Love and Hate in Nine Innings - Inning Three

The continuing story of a man's love for baseball and the team that tried his affections ...

Top of the Third – Tommy Davis

Through the early Sixties, while the Mets pitching staff was setting records for negative results, the offensive lineup showed occasional signs of individual competence. Older players such as Richie Ashburn and Frank Thomas managed to compete, or at least not to embarrass themselves in the batters box. Younger players such as Ron Hunt, Ron Swoboda and Ed Kranepool and young veterans such as Joe Christopher and Jim Hickman provided distinguishing moments in a less-than-distinguished lineup. The Mets dealt both Hunt and Hickman to the Dodgers after the 1966 season, in exchange for Tommy Davis, a two-time All-Star outfielder, two-time league batting champion and MVP second runner-up in 1962, when he set the current Dodger all-time record for RBIs in a season. Davis broke his ankle two seasons prior and was never the same player for the Dodgers. For the Mets, he represented a godsend, a consistent professional hitter in the middle of misbegotten batting order. By the end of the 1967 season, the Mets finally escaped the dank must of the cellar, losing less than one hundred games for the first time and finishing in ninth place, ahead of the Chicago Cubs.

Bottom of the Third – Tommy Davis (along with rookie Tom Seaver) earned slight consideration for League MVP at the end of the season. As a reward, the Mets traded Davis and Jack Fisher to the Chicago White Sox that off-season, in exchange for future World Series heroes Tommie Agee and Al Weis. Agee, like Davis, was a former Rookie of the Year, but I mourned the quick exit of the ex-Dodger’s bat from the lineup. Even so, the Fisher part of the deal bothered me most; a little piece of little me died that day. I started to work on learning the Seaver pitching motion.

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