For the two old southpaws, both now in their 70s, the statue that will soon dominate Citi Field is a source of both joy and sorrow, magnificence and melancholy. Sometime after 10:30 Friday morning someone will pull a protective covering off the 3,200 pounds of bronze and stainless steel, and once more The Franchise will belong to the franchise.
Tom Seaver, dropping-and-driving into forever, right-knee mud smudge and all.
“It will make me so happy to know that they are appropriately honoring the greatest player in the history of the New York Mets,” Jerry Koosman told The Post on the phone this week. “And it will make me sad to know my friend and brother won’t be there. He was the very best of all of us. I wish he could see it.”
Said Jon Matlack: “He was the consummate pro. He pitched the right way because he did everything in his life the right way. He worked hard. He studied the game. He treated people with respect. You couldn’t ask for a better teammate or a better guy to work with and work alongside. You couldn’t ask for a better role model.”
There won’t be a dry eye anywhere in Queens County when the Seaver statue is unveiled, a long-overdue tribute to the most essential player in Mets history. Fans are, in many ways, still grieving his passing from COVID complications and Lewy body dementia in September 2020. But Seaver was that rare athlete who wasn’t simply revered by the folks in the stands. Talk to the old Mets. Start with his closest co-workers. And you will understand.
“I didn’t just like him,” Koosman said. “I admired him.”
There was a moment, in the mind’s eye, anyway, when the three of them were going to be young and making National League hitters look foolish forever. Seaver and Koosman had actually broken camp together in 1967, and formed an instant bond as the new-guy pitchers. After Koosman was sent to Jacksonville for most of the ’67 season, it was Seaver who blossomed into the Mets’ first legitimate star, winning 16 games, capturing the NL’s Rookie of the Year.
A year later, it was Koosman’s turn: a 19-12 record, a 2.08 ERA. He finished second for ROY, losing out to Johnny Bench by one vote. Together, Seaver and Koosman announced that the Mets would no longer be a laughingstock. Seaver became a superstar, Koosman his trusty sidekick, and one of the best big-game pitchers in team history.
“We got better and better because we challenged each other every day we were teammates,” Koosman said. “We were both extremely competitive and we didn’t ever want the other guy to outdo us too much.”
So they would invent dozens of competitions, games-within-the-games: they’d challenge each other to see who could throw the fewest pitches in a 1-2-3 inning. They’d see who could saw off more bats during this or that start.
“And there was always hitting,” Matlack said with a laugh. “That’s when things got really interesting.”
When Matlack arrived for good at age 22 in April of 1972, he discovered he would be entering one of the great baseball laboratories of all time.
“On one side of my locker is Jerry Koosman, one of the two or three best left-handers in the National League, and of course me being lefty, too, we immediately hit it off because we were always looking how to finagle our way past hitters,” said Matlack, who won Rookie of the Year in 1972, going 15-10 with a 2.32 ERA and four shutouts.
“And on the other is Tom Seaver, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, lefty or righty, and watching him was like watching a case study of how to do everything right: eat well, stay in condition, how to be good with fans, how much sleep you needed. He was very serious.”
“But not always,” Koosman said. “If there was some hijinks in the clubhouse, chances are Tom was behind it, though you’d never know it till it was too late.”
Both men laugh easily when they talk about Seaver. But, like so many of their teammates, the laughter is often quickly met with an inevitable strain of sorrow. He was only 75 when he died. The Mets knew they were opening a new ballpark years before. At Yankee Stadium they’d have opened the new joint without home plate before they’d leave out a monument to Babe Ruth; Seaver was, and remains, the Mets’ Ruth.
So Friday, an old oversight will be air-brushed away. Nancy Seaver will be there, as will their daughters. Two of the Seaver grandkids, Tom and Tobin, will throw out the first pitch of the new season a bit later. And just to the right of the old Big Apple in the parking lot, Tom Seaver will drop-and-drive one more time. The Mets kept getting rid of him as a player. Now he is theirs, eternally. Not even M. Donald Grant or Frank Cashen can ever change that.
“I wish I could watch him pitch tomorrow,” Jon Matlack said. Jerry Koosman had a different yearning.
“I wish,” No. 36 said of No. 41, two of five retired Mets numbers, “that he could see all of this. I wish he could be at the ballpark. I wish he could hear the fans one more time.”
