Both of our baseball teams have experienced periods of turmoil and annoyance so far this season, as the first three months have so often tilted away from them. It is nice to have an easy reference point that things could always be a little crazier, a little zanier, a little nuttier. It is nice to remember 1973.
It started early, both sides: The Yankees had their Mike Kekich-Fritz Peterson family-swap story to greet everyone with at their spring-training home in Fort Lauderdale. Over in St. Pete, poor Yogi Berra was put into a terrible position late in the spring when the Mets’ other legend-in-residence, Willie Mays, simply went AWOL one day and returned to a fine and as stern a reprimand as Yogi could muster.
Then the season began, and things went very well for the Yankees for a while, and they went very poorly for the Mets for a while, and by this week in ’73 the Yankees were a couple of games up on the Orioles, Red Sox and Tigers in the AL East while the Mets were bottoming out in the NL East, 12 games behind the first-place Cubs and 4 ½ behind the fifth-place Pirates.
Then things really got … well, weird, which was interesting because at exactly the same moment in time the Watergate hearings were dominating the front of the newspapers and the Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs “Battle of the Sexes” tennis free-for-all was announced, seizing the headlines in the back of the papers.
But baseball was still king in New York, and that’s where things really started to get funny. In the pages of this newspaper one afternoon, readers were greeted by an old-fashioned poll: Who should be fired for the Mets’ futility? The candidates were listed with a box next to the names:
1. Yogi Berra
2. GM Bob Scheffing
3. Chairman of the Board M. Donald Grant
4. All of the Above
5. None of the Above
Now, this was 1973. In 2023, people conduct polls on Twitter every few hours, and the responses come pouring in and there’s more voters than a presidential election. In ’73 you had to be moved enough to grab a pair of scissors, cut the ballot out of the paper, get a pen and check one of the boxes, put it in an envelope, address it, stamp it, then put it in the mailbox.
Still, some 4,113 people did just that, “flooding the Post mail room daily,” according to Post baseball writer Maury Allen. And after a week the results were thus:
1. Scheffing: 1,448 votes
2. Grant: 1,267
3. Berra: 611
4. All: 486
5. None: 201
6. One hundred folks actually wrote in alternate choices, the blame falling on everyone from Martha Mitchell to Richard Nixon to Joe Namath. One simply said, “I abstain.”
Grant, who was actually visibly angry to receive such a high total, actually said, “As long as the fans back that up by coming to the ballpark, I’m satisfied. Public opinion will carry the day.” And it wasn’t just the poll numbers that backed that up: Despite the teams’ disparate seasons, and despite it being the swan-song season of the old Yankee Stadium, at the time the Mets were outdrawing the Yankees nearly 2-1.
At the same time, a most extraordinary thing that had been brewing behind the scenes died a quiet death. Grant, it turned out, was itching for weeks to fire Berra, who remained popular among fans despite the team’s struggles. And he had a plan.
George Steinbrenner was in his early hours as Yankees manager, but he had already driven team president Michael Burke nuts, and Burke resigned in April. GM Lee MacPhail was next in the line of fire, and despite the Yankees being in first place, he was looking for a graceful exit (and, indeed, a few months later he’d be elected AL president and was out the door). Grant devised a three-step plan:
1. Fire Berra.
2. Make Scheffing the Mets manager.
3. Hire MacPhail as Mets GM.
There was some momentum behind it, too. Then came the poll, and as Grant no doubt immediately realized, that wasn’t going to work. For MacPhail, who’d seen what happened when Leo Durocher switched sides in the New York baseball summer of 1948, Dodgers to Giants, it became a non-issue, especially once he saw he had an alternative looming.
To review, let’s transpose that nutty idea to 2023:
1. Fire Buck Showalter.
2. Make Billy Eppler the Mets manager.
3. Hire Brian Cashman as Mets GM.
Twitter would break. By the way? Public opinion really did carry the day, and carried Yogi and the Mets all the way to Game 7 of the World Series that year. Who says fans shouldn’t have a vote?
Vac’s Whacks
No matter how aggravating the seasons have been at times on either side of the Triborough, it is a fine baseball thing to see the kids, Anthony Volpe and Francisco Alvarez, mashing the ball as they have of late.
The Nets are very quietly putting together a fine summer so far.
I sort of wanted “You Hurt My Feelings” to be just a little better than it was, truth be told, but let’s face it: Any movie with Julia Louis-Dreyfus is 90 or so minutes well spent.
There have been other hours of television as good as the “Fishes” episode of “The Bear” — season 2, episode 6 — but I can’t think of a lot that have been better. I’ve watched three times, and I’m not done yet.
Whack Back at Vac
Kevin Bryant: The Knicks will never be elite if Julius Randle is your No. 1 or 2 option. His poor ball handling in crunch time rules him out as a go-to. If you’re right about shaking up the core, I’m keeping RJ Barrett and moving Randle.
Vac: The Knicks would move Randle, but not for 60 cents on the dollar, nor should they. Though the fans are hot and cold on him, you don’t just give away a guy who’s been All-NBA two of the past three years.
William Joosten: Luis Severino is not just having an off year to me, I think something is wrong with him. He is throwing basketballs up there. Sad to see.
Vac: There are few things more depressing in sports than an ultra-confident athlete stripped of his swagger. That’s Severino right now. I hope he finds it again. I really do.
@whrlwndsprtlvng: How come more isn’t made of the fact that no one has managed a Yankees team as long as Aaron Boone has without winning a World Series?
@MikeVacc: You should see my inbox on morning-afters like Friday morning after Orioles 14, Yankees 1. Then you’d wonder if anyone exists who DOESN’T obsess about that.
@BostonHeraldHS: TNT’s got to hook up the Van Gundy brothers. It’s too obvious.
@MikeVacc: I’m pretty sure I’d sign up for a Van Gundy Brothers Channel.
