Seaver’s death awakens memories in childhood fan
After my father, Tom Seaver was my childhood hero.
I say that as someone who is now loath to attach the word “hero” to a sports figure. Heroes are children battling life-threatening diseases. Heroes are those who give their own lives to save others. Heroes are the people who are there for you, no matter the cost.
Of course, language is flexible and mutable. The original Greek “heros” meant “protector” or “defender,” and every culture has heroes woven into their mythology. The ancient Greeks nearly filled an alphabet of heroes, from Achilles to Theseus.
Grantland Rice, a famous sportswriter who was at his peak of renown in the 1920s — the “Golden Age of Sports” — invented a new hero every day. Jack Dempsey. Babe Ruth. The Four Horsemen. Rice couldn’t carry Damon Runyon’s typewriter, but he was on newsreels.
I grew up on the Marvel Universe when it was not a Universe — it was comic books that you bought for 50 cents apiece with money from your newspaper route. I delivered an afternoon newspaper in the 1970s, just before afternoon newspapers went into extinction. I was a Mets fan and my hero was the Franchise, Tom Terrific.
I still remember tearing open a bundle of papers, ripping out a sports section and reading about Seaver winning his second Cy Young Award. It was sometime around Halloween, 1973. Seaver was 19-10, which is not exactly a sterling won-loss record. But he led the National League in ERA (2.08), complete games (18) and strikeouts (251).
Over the past 20 years, only one pitcher has reached double digits in complete games in a season (James Shields, Tampa Bay, 2011). Seaver pitched 231 complete games over 20 years with the Mets, Reds, White Sox and Red Sox.
Yes, yes, yes, the game has changed. We now live in a time where there are lefty-on-lefty specialists who come in to throw to one batter in the middle of the fifth. The game has changed.
It’s always changing.
Dead-ball vs. live-ball, spitball and post-spitball, high mound vs. lowered mound, 100 years without a designated hitter and 50 years with one, segregated era vs. post-segregation. Who had the greatest peak years? Who had the best long career? It’s impossible to say where Seaver ranks among the all-time greats.
In The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, published in 2001, James writes, “There is actually a good argument that Tom Seaver should be regarded as the greatest pitcher of all time . ... Seaver pitched for eight losing teams, several of them really terrible, and four other teams which had losing records except when Seaver was on the mound.”
The 1975 Mets were just such a team. They went 60-71 when Seaver wasn’t on the mound and 22-9 when Seaver got a decision. I remember tearing open a bundle of papers, ripping out a sports section and reading about Seaver winning his third Cy Young Award. I remember turning the pages with inkstained fingers until ...
There it was, the picture. Tom Seaver with his right hand raised three-quarter-arm, approaching release point, glove on left knee, right knee dragging in the dirt as he launched the whole of his 6-foot-1, 220-pound body toward home plate.
It was just like the poster I had on my bedroom wall.
By the time Seaver was traded to the Reds in 1977, the Hartford Times had folded. But the Cincinnati Post still survived. I can imagine a kid tearing open a bundle of Posts on an afternoon in October 1981, and looking for the picture. I can imagine the kid wondering how Seaver — who was 14-2 with a 2.54 ERA in a strike-shortened, split season — did not win his fourth Cy Young. Fernando Valenzuela was something, but he was no Tom Seaver.
Arguments persist about whether it is physically possible for a fastball to rise, but I will swear that Seaver’s fastball climbed belt-to-chin. Later in his career, he added pitches (flop-curve! change-up!) and survived on finesse until he was 44. In 1992, he became a first-ballot Hall of Famer with 98.8% of the votes, a record that stood until Ken Griffey Jr.’s induction in 2016.
Another hero of mind, my mother, insisted I was a Mets fan before the Miracle of 1969 — when Seaver won his first Cy Young and the Mets won their first World Series. I turned 5 about a month before the Mets beat the Atlanta Braves to win the pennant that year.
As my 56th birthday approached, the Hall of Fame announced that Seaver, who was suffering from dementia, Lyme disease and COVID-19, will now be warming up in another bullpen.
I got the news visa texts sent by my oldest child, two of my best friends and two of my siblings. They knew Tom Seaver was my hero, and there will be no more. marace@dispatch.com @Michaelarace1