Mike's Mets - By Any Other Name

By Mike Steffanos August 22, 2020

1970 was my second season rooting for the New York Mets. It was the year that I began to learn the harsh reality of what it truly meant to be a Mets fan. After the Mets had won the World Series in my first go-round as a fan, I was expecting another title and some more 1969-like magic. At age 11, I was due for one of the first rude awakenings of my life.

he Mets pitching staff continued to feature Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman at the top of the rotation, along with holdovers Gary Gentry, Jim McAndrew and the promising but frustrating Nolan Ryan. Unfortunately, while Tom Seaver was still Tom Seaver, injuries began to chip away at the rest of the starting staff. Because of that, an unfamiliar pitcher began making starts for the Mets in May, a southpaw named Ray Sadecki. In fairness, he didn't do a bad job in those starts, but he wasn't as good as Seaver and Koosman. With my limited knowledge of the game at that time, I just couldn't understand why those two guys couldn't make all of the starts for the Mets. I remember how I felt cheated when I turned on Channel 9 to watch a game and discovered that this Sadecki guy was pitching again.

On the other hand, my grandmother, who I wrote extensively about in this piece, just loved the guy. Not for any baseball reason, of course, but because she loved the way his last name sounded, and she loved to say it out loud while she was cheering for him. Not that she ever pronounced it correctly. For Ray Sadecki's entire time with the Mets she invariably referred to him as "Radicky". I remember listening to countless cheers of "c'mon Radicky," as she did her best to vocally support him through difficult innings with men on base.

I remember correcting her countless times during that 1970 season on the correct pronunciation of Ray Sadecki's name, but I eventually bowed to the reality that she liked her own version of it and would never concede to pronouncing it any other way. In my memories of that time, "c'mon Radicky" has become as iconic a piece of the '70s experience as Harvest Gold appliances and tight polyester double knit pants.

Eventually I got over my aversion to Sadecki's starts, forgiving him for not being Seaver or Koosman. He did a good job as a starter in his first year with the Mets, going 8-4 with a 3.64 ERA. It wasn't good enough to elevate the club out of mediocrity, however. The 1970 Mets followed up on their 100-win season of 1969 with a much more pedestrian 83-79 record, finishing 6 games behind the Pirates in third place. I didn't love Sadecki with the same fervor that my grandmother did, but the success of his initial season with the Mets won me over as a fan.

With only one year of watching baseball under my belt and no internet to tell me differently, it would be many years before I would realize that Ray Sadecki's story didn't begin in that first year with the Mets. His baseball story began over a decade earlier in Kansas City, Kansas, where Sadecki was a standout high school phenom, nabbing a huge (at the time) $50,000 bonus to sign with the Cardinals.

In 1960, as a 19 year old, Sadecki made 26 starts for St. Louis, going 9-9 with a 3.78 ERA. The following season he pitched 222.2 innings at age 20, going 14-10 with a 3.72 ERA. He tried to hold out and negotiate a larger contract the following spring, then struggled early in the season. He wound up spending most of the second half or the year in the minors. He regained his spot in the Cardinals' rotation in 1963, and won 20 games for them in their World Championship season of 1964.

He struggled in 1965 and 1966, and was traded to San Francisco for Orlando Cepeda in May of 1966. Sadecki was a mainstay of the Giants rotation in 1967 and 1968, pitching quite well but in some hard luck. In 1968 in particular he achieved a career high in innings with 253.2, a career low in ERA (2.91), but wound up with a 12-18 record for an 88-win Giants team.

Sadecki lost his spot in the Giants' rotation in 1969, struggling in the role of reliver and spot starter. I may not have known it, but by the time he came to Mets in 1970 as a 29-year-old MLB veteran, he had already amassed over 1,700 career innings in 321 Major League games.

Heading into 1971, Sadecki's role was to be bullpen guy and spot starter. Thanks to injuries, however, Sadecki made 20 starts and pitched to a 2.92 ERA. That was only good for a 7-7 record with that low scoring club, as they repeated 1970's 83-79 record and third place record.

Jon Matlack arrived on the scene in 1972, a season which saw Sadecki's lowest usage in his Mets tenure. To the continuing dismay of my poor grandmother, "Radicky" only made 2 starts for that team. Appearing in an additional 30 games as a reliever, Sadecki's 75.2 innings pitched was the lowest total of his career to that point.

When he began the 1973 season pitching in a "mop up" long relief role, the 32-year-old southpaw looked like he was approaching the end of his career. He had plenty left, as it turns out, stepping into the starting rotation in July and holding his own, but Sadecki's enduring fame from that "Ya Gotta Believe" season came as a reliever in a crucial stretch of 5 games against Pittsburgh in late September. He relieved in 3 of those games, allowing no runs and pitching the last 4 innings for the win in a 13-inning nail biter that featured this legendary play:

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