Forgotten "Glue Guys" of the 60s: Remembering Al Weis, Rod Kanehl, and Jerry Buchek
- Manny Fantis
- 14 hours ago
- 7 min read
Al Weis, Rod Kanehl and Jerry Buchek carried the utility-player’s job through every phase of the Mets’ first decade—from expansion-era chaos to an improbable world championship.
On October 16, 1969, Al Weis stepped to the plate at Shea Stadium with the Mets trailing Baltimore, 3–2, in the seventh inning of World Series Game 5. Dave McNally threw a pitch that Weis lifted over the left-field wall, tying the game and jolting Shea into bedlam. The Mets went on to win, 5–3, and capture their first championship.
It was an almost absurdly perfect moment. Weis would finish his major-league career with a .219 batting average and only seven regular-season home runs. Every one of those seven had been hit on the road. His World Series drive was the only home run he ever hit in a home ballpark.
Yet Weis’s swing was more than a baseball miracle. It was the concluding chapter of a decade in which the Mets repeatedly depended upon players who lived between the starting lineup and the bench. Before Weis, there had been Rod Kanehl, the hustling embodiment of the lovable but historically inept expansion Mets. Between them came Jerry Buchek, a utility infielder who briefly became an everyday player and supplied unexpected power.
None possessed a glamorous statistical résumé. Together, however, Kanehl, Buchek and Weis help explain how the Mets traveled from 120 losses in 1962 to 100 victories and a championship in 1969.
The numbers show three different versions of the utility player. Kanehl offered speed, energy, and positional flexibility. Buchek supplied the most power. Weis contributed the least impressive regular-season batting line—but delivered the most important postseason hits.
Rod Kanehl: The utility man as folk hero
Rod Kanehl did not arrive in New York as a prized prospect. He had spent eight seasons in the minor leagues and was 28 years old when he finally reached the majors in 1962. What he did have was the confidence of Casey Stengel, who remembered Kanehl from their years in the Yankees organization and valued his speed, aggressiveness and willingness to play almost anywhere.
Kanehl earned the nickname “Hot Rod” because he seemed incapable of playing at anything less than full speed. In the Mets’ inaugural season, he appeared at every defensive position except pitcher and catcher. He batted .248 with 87 hits, 52 runs, four home runs, 27 RBIs and eight stolen bases in 133 games. He also made 22 errors in only 62 games at second base—a statistical contradiction that captured the early Mets perfectly. Kanehl could reach plays other players could not, but completing them was another matter.
What made Kanehl memorable was not polish. It was motion.
On April 28, 1962, he entered a game against Philadelphia as a pinch-runner and raced home from second on a wild pitch, scoring the deciding run in the first home victory in Mets history. He scored either the tying or winning run in seven of the club’s first 11 victories. On July 6, he hit the first grand slam in franchise history, connecting against former Yankees pitcher Bobby Shantz.
Kanehl’s statistics declined as the Mets began finding younger players. He hit .241 in 1963 and .232 in 1964, working as a pinch-hitter, pinch-runner and late-inning replacement. His versatility allowed Stengel to move him around the diamond, and his enthusiasm helped make three consecutive 100-loss seasons tolerable.
Over his entire major-league career—all of it with the Mets—Kanehl played 340 games and batted .241 with 192 hits, six home runs, 47 RBIs and 17 stolen bases. His 103 runs scored were more than twice his RBI total, an appropriate ratio for a player whose greatest value often came after he had reached base or entered as a runner.
After Kanehl was sent to the minor leagues following the 1964 season, a banner appeared at the Mets’ 1965 home opener: “The Mets Look Odd Without Hot Rod.” That may have been the most meaningful statistic of all. Kanehl had become one of the first players Mets fans loved not despite the team’s imperfections, but because he reflected them.
Jerry Buchek: The utility man with unexpected thunder
By 1967, the Mets were beginning to look less like an expansion act and more like a developing baseball club. Tom Seaver was arriving. Bud Harrelson was establishing himself at shortstop. Young pitchers were moving through the organization.
Jerry Buchek arrived from St. Louis just before the season and represented a different kind of utility player. He had already been a reserve on the Cardinals’ 1964 championship club, appearing in four World Series games and singling in his only at-bat. In New York, the opportunity was larger. The Mets needed a second baseman, and Buchek—who could also play shortstop and third—was given his first extended chance to become a regular.
He took advantage of it.
In 1967, Buchek played a career-high 124 games and batted .236 with 97 hits, 14 home runs and 41 RBIs. He started 92 games at second base, 14 at third and five at shortstop. His .375 slugging percentage was modest by league standards, but his 14 home runs ranked second on the Mets, behind Tommy Davis’s 16, and remained the franchise record for a second baseman until Jeff Kent hit 21 in 1993.
For perspective, Buchek’s 14 home runs in 1967 were one more than Kanehl, and Weis hit in their entire major-league careers combined. Kanehl finished with six; Weis finished with seven.
Buchek also had a gift for attaching his home runs to memorable games. In Seaver’s major-league debut on April 13, Buchek hit a two-run homer that gave the Mets an early lead in a 3–2 victory over Pittsburgh. A month later, he hit a go-ahead homer off Bob Gibson, ending Gibson’s nine-game winning streak against the Mets.
His most improbable moment came on July 9. The Mets trailed Atlanta, 4–3, with two outs and nobody on base in the ninth inning. Manager Wes Westrum sent Buchek to pinch-hit for Harrelson—even though Harrelson had already gone 4-for-4. Buchek homered to tie the game, and the Mets eventually won, 5–4, on a bases-loaded walk to Ron Swoboda.
Then, on September 22 against Houston, Buchek produced the finest game of his career. He hit a three-run homer in the eighth inning to put the Mets ahead and, after Houston tied the game, won it with another homer in the 11th. Buchek finished with six RBIs.
The surge did not last. In 1968, Buchek fell behind Ken Boswell and Phil Linz on the depth chart, played only 73 games and batted .182 with one home run and 11 RBIs. His two-year Mets totals settled at a .219 average, 15 home runs and 52 RBIs in 197 games.
Buchek was gone before the championship season, but his 1967 performance showed that even a struggling club could receive meaningful production from an unheralded player. He was a utility infielder who, for one season, became one of the Mets’ most dangerous home-run hitters.
Al Weis: The utility man as October legend
The Mets acquired Al Weis from the Chicago White Sox in December 1967 as part of the trade that also brought Tommie Agee to New York. Agee was considered the centerpiece, but new manager Gil Hodges had specifically insisted that Weis be included. Hodges wanted a dependable defender who could back up Harrelson at shortstop and Boswell at second.
Weis’s first season in New York offered little indication of what was coming. In his Mets debut, he played shortstop in a 24-inning game at Houston. In the bottom of the 24th, a ground ball went through his legs, allowing the only run to score in a 1–0 loss.
For the 1968 season, Weis batted .172 with a .234 on-base percentage and .204 slugging percentage. He collected 47 hits, one home run and 14 RBIs in 90 games. Defensively, however, he gave Hodges the flexibility he wanted, appearing in 29 games at second and 59 at short.
His 1969 regular-season statistics were only slightly better: a .215 average, 53 hits, two home runs and 23 RBIs in 103 games. But Weis’s value was concentrated in precisely the moments when the Mets needed him.
In July, while Harrelson was fulfilling an Army Reserve obligation, Weis started nine consecutive games at shortstop during a critical stretch against the Cubs and Expos. He played every inning, helped turn nine double plays and went 9-for-34 with two home runs and five RBIs. On July 15 at Wrigley Field, he hit a three-run homer in a 5–4 victory over the first-place Cubs. He homered again the following afternoon as the Mets won, 9–5, and cut Chicago’s divisional lead to four games.
Those July home runs were merely the rehearsal.
In the World Series against Baltimore, Weis drove in the Mets’ only run of Game 1 with a sacrifice fly. In Game 2, he came to the plate against McNally with two outs in the ninth inning and the score tied, 1–1. Weis singled home Ed Charles, giving New York a 2–1 victory and its first World Series win in franchise history.
Four days later, in Game 5, Weis faced McNally again and hit the home run that tied the championship-clinching game.
For the Series, Weis went 5-for-11 with four walks, three RBIs and a .455/.563/.727 batting line. His .455 average led the regulars on both teams and was more than twice his regular-season mark. Donn Clendenon received the official World Series Most Valuable Player Award. Still, Weis was selected for the Babe Ruth Award, presented by the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to its outstanding postseason performer.
The value beyond the batting line
Across their Mets seasons in the 1960s, Kanehl, Buchek and Weis combined to appear in 730 regular-season games. They totaled 424 hits, 24 home runs, 136 RBIs and 27 stolen bases. None batted higher than Kanehl’s .241.
Those are not Hall of Fame statistics. They are not even the numbers generally associated with everyday major-league stars.
For the Mets, those fragments became history.
Rod Kanehl gave spectators a reason to become emotionally attached to a 120-loss team. Jerry Buchek gave a last-place club an unexpected supply of home-run power. Al Weis gave a championship team the winning hit in one World Series game and the tying home run in another.
The stars made the 1960s Mets famous. The utility men completed their journey.
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