Tom Terrific, the greatest Met, is dead

UncleScoopy

Mets legend Tom Seaver dies at 75 after battle with dementia

“Seaver had dropped out of public life in March last year after being diagnosed with dementia. He spent the remainder of his life at his home in California, reportedly dying peacefully in his sleep of complications of Lewy body dementia and COVID-19. The New York Daily News reported that Lyme disease also played a part in his death.”

311 lifetime wins with a 2.86 ERA.

Led the league in wins three times; ERA three times – that was six different seasons. Led the league in strikeouts five times.

Won the Cy Young Award three times. Also finished second twice and third twice. Totals: nine times in the top five, eleven times in the top ten.

Struck out 200 or more in nine consecutive seasons. Nobody else has ever done that.

Led the 1969 Mets to the World Series win with 25 wins in the regular season and two more in post-season competition.

9 thoughts on “Tom Terrific, the greatest Met, is dead”

  1. I was in a Dollar General store yesterday. The friend I went with likes to look at the toy section. Among other things, they had sets of miniature balls (toy toys, so to speak). They consisted of a football, a basketball, and a soccer ball. No baseballs. How things have changed!

  2. “”Did I ever tell you about the dinner I organize at Cooperstown every year?” he said once. “It’s me, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Gaylord Perry and Warren Spahn. Sandy and Gibby are the only ones without 300 wins. You know what we call them?” He paused. “Our fourth and fifth starters.”
    TS, as reported by T. J. Quinn in ESPN

  3. I was born in 1968 and Tom had been traded before I really started paying attention to baseball. But Seaver was the greatest player in Mets history. I knew that before I really understood that baseball was a thing. He should have spent his whole career with the Mets, but M. Donald Grant perpetrated a massacre instead. A man who was a single number away from being the answer to life, the universe, and everything deserved better. My deepest condolences to his friends and family. I am happy he is no longer suffering, but there is no joy in Metsville today.

  4. I’m a Reds fan, his run with Cincinnati was underrated and he likely was robbed of a World Series in 1981 when the season was strike shortened. So the Reds end up with the best record overall in baseball, and somehow didn’t end up in the playoffs because of idiotic method determined to be eligible for the playoffs.

    Kind of similar to now, where baseball has never really gotten hold of a playoff method that is equitable and allows teams to complete in a series length long enough to be representative of the regular season.

    1. I ‘ve had this discussion from time-to-time, about how playoff baseball is more dissimilar from the regular season than playoffs in other sports. Seven vs. 162 games is such a small sample size that you do extreme things with personnel management (especially with pitchers) that you would never do the rest of the year.

      1. Moneyball by Michael Lewis covers this topic in depth. Great book and an expose of the early days of sabermetrics. Changed the game forever. People who say “but he never won a World Series” don’t realize how meaningless it is in the grand scheme of actual performance. But I don’t mind having a season based on skill and a playoff based on luck. It’s tradition.

  5. My favorite TS story: In 1968, after winning a game, TS arrived at his locker to the usual crowd of beat writers. They informed him that at 34-34, this was the latest in any season that the Mets had been at .500. They joked about having some champagne. Tom replied “if you want to laugh about the old Mets, go call Casey. I’ll have champagne when we win the World Series.”

  6. The NYT reported that Covid-19 played a role. “ The cause was complications of Lewy body dementia and Covid-19, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

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