Lancaster Papers
Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, PA)
July 16, 2004
The magic of 1969, remembered - Ron Swoboda, October star of the Miracle Mets, savors his good fortune
Author: Kevin Freeman
LANDISBURG - He was a mediocre outfielder with occasional lightning in his bat. More than a few fly balls were "adventures," but maybe that's what made him lovable. He fit right in with a team more noted for its bumbling than winning. But when magic struck the New York Mets in 1969, Ron Swoboda was right in the middle of it. To his credit, Swoboda admits that his post-baseball life would be lived in near anonimity if it wasn't for the Miracle Mets. Even so, one wonders why grown men would pay handsomely to venture to a dot on the Pennsylvania map to play the game with this guy.
Why would a reporter make the same trek? Hey, even reporters had favorite players when they were young. Why not Tom Seaver or Jerry Koosman or Tommie Agee or Wayne Garrett? Some reporters are too old to remember the whys. Just the whos.
In this case, Swoboda was the who. A career .242 hitter, Swoboda hit 73 home runs in nine seasons with the Mets, Yankees and Expos. Neither stat will get him into the Hall of Fame. He whiffed 647 times, once for every four times he stepped to the plate. But there he was Wednesday afternoon, suited up in his white uniform with "Mets' in script on the front of his shirt and a No. 4 on the back. "Rocky," as he was nicknamed, walked onto the Doubleday Field of Dreams field in Landisburg, near Carlisle, sharing a laugh with the fantasy players, many of whom will remember the summer of '69 not so much for the moon landing but what happened in Flushing, New York.
He is 60 now (yes, even boyhood heroes grow old), yet he is at home in this setting. He loves shooting the breeze with these guys from the third base coach's box or while delivering a pitch. He's able to do so because the '69 Mets, who outdueled the Chicago Cubs for the NL East pennant, beat the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs and then toppled the All-Star-laden Orioles, won it all.
"I was scuffling just trying to stay in the big leagues," he said, talking about that magical summer. "If you're lucky enough to get into the World Series, some moments become benchmarks and they are moments you can look back on. That's a privilege. All I was trying to do was play baseball."
Swoboda's biggest "moment'' came in Game Four of the series (although he did hit .400 in the series, going 6-for-15). Swoboda, playing right field, dove to his left and, with outstretched glove hand and body parallel to the ground, speared Brooks Robinson's dying line drive. Frank Robinson tagged up at third and scored the tying run but the catch was, in today's parlance, a web gem. "There's been some second-guessing about whether I should have even tried to make that catch," Swoboda said. "I took what I thought was the shortest route to intersect the flight of the ball and was lucky it was still in the air when I got there." The Mets won that game in 10 innings.
Earlier that season, the Mets were in St. Louis, facing Steve Carlton. Carlton struck out a then-major league record 19 batters in the game. Swoboda? He hit a pair of two-run homers to lead the Mets to a 4-3 victory. "That was a funny thing," he said. "I wasn't swinging the bat too good prior to getting to St. Louis. But at the new Busch Stadium, they had a batting cage behind the left field fence. "I asked Ralph Kiner, who was a Mets broadcaster and a pretty good hitter in his day (40 or more homers in five straight seasons), to look at my swing. After that session, I got in a groove."
Carlton fanned Swoboda twice that day but Swoboda also went deep, both times after Carlton had two strikes on him. "I hit a fast ball on the first and a slider that didn't get far enough inside, on the second," he said.
A Baltimore native, Swoboda hasn't exactly lived off his few "moments" in the majors. After his final season in 1973, he went into broadcasting, doing local sports in New York and New Orleans, where he now lives. Some of his time, these days, is devoted to writing his Swoboda At Large column for New Orleans Magazine. He also owns a 70-acre tract of undeveloped land, primarily woods, in northern Maryland, not far from the Pennsylvania border. He bought the land with his 1969 World Series check.
Otherwise, he returns vicariously to that summer of fulfilled dreams. Dreams that came true for him and Mets fans everywhere. "All of these things, the autograph sessions, the fantasy camps, are the result of 1969," he said. "If I'm not lucky enough to be part of that team and win the World Series, I doubt I would have been invited to one card show."
The magic of that summer has not faded for guys like Bob Kurpiel of Staten Island, who brought his sons to rural Pennsylvania to play ball with one of dad's fondest baseball memories. No, Swoboda wasn't the greatest at anything. He was a workmanlike, sometimes exciting ballplayer who did a few great things.
"I try to be grateful for the time I was allotted," Swoboda said. "I tried to be the best player I could be and it lasted as long as I could make it last."
Now, he drags out the memories, much to the delight of old Mets fans and a reporter, who, too, was once a boy.
Kevin Freeman's e-mail address is kfreemanlnpnews.com.
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