The View Through The Rear View Mirror - Casey Stengel, Jerry Koosman

By Michael Jawitz, AKA: Grubby Glove

My selection of twenty-five core Mets baseball cards for my friend in Sydney, Australia continues with these additions:

Casey Stengel. I talked about the Mets a lot back in their earliest years. One day, during one of these conversations, my friend Walter proclaimed "Casey Stengel was born old." Looking at his 1963 Topps card, I couldn't take issue with Walter's assertion. Look at Stengel here. This is a man who lived.

I see so much in Stengel's face that I almost don't know where to begin. If pressed, I'd say his eyes grab my attention first. They're aimed straight ahead, still open to a world of possibility. Maybe it's the crystal blue color that makes them seem so alive. His mouth comes next. It's closed, belying a degree of tension. From there, I turn to the old man's expression. It tells me he knows he's in for a rough road, yet he's determined to ride it out. The whole thing is topped off with what I think is an ill-fitting cap.

Casey Stengel brought all of his skills to bear as the first manager of the Metropolitans. He was a master showman, a salesman of the first magnitude, a ringmaster orchestrating a circus of the bizarre before an adoring, mesmerized "new breed" of fans. The '62 Mets were populated with over the hill veterans and a few youngsters who were not quite ready for the bigs. I sometimes think that of all the managers the team could have hired, Stengel was the only one who could have pulled the whole thing off.

I was nine years old during the 1961 season. It was the year I came of baseball age, watching the New York Yankees beat the opposition into submission. They would jump out to a small lead, say 9 to 0, and then gradually pull ahead. They went 109 – 53 for the season. I wasn't a Yankees fan; my Dad saw to that. I followed the Bronx Bombers because they were the only game in town. They did get me in the habit of watching a winning baseball team, however, so the first edition of the Mets came as a bit of a shock. When Casey Stengel commented that his Mets found ways to lose that he had never seen before, I knew what he meant.

The “Old Professor” would preside over the Mets until midway through the 1965 season, when he fell and broke his hip, ending his career. No group of core Mets would be complete without him. To me, Casey Stengel is the Godfather of the Mets, the old master whose gaze, so well captured here, and is continually looking ahead, perhaps to a winning time. We’ll be winners again one day, and Casey Stengel knew it.   

Jerry Koosman. I remember how dominant this guy was in his first year. He was a left-hander who could bring it, had a nasty curve ball, a mastery of the strike zone and ability to kept hitters off balance. He was what we had not seen very often in these parts; he was a winner. I remember when he was on the cover of Life magazine in the late summer of 1969; the story said "Mets In The Stretch." Ordinarily this would mean the prestigious publication had selected players from the team and done a photographic feature of them manipulating their bodies. But, no, in the summer when man landed on the moon, anything was possible, and the Amazins' were about to prove it.

I recently looked up Koosman's numbers from 1969, during the first part of his career and it's no wonder Life chose him for the cover. Pitching 241 innings that season, he compiled a 17-9 record, had a 2.28 ERA and threw 6 shutouts. His Wins Above Replacement (WAR) was 6.7.

This card is from the 1970 Topps subset covering the '69 fall classic, won in stunning fashion by the New Yorkers. I love this view of Koosman because it shows him in a classic pose, with left knee flirting with the pitcher's mound, ball in hand and elbow bent at a 90-degree angle. Plus it brings attention to his pitching line that October afternoon. Yes, the Orioles got to him for a three spot in the top of the third inning, but he kept the Orioles at bay after that, giving the Mets a chance to come back and win the game, which they did, 5 to 3.

Koosman was one of the young pitchers who helped bring the Mets to the promised land. He, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan all had very long careers. They received good coaching, had great mechanics, ran between starts and pitched every fifth day. Jerry Koosman would go on to have a career record of 222 - 209, a pretty good mark when one considers he pitched on some very poor Mets teams. I’ll remember him just like this, on the mound when the Amazins’ won it all. 

I'll return next week with a few additions to the roster.