “maybe.”

I attended about 40 games at Shea in 1985. Gooden’s starts electrified the sold-out crowds in a way that I’ve never seen anywhere else since. How fun would it have been to see the 40-year-old Seaver the day before or after the 20-year-old Gooden? How much more would thousands of Mets fans have enjoyed seeing Seaver celebrate his 300th victory with Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter at Shea instead of fellow Cooperstown inductee Carlton Fisk at Yankee Stadium?

Regardless, life and sports don’t always work out perfectly. Tom Seaver’s career arc wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty darned close. He has left us too soon. RIP Tom Terrific.

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