Love and Hate in Nine Innings - Inning Five

Top of the Fifth – Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones

My mother’s Aunt Angie lived in the apartment above ours on Hobart Avenue in the Bronx. One night, when her grandson was visiting from Texas, we two boys sat in her living room and watched a Mets game. A rookie pitcher started for the Mets that evening, his name forgotten in the misty memory of cup-of-coffee prospects. Aunt Angie was passing through when the rookie’s name came up in the broadcast. It didn’t seem a very odd name but, upon hearing its mention, she stated that baseball players have such unusual names. Mind you, this remark came from someone named Angelina Prestopino nee Aloisi.

Still, in the annals of odd names, the Mets have had their share of weird spellings and sounds to list. I’ll skip the nicknames and stick with given and surnames (in no particular order): Al Luplow (an expert in the restraint of short people), Bobby Pfeil (yes, the “P” is as silent as his bat), Don Hahn (or, as he was known to Jamaican fans, Don Hahn, mon), Chris Cannizzaro (Aunt Angie would have approved), Jesse Gonder (what’s good for the gos …), Amos Otis (picture cookies on an elevator), Clem Labine (Jethro Bodine’s biological father), Carlton Willey (term given for an erection caused by smoking low-tar cigarettes), Frank Lary (as opposed to an evasive Lawrence), Danny Napoleon (as French as French Fries and minus a cream center), Bob Friend (but if your name is Fred, watch out), Cal Koonce (what do you call someone who flunks out of UCal?), Al Schmelz (no, this one is way too easy), Les Rohr (more cowbell), Joe Moock (who you calling a Moock?), Jack Aker (symptomatic of overdoing the masturbatory thing) and Jerry Cram (recipe: mix one woman with several Jerrys and wait for the scream). I could go on, but this is getting tedious.

If you’re still with me, my favorite unusual player name for the Mets is Cleon Jones. It just reeks of history, a prince of Troy dumped unceremoniously into the delta swamps of Mobile, Alabama. Cleon was an outfielder with an unusual combination of a right-handed bat and left-throwing arm. He also had a vertical scar moving skyward from his upper lip, which made him appear older than he was, and a little threatening. He spent twelve mostly-productive years as a Met, never exactly displaying the pop of a corner outfielder but amassing a career batting average over .280. In 1969, Cleon finished third in the National League batting race and ranked seventh in the vote for league MVP. One night during the regular season, while playing in an outfield flooded by an earlier torrential rain, he hesitated in pursuing a ball hit in his direction. After the play was over, manager Gil Hodges left the first-base dugout and took a long, slow walk out to Cleon in left field. They chatted briefly and then both men took the long, slow walk together back to the dugout. It seemed shocking at the time it happened, but Cleon insists that the conversation centered on the condition of the field and its potential to aggravate an existing injury. For the fans watching, as well as his teammates, it appeared that Hodges was making a general statement to the team regarding his impatience with any player who was “dogging it.” I believe Cleon. It must be the scar.

George Thomas Seaver enjoyed an equally long and even more successful career for the Mets. Voted National League Rookie of the Year in 1967, he went on to win three Cy Young awards as a Met. There’s nothing unusual about his name, other than the fact that he didn’t answer to “George.” Tom Seaver was fortified white bread, as Southern California as Cleon Jones was southern. Because he became the first legitimate Met Hall of Fame inductee, along with the tributes amassed in a great career, Seaver is looked upon as an icon and Mets fans would, even today, line up for miles to kiss his World Series ring. However, I always found him to be somewhat phony. Maybe it was the clash between his California realities versus those of my Bronx. In any case, I admired his skill as a pitcher … and I still do.

Bottom of the Fifth – Cleon Jones was undone as a Met during spring training in 1975, when St. Petersburg police discovered him in the back of his van, naked and in the company of a white woman. He was arrested for indecent exposure, forced by the then Chairman/GM M. Donald Grant to make an embarrassing public apology and subsequently released by the team in July of that year. I don’t know what Grant found more disturbing; the nudity, the white woman, or the fact that he slept in a van.

As for Tom Terrific, when manager Yogi Berra gave him the ball to start game six of the 1973 World Series, Seaver’s arm was in no condition to handle the short rest. My father always blamed Yogi for losing the last two games (and the series) to the Oakland As, but to my mind, Seaver had earned sufficient status by then to decline and defer to George Stone. We’ll never know what would have happened, but even if Stone failed, Seaver could take the ball for game seven in reasonable physical shape to compete. I remembered that on June 15, 1977 when the Midnight Massacre occurred, after Seaver held firm in his demand to M. Donald Grant for a contract that was commensurate with the then going rate for star pitchers or else, only to have Grant call his bluff and trade him to Cincinnati. Tom cried at the press conference that night. At that point, like Grant, I had had enough.

Next up – The Broadcast Team