In Memoriam: Jerry Koosman — "You Made a Good Pick"

Some of these are harder than others. This one is the hardest.

Jerry Koosman — Kooz — the big left-hander who won the two biggest games in Mets history and then, eight years later, sat in a television studio and confessed to the greatest practical joke ever pulled in a major league clubhouse, died this morning in Osceola, Wisconsin, surrounded by his family, after battling multiple illnesses. He was 83.

Jay Horwitz, who knew him as well as anyone, wrote the Mets' announcement, and Jay got it exactly right: "The 1969 Mets had a multitude of heroes, but no one was bigger than Jerry Koosman."

Tom Seaver was The Franchise. But there was a whole generation of us who grew up Koosman guys, the way a generation before us picked Ali or Frazier and never apologized for it. I told him so, on the record, when he came on my radio show in 2010. We'll get to his answer. First, you should hear the man the way I got to hear him — because Jerry Koosman in full storytelling mode was one of the great pleasures of this job.

He almost never got here at all. The Mets found him because his catcher in the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss, John Lucchese — whose father was an usher at Shea Stadium — tipped them off, and scout Red Murff signed him in 1964. Two springs later his car was totaled driving to spring training. He called minor league director Joe McDonald, and as he told it to me: "Joe McDonald wired us 50 bucks so we could get bus tickets to get to spring training." Then, when the front office met to decide which kids to cut, his name came up — and the $50 saved his career. "Hey, Koosman owes me 50 bucks yet, and let's hang on until we get the money back. And so they did."

Fifty dollars. The Mets once nearly released the winningest left-hander in franchise history over an unpaid fifty-dollar loan. There ought to be a plaque.

His debut, April 14, 1967, at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia, was pure Koosman — comedy first, dominance immediately after. Sent to warm up, he was throwing so wild that pitching coach Harvey Haddix took cover: "He went behind the screen because I was throwing somewhat wild. He didn't feel safe standing out there by the catcher." Haddix waved; Koosman thought he was being asked if he was ready and kept throwing. Finally the umpire walked all the way down to the bullpen to fetch him: "Hey kid, you're in the game." Koosman's review of his first day in the big leagues: "I went in the game, took my warm-up pitches, and pitched three and two-thirds hitless innings against the Phillies."

By 1968 he was a star: 19–12 with a 2.08 ERA and seven shutouts, an NL rookie record. He pitched the Shea home opener that April — I was in the stands, eight years old, ten days shy of nine, and I never forgot it, because he was already my guy. "That was a big game for me," he said. "It was unbelievable." That summer he closed out the only 1–0 All-Star Game ever played, striking out Carl Yastrzemski for the final out. And that fall he lost Rookie of the Year to Johnny Bench by the closest vote in the award's history, 10½ to 9½ — because one Chicago writer, Jim Enright, split his ballot. Koosman, without a trace of bitterness: "He gave half to each of us, and that was the difference, I guess — was a half a vote."

Then came 1969, and the lefty from Appleton, Minnesota, became immortal. Ask him what that team expected of itself that spring and you got the Miracle Mets in one sentence: "We had no idea. We'd never been there before, and we didn't know what it took." What it took was Gil Hodges — "I think the perfect manager out of all of them was Gil Hodges... Gil ran a ball club that was one rule for all. You knew where you stood. Everybody just did their own job" — and a left-hander who saved his best for the biggest stage in the sport.

Seaver lost World Series Game 1. Koosman answered in Game 2, holding Baltimore hitless into the seventh inning of a 2–1 win. Then, in Game 5 at Shea, he fell behind 3–0 — and finished what he started, a complete-game 5–3 win that made the Mets champions of the world. Listen to him describe that ninth inning, forty years later: "I know in my warm-up pitches I wasn't able to control my curveball, because of nerves and excitement... Basically in the ninth inning I wasn't trying to hit any spots or anything. I was just trying to throw my fastball as hard as I could." And then Cleon Jones squeezed Davey Johnson's fly ball: "When we got the last out, it was like a piano was taken off your shoulders — all that weight."

He did it again in 1973 — a complete game in the NLCS, another World Series Game 5 win against Oakland — though he was the first to tell you it wasn't the same: "No doubt the first one is always the best — the one that is imprinted in your mind the most." In 1976 came his finest season: 21 wins, 200 strikeouts, runner-up for the Cy Young. Asked what he was proudest of, he put '69 first, then "'76 — winning 20 for the first time," and then the thing that may have defined him most: "Your body holding up for approximately 19 years in the big leagues is a nice feat."

The lean years came — 8–20 on a collapsing team in 1977, a trade to Minnesota at his own request (the player to be named later coming back turned out to be a kid named Jesse Orosco), a 20-win rebirth with the Twins in 1979, stops with the White Sox and Phillies, and one last line for the trivia books: on April 13, 1984, he gave up Pete Rose's 4,000th hit. When it was over: 222 wins, 2,556 strikeouts, a 3.36 ERA — and as a Met, 140 wins, more than any left-hander in franchise history, with 2,544⅔ innings, second only to Seaver himself.

There was a hard chapter, and an honest remembrance shouldn't skip it: in 2009 Koosman pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion — he'd been, in his own word, "suckered" by anti-tax rhetoric — and served six months. It happened, he owned it, he paid for it, and it is a footnote to the man's life, not the story of it. The story of it is what follows.

When I asked Jerry, years later, about his favorite Kiner's Korner moment, he didn't hesitate: "Well, gosh, I'm not sure. There was a lot of them. But the one I remember is that game..." The game was August 21, 1977. Seaver, two months gone in the Midnight Massacre, had just beaten Koosman at Shea with a complete game for Cincinnati, and Kiner's Korner brought the two old teammates together. Ralph asked if ten years as teammates had produced any stories. "You must remember something you could reminisce about," Ralph said. Koosman: "Yeah, I got one."

It started with an ad in a sporting magazine: "I bought a sporting magazine in the clubhouse. I saw a little ad — a bugging device." The gadget could broadcast over an FM frequency from about fifty feet away. And the clubhouse had exactly one FM radio: "Seaver had an FM radio above his locker. It was the only music we had in the clubhouse."

Koosman recruited trainer Jack Simon, who did a dead-on Howard Cosell, hid him in the doctor's office after batting practice — "Count down from 10, like that, and I'm gonna go out there" — then climbed up on Seaver's stool, as innocent as a man adjusting a radio, and tuned it to the frequency. Seaver was at his locker talking with Don Grant, the chairman of the board himself. "All of a sudden, here it comes." Cosell's voice boomed out with a bulletin: the Mets had traded Tom Seaver — and Ed Kranepool — to Houston for Doug Rader.

"He didn't know what to say," Koosman remembered. "He was shell-shocked." Koosman strolled over and offered his hand in farewell. "He didn't want to raise his hand to shake my hand. So I just held it there. And finally he raised up and gave me that cold tip of my fingers." Kranepool, meanwhile, was at his own locker cursing a blue streak and throwing things; the clubhouse was in turmoil, and Koosman suddenly understood a joke can land too well. He hustled back to Simon: "Jack, I says, God, get out of here. Don't say a word." Neither of them did — for years.

Until that night on Kiner's Korner, with Seaver sitting right beside him, hearing the confession for the first time in his life — live, on television. Koosman could see the monitors, could see his own close-up — and could see Seaver lean out of the frame. "He's whispering to me as I'm getting near the end of the story. He goes, 'You motherfucker.'" Koosman cracked up telling it, decades later, exactly the way he must have cracked up in the studio: "Oh God, I laughed so hard on that story... Kiner, that's the first time you've heard it. Seaver's first time he's heard the truth about it."

Of all the stories Howie Karpin and I uncovered for our book Down on the Korner, that one was one of my absolute favorites — the night the quiet lefty from Minnesota finally confessed, and The Franchise, caught on live TV, could only lean out of the shot and swear at him. I will maintain to anyone who asks: it is the best Kiner's Korner story ever told.

The honors came late but they came. He stood on the Shea mound one last time during its closing weekend in 2008, waving to the crowd in his old jersey. And on August 28, 2021, at Citi Field, the Mets retired No. 36 — only Seaver and Piazza had received the honor before him — and Kooz took his bow as what he had always been: not the other ace. The co-ace. The man who won Game 2 and Game 5.

At the end of our 2010 interview, I told him about the autographed Koosman jersey from 1975 that I keep, and I told him the thing I'd waited forty years to say: growing up, you were either a Seaver guy or a Koosman guy, like Ali or Frazier — and I was a Jerry Koosman guy.

"Well, you made a good pick," he said. "Thank you very much."

You were right, Kooz. I did. We all did.

Rest easy, No. 36. And thanks — for the piano coming off our shoulders, for the greatest prank ever pulled, and for every single story.

Hear Jerry Koosman in his own words: his 2010 SPORTSTALKNY conversation with us, and his telling of the Seaver prank, are linked below.