April 13, 1967 was a brisk and cloudy day in Flushing, Queens. The Mets were coming off five consecutive losing seasons and had just lost their Opening Day battle against the Pirates. For the second game of the season, with a paltry sum of 5,005 fans in attendance, then-Mets manager Wes Westrum decided a new face was ready for prime time at Shea Stadium.
That afternoon, there was reasonably no way that Tom Seaver — an enthusiastic 22-year-old from Fresno, Calif. — would know that 53 years from the day he made his major-league debut, and we suspect for many years after, he’d be known as “The Franchise.”
Seaver held the Pirates to two earned runs, six hits and four walks and struck out eight batters over 5.1 innings that day. He opened the game by giving up a double to right field to leadoff hitter Matty Alou, two-time All-Star and uncle to current Mets manager Luis Rojas. Seaver escaped damage in the first when he struck out future teammate Donn Clendenon to end the inning.
The rookie starter received some run support when second baseman Jerry Buchek crushed a two-run home run off Bucs southpaw Woodie Fryman. But Seaver gave both runs back on RBI singles to Roberto Clemente and Maury Wills. Mets skipper Westrum let his young right-hander work out of a few jams before pulling him in the sixth after Seaver hit Alou with a pitch. Reliever Chuck Estrada wound up getting the win for the Mets that day.
Seaver’s MLB debut was hardly perfect, but he gave fans a glimpse of his swing-and-miss stuff. He quickly signaled that greatness — and eventually Cooperstown — was just around the corner.
Seaver, now 75 years old, didn’t waste time pitching his name into baseball history. At the end of the 1967 season, his 16 wins, 18 complete games, 170 strikeouts and 2.76 ERA set new records for the club. He garnered 11 of 20 first-place votes for National League Rookie of the Year. Seaver became the first Met to win Rookie of the Year honors since the franchise’s inception in ’62.
Two years after his big-league debut, Seaver would win the first of his three Cy Young awards. But 1969 was special for a different reason. Even though Seaver was the star of the Mets ’69 championship team, he and many other teammates would go on to say then-manager Gil Hodges was the reason the Mets went all the way. Seaver went 25-7 that year, leading the majors in wins, and leading the Mets to their first-ever pennant win — after seven straight seasons of the club finishing last or second-to-last in the National League.
Dubbed “Tom Terrific” by fans, Seaver pitched for the Mets from 1967 to ’77 — plus a one-year stint in the summer of ’83. He won 311 games and struck out 3,640 batters across his 20-year career before retiring after the ’86 season. He played for the Cincinnati Reds, Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox and received 12 All-Star nods. In ’92, Seaver was elected into the Hall of Fame with 98.8% of the vote — a near-unanimous decision.
Mets ace Jacob deGrom, with back-to-back Cy Young awards under his belt, is vying to reach Seaver’s rather untouchable class of pitching. DeGrom won’t match Tom Terrific’s wins, but he’s a World Series ring and perhaps another Cy Young award away from asking Seaver to move over and make some room in Mets immortality.
“Blind people come to the park just to listen to him pitch,” Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson once famously said about Seaver. Jackson batted .226 (7-for-31) with a lifetime OPS of .932 against him, so it’s obvious why the two-time World Series winner sang Seaver’s praises.
But Jackson’s words rang true even in 2019, when thousands of fans filled the seats of Citi Field to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 championship team. Seaver, who was diagnosed with dementia and retired from public life last March, did not attend the ceremony. But his presence was felt and his lore was honored by the Mets that day.
The Franchise. A moniker like that is designed to outlast generations of Mets fans and Seaver’s name, plus everything he personified, will be remembered for many decades to come.
