41 RETURNS TO METS DUGOUT
AMAZIN’S HONOR SEAVER MEMORY, RALLY TO BEAT YANKS IN SUBWAY SERIES
Every member of the Mets put dirt on his right knee to symbolize Tom Seaver’s quintessential drop and drive delivery. As each player took the field, he stopped at his position and tipped his cap to No. 41, which hangs in the upper deck in left field.
The long-awaited Mets’ Seaver statue is in the process of being made, which takes about 18 months, and is expected to be unveiled in early 2021. Starting this weekend, the Mets will wear a uniform patch on the sleeve of their jerseys for the remainder of the year.
The Mets honored The Franchise in many ways in their return to Citi Field on Thursday for a Subway Series matchup — the team’s first game since the news that Tom Seaver died at the age of 75.
A No. 41 jersey hung in the Mets dugout. Purple and black bunting was displayed behind home plate, in addition to the bunting draped over the 41 Seaver Way entrance to Citi Field. The right field scoreboard was displayed in the style of Shea Stadium circa 1969.
Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered all flags at Mets ballparks in the state (Citi Field, NYSEG Stadium in Binghamton, MCU Park in Brooklyn and NBT Bank Stadium in Syracuse) to fly at half-staff. The strikeout board behind the left field foul pole displayed an in-memoriam for Seaver.
Despite the team’s brilliant attention to detail, perhaps no one recounted the finer points of Seaver’s legendary life better than his good friends and old teammates, Ron Swoboda and Ed Kranepool.
“He knew who he was,” Swoboda said. “He had both hands on the steering wheel and he knew where he was going. And that wasn’t true for all of us, but it was with Tom Seaver.”
Swoboda played with Seaver from 1967-70 and made that iconic catch in Game 4 of the 1969 World Series with Tom Terrific on the hill. He was in his third season in the big leagues when Se av er joined the Met sand Swoboda recalled the future Hall of Famer “looked like the finished article right out of the box.”
Seave r showed up to Shea Stadium prepared, focused and competitive. He didn’t need motivational meetings to get the Mets fired up. His teammates latched onto Seaver’s intensity and tried their best to adapt his mentality. But, no matter how hard they tried, no one could quite be like Seaver.
“You know who the great ones were,” said Swoboda. “And with Seaver you knew you had a level of greatness that you could latch on to … When you played behind Tom Seaver you were playing behind greatness.”
Kranepool adored Seaver’s confidence and the first baseman said he knew“from day one” that he “was going to be a star.” The Hall of Famer had everything going for him, Kranepool said, including poise, class and a great arm.
“It was a changing of the organization, a changing of the guard ,” Kranepool said of Seav er’ s arrival to the club .“We were a bad ball club in the beginning, we were young guys struggling to make a name for ourselves and we finally added the piece to the puzzle that was going to take us to the promised land.”
As much as Swoboda and Kranepool remember the good times, they can’t help but see their final memories of Seaver through a harsh and painful lens.
Seaver retired from public life in March 2019 due to his battle with Lewy body dementia. He died Monday due to complications from COVID-19. Swoboda remembered calling Seaver a couple of years ago for a detail about the 1969 championship series and he couldn’t remember anything.
“I realized then that this dementia thing had gotten in there like a thief and stolen these memories from him, ”Swo bod a said. “All I can think of is, for me, those memories are gold. And the idea that something could worm its way in and steal those was devastating. It was tragic. Tom was losing that stuff and that dementia was going to win.
“There’s nothing more disturbing than that and I was sad for Tom. I wondered if maybe this COVID-19 that was attendant to his passing might have spared him that long slow walk into nothingness that dementia represents.”
Swoboda will always remember the good day Seaver had on his vineyard when he visited him, alongside Art Shamsky, Jerry Koosman and Bud Harrelson, three years ago. Kranepool wanted to make the trip, but he was in the hospital undergoing surgery at the time.
The close-knit group of friends and teammates will miss Seaver dearly throughout their remaining years. Now, they look forward to the day Seaver’s statue will stand tall outside the gates of Citi Field. Swoboda has some ideas for the memorial.
“Does the word overdue touch on it?” Swoboda remarked on the timetable of the Mets’ Seaver statue. “I think, because his motion was so iconic, I would love to see something out there. I would love to see them capture his motion right at the delivery with his knee close to the mound as he comes through in his follow through. It was so iconically Tom.”