How the Franchise Went West

He had been baseball's golden boy, the handsome hero with the strong right arm who almost singlehanded wrought the Miracle of 1969--the young New York Mets' rise from happy-shabby obscurity to a World Series championship. In eleven seasons with the team, Tom Seaver had won the Cy Young Award three times. Only two weeks ago, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds, he chalked up the 42th shutout of his career, and in the process struck out ten Reds batters. This brought his lifetime strikeout total to 2,400 and pulled him ahead of Sandy Koufax (2,396 strikeouts) on the list of alltime strikeout leaders. The game was held up for three minutes as the Mets' faithful in New York's Shea Stadium stood to cheer.

After months of acrimonious bickering between Seaver and his team's front office, Mets fans seemed to sense that the game would be his farewell to New York. Sure enough, just hours before the trading deadline last week, the star, known among Mets fans as "the Franchise," was dispatched to the Cincinnati Reds for second-year Pitcher Pat Zachry, Utility Infielder Doug Flynn and two minor leaguers.

The trade, one of the most dramatic in baseball history, climaxed a 16-month dispute between a proud--if sometimes preachy--player and a stubborn management. Early in 1976, when Seaver balked at signing a new contract, Mets Board Chairman M. Donald Grant huffed that the pitcher was an "ingrate" who cared more about his wallet than his team. Seaver lashed back: "My loyalty is to my family." The war was on.

Both men took to airing their views to sympathetic reporters, who eagerly carried on the dispute in the New York tabloids. Eventually, Seaver signed a three-year contract fixing his salary at $225,000 per year, with elaborate performance clauses, e.g., bonus clauses which could increase his pay to $260,000 annually. But the damage had been done: Grant had threatened a trade, thus making a once unthinkable idea suddenly thinkable.

Irate Fans. Neither the Mets nor Seaver had had a good year in 1976. The team finished third in the National League's Eastern Division. Attendance slipped, and with interest picking up in the Yankees, New Yorkers began to regard the Mets less as lovable losers than as just losers, period. Seaver pitched well, but was hobbled by the Mets' impotent offense: the .246 team batting average was the lowest in the major leagues. When training opened this year, Seaver openly criticized Grant's refusal to enter the free-agent draft in search of needed hitting talent. Grant was also locked in a contract dispute with Slugger Dave Kingman, the team's single long-ball threat, and the effect of another round of debilitating negotiations showed up in Kingman's performance. Still unsigned, he was traded to the San Diego Padres within hours after Seaver was sent to the Reds.

In Seaver's view, Grant's tightfisted, unaggressive management consigned the club to a mediocre future. He asked that his contract be renegotiated. Grant, a Wall Street stockbroker, issued a statement outlining club policy against renegotiation, adding by way of explanation that "the contract is the fundamental cornerstone of our country and baseball as well." Seaver asked to be traded.

As the trading deadline neared, Seaver had second thoughts and appealed to Mets President Lorinda de Roulet. daughter of the late Joan Whitney Payson, the club's founder. "Tom had at least four conversations with Mother," said Whitney de Roulet, 23, a Mets public relations aide. "I felt that the talks were working out well and that Tom would remain with us." Indeed, Seaver left the dugout the night before he was traded to confer by telephone with Mrs. De Roulet. An agreement was apparently worked out. But next day, Seaver heard about a story by New York News Sports Columnist Dick Young, a staunch backer of Grant (Young's son-in-law is a Mets employee). The piece contained a belittling reference to Seaver and his wife Nancy. Seaver promptly called the Mets front office and announced: "Everything is off. I want out." That evening, to the unbounded joy of Cincinnati fans, he was a Red.

The Mets' switchboards were jammed by irate callers protesting the trade. The 8,915 fans who turned out for the first Seaver-less game in Shea came primarily to display their disgust through caustic banners. Shortstop Bud Harrelson, the star pitcher's close friend, found a much-coveted radio waiting in his locker after a tearful flight back from Atlanta. Said Harrelson: "That radio of his has been in the clubhouse since the beginning of time. I couldn't take it home because it's like part of the ballpark itself. That part of him is still here." For New York baseball fans, it is small consolation. For the rest of the league, Seaver's transplantation is terrifying news. At week's end baseball's best pitcher led baseball's best team to a 6-0 victory over Montreal. Seaver gave up only three hits, and made two himself, in his first start for the Reds.

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