Seaver, whose arm led Mets, dead at 75
NEW YORK — Tom Seaver, the galvanizing leader of the Miracle Mets 1969 championship team and a pitcher who personified the rise of expansion teams during an era of radical change for baseball, has died. He was 75.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame said Wednesday night that Seaver died Monday from complications of Lewy body dementia and COVID-19. Seaver spent his final years in Calistoga, California. His family announced in March 2019 he had been diagnosed with dementia and had retired from public life.
He continued working at Seaver Vineyards, founded by the three-time National League Cy Young Award winner and his wife, Nancy, in 2002 on 116 acres at Diamond Mountain in the Calistoga region of Northern California.
Seaver was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 1991, and it reoccurred in 2012 and led to Bell’s Palsy and memory loss, the Daily News of New York reported in 2013.
“He will always be the heart and soul of the Mets, the standard which all Mets aspire to,” Mike Piazza, a former New York Mets catcher and Hall of Famer, wrote on Twitter when Seaver’s dementia diagnosis was announced.
Nicknamed “Tom Terrific” and “The Franchise,” Seaver won 20 games or more in a season five times and the was voted the NL’s top rookie in 1967. In an MLB career that spanned from 1967 to 1986, he had a 311-205 record with a 2.86 ERA, 3,640 strikeouts and 61 shutouts. He became a constant on magazine covers and as a media presence, calling postseason games on NBC and ABC even while still an active player.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1992 when he appeared on 425 of 430 ballots for a then-record 98.84%. His mark was surpassed in 2016 by Ken Griffey Jr., again in 2019 when Mariano Rivera became the first unanimous selection by baseball writers, and in 2020, when Derek Jeter fell one vote short of a clean sweep. His plaque in Cooperstown lauds him as a “power pitcher who helped change the Mets from lovable losers into formidable foes.” He changed not only their place in the standings but the franchse’s stature in people’s minds.
He pitched for the Mets until 1977, when he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds after a public spat with chairman M. Donald Grant because of Seaver’s desire for a new contract. It was a clash that inflamed baseball fans in New York.
“My biggest disappointment? Leaving the Mets the first time and the difficulties I had with the same people that led up to it,” Seaver told The Associated Press ahead of his Hall of Fame induction in 1992. “But I look back at it in a positive way now. It gave me the opportunity to work in different areas of the country.”
He threw his only no-hitter for the Reds in June 1978 against the St. Louis Cardinals and was traded back to New York after the 1982 season. Mets general manager Frank Cashen blundered by leaving Seaver off his list of 26 protected players, though, and in January 1984 he was claimed by the Chicago White Sox as free agent compensation for losing pitcher Dennis Lamp to the Toronto Blue Jays.
While pitching for the White Sox, Seaver earned his 300th win at Yankee Stadium and did it in style with a six-hitter in a 4-1 victory in New York.