Meet the Met

New book promises ‘definitive’ look at pitching legend Tom Seaver

GREENWICH — When former Greenwich resident Tom Seaver died in September, the baseball world lost a pitching legend, considered to be the best player to ever put on a New York Mets uniform.

Now, noted baseball writer Bill Madden has completed “Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life,” a biography of the Hall of Famer, based on interviews and a relationship that developed over decades as Seaver established himself as one of baseball’s best-ever pitchers and then broadcaster for the Yankees and Mets.

“I wanted this to be the definitive book on Tom Seaver,” said Madden, a member of the Hall of Fame’s writers wing and an institution on the sports pages of the New York Daily News. “When people talk about Tom Seaver, I want them to say, ‘You gotta read Madden’s book because it’s all in there.’ That’s the approach I took for this book. I wanted it to be definitive. I didn’t want to leave anything out. I hope I didn’t.”

The book covers Seaver’s time with the Mets, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago White Sox and his end-of-career stint with the Boston Red Sox. It scales the triumphs of 1969 and 1973 with the Mets and delves into his trade to the Reds in 1977 — an event so infamous it is known to Mets fans as the “Midnight Massacre.”

In exploring that trade, Madden reveals Seaver’s acrimonious relationship with Mets Chairman of the Board M. Donald Grant. A fellow Greenwich resident, Grant once marveled how Seaver, whose father was a champion amateur golfer, ever got into the Greenwich Country Club. When Seaver became involved in the player’s labor union, Grant came up to him one day and questioned whether he was a communist.

The two often clashed over Seaver’s contract, a dispute that involved Daily News columnist Dick Young.

Grant and Young are often painted as the villains in the subsequent trade of Seaver to Cincinnati, which put Madden in an interesting position while writing the book, as Young was not only his boss, but his mentor, he said. That didn’t stop Madden from digging into the machinations behind the trade, however.

“You are going to find out in this book how Seaver’s relationship with the Mets went bad, and how he never reconciled with the Mets,” Madden said. “A lot of people think he did but he didn’t. To his dying day he never reconciled with the Mets and there’s a reason for that.”

Madden described Seaver as “probably the most intelligent player that I’ve ever covered” as he recalled seeing him doing the New York Times crossword at his locker before a game when other players were flipping through a Playboy.

“What I wanted to do for this book was show the reader who the real Tom Seaver was, beyond this great pitcher and great athlete and this icon of New York,” Madden said. “I think it’s in there. You’re going to learn a lot about Seaver as a person as opposed to Seaver as the great baseball player.”

Madden and Seaver’s bond was sealed during one of the more embarrassing episodes in Mets history. After reacquiring Seaver from the Reds prior to the 1983 season, then-General Manager Frank Cashen left the pitcher off a protected list of players who couldn’t be chosen as compensation by teams that had lost players to free agency.

Madden discovered that, not only had Seaver been left unprotected, but the Chicago White Sox were going to select him, bringing a sudden and unexpected end to a popular homecoming. Madden had unearthed a major exclusive, one he said was probably the biggest story he ever broke for the Daily News.

But he chose to hold onto it until he could talk to Seaver, who hadn’t been told anything by the Mets or the commissioner’s office.

“I got the story confirmed by the Mets but before I could write it, I figured I owed it to Seaver to call him rather than blindside him with a story in the paper the next day,” Madden said. “I called him and told him what was going on and he was stunned.

“He thanked me for calling him, and the irony of all of this was if this had happened today this could have never happened,” Madden said. “We sat on that story all day and all night and didn’t put it in until the last edition of the paper, which went off the presses at 1:30 in the morning. In the age of Twitter and Facebook and all that other stuff you can’t sit on a story for five minutes much less eight hours.”

That began a close relationship that lasted until Seaver’s death this year. Seaver was suffering from dementia and Lyme disease, and had been diagnosed with coronavirus before his death.

Madden’s interviews with

Seaver that make up the heart of the book were done for a documentary that ended up being put together by director Ed Burns. But a lot of the anecdotes about his career and life ended up on the cutting room floor, leaving plenty for the book, Madden said.

Work on the documentary began in 2015, and the first set of interviews were done at Seaver’s California vineyard in 2016, when Seaver was already starting to show the signs of the dementia, with another set in 2017.

“There was a marked difference in him out on the vineyard between 2016 and 2017,” Madden said. “We did two shoots out there and in the second year in 2017 he couldn’t remember anything about his career.”

When the Hall of Fame put out a statement confirming that Seaver had dementia and was not going to appear in public anymore, Madden said he was convinced by Teri Thompson, a former sports editor at the Daily News who worked with Madden on the documentary, to do a book.

“I didn’t want to do a book with (Seaver), partly because his memory was going and it was going to be a problem, and I didn’t feel comfortable doing a book about him without his permission,” Madden said. “But Teri said, ‘Bill you’ve got to do the book and if you don’t someone else is going to do it and you’re going to kick yourself.’”

In addition to hours of interviews with Seaver and his wife Nancy, Madden spoke with other players including Reds Hall of Famer and Seaver teammate Johnny Bench.

“I was glad as soon as I started it,” Madden said. “I said Teri’s right and I’m the only guy who can do this book properly. I don’t mean to sound conceited but no one knew him the way I knew him, at least among the writers.”

The writer said he’s proud of the book.

“I think I was fair to him,” Madden said. “I think it’s the book he would have wanted written about him even though there is some negative stuff in there.”

“Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life” will be available on Nov. 24

Anonymous / Associated Press file Tom Seaver, pitcher for the New York Mets, is shown during spring training in March 1968.