Foreword

When professional baseball voided my original contract with the Atlanta Braves and made me a free agent, available to any team willing to match Atlanta’s $50,000 offer, three teams put their names into a hat: the Cleveland Indians, the Philadelphia Phillies, and, of course, the New York Mets. There’s no way to know how playing in Cleveland or Philadelphia would have affected my pitching and, ultimately, my career stats, but when it turned out to be New York that was pulled out of that hat, I was excited, because I knew that with a developing franchise I’d get a chance to pitch in the majors in a hurry. I also knew that pitching in New York would be a dramatically different experience than pitching for any other team: I’d be performing on a stage and in a spotlight unique in America.

            This was the city of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, of Jackie Robinson and Frank Gifford; this was the city where Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson had fought some of their biggest fights. With the departure of the Dodgers and Giants and the steep decline of the Yankees and the football Giants, New York was ripe for new stories and new stars. For a young athlete in the 1960s it was the land of opportunity. For Willis Reed and the Knicks, Joe Namath and the Jets, and for the Mets team that I played on, it was a magical moment, one in which our adventures and exploits captured the attention of the city and the nation, providing a thrilling, often hopeful backdrop in an increasingly turbulent time. Our 1969 World Series win was even credited with giving John Lindsay’s mayoral reelection campaign a needed boost across the finish line. And while it’s impossible to truly measure the impact we had, the memorable teams and their stars are a reminder of how deeply sports resonate in New York.

            This book is another reminder of how important sports are to the life of this city, but also of New York’s preeminent place in the American sports landscape. Plenty of books have been written about the Mets—and about the Yankees, Knicks, Rangers, and other local teams—but no other book has undertaken a task with the breadth and depth of this one, covering the vast terrain from horse racing to tennis to baseball to marathons to football and on and on.

            For those of us who lived through these moments, the book stirs up plenty of nostalgia. In my case, there was the thrill of pitching in the World Series at Shea Stadium; just two years earlier I began to understand that I really belonged in the big leagues and could compete on that level. (That moment came in the 1967 All-Star Game, when I realized that I was no longer in awe of the big stage.)

            And then there are the events I remember as a fan. The first years of the U.S. Open, with Rod Laver, Arthur Ashe, and later Jimmy Connors, were when I became a tennis fan (my wife, Nancy, had long been one). I followed the meteoric career of Secretariat, whom I thought of as one of the great athletes of our time. And for me, as a longtime basketball fan, it was an especially great era to be in New York. The winter after we won the Series was the first time I didn’t return home to southern California, and I went to see a couple of Knicks games. I loved to watch Dave DeBusschere and Willis Reed; they were pro’s pros who headed a very good defensive team that played basketball the old-fashioned way. (I became good friends with DeBusschere, and later Jerry Lucas.)

            Those Knicks and their coach, Red Holzman, shared a philosophy with our Mets, managed by Gil Hodges. Both men, old masters of their sports, had a similar vision of the right way to play the game. Both the Knicks and the Mets were great teams that emphasized the importance of fundamentals.

            But beyond evoking pleasant memories of bygone days, this book takes us beyond our personal experiences, back through time, stripping away lingering myths and providing incisive historical perspectives that add depth to the retelling of the events themselves. And because it is also a book of lists, it is bound to spark debates, although on the whole the book is like an umpire: you can argue as much as you want, but you’re not going to change what happened. But truth be told, the rankings are secondary to the stories themselves, and those belong at the top of any list of the best New York sports events.

            A book like this one about sports in New York is invariably also about the life and culture of the city. Being in the center of it all, with the enthusiasm of the hometown fans, and especially with the extensive media coverage of professional sports from so many different outlets, is truly amazing. When I played with the Mets I had to learn to withstand all that, because it could be overwhelming. Sports events in New York are amplified across the nation, but they loom particularly large among the locals, for whom these teams and these athletes are an integral part of daily life.

Tom Seaver
New York City
May 2006