Rheingold Retro Radio Days No. 3: Seavers Imperfect Game

Chicago Cubs at New York Mets · Shea Stadium · Wednesday, July 9, 1969

Twenty-Five Up, Twenty-Five Down

If you want to pick the night the summer of 1969 stopped being a lark and started being a pennant race, this is a pretty good candidate. The first-place Chicago Cubs — Leo Durocher's Cubs, Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins and all — came into Shea Stadium on Wednesday night, July 9, leading the Mets by four games. But the Cubs had lost four straight, the Mets had won six straight, and 50,709 people showed up on a beautiful night ("one of the most comfortable days of the summer," Bob Murphy said) to see Tom Seaver pitch. The night before, the Mets had rallied in the ninth to beat Chicago in the series opener. This night, Seaver nearly did something nobody had ever done in a Mets uniform.

He had it from the first pitch. Seaver struck out five of the first six Cubs he faced, and the Mets handed him a lead before the Cubs knew what hit them: Tommie Agee tripled to right to open the first and Bobby Pfeil doubled him home. In the second, the Cubs' celebrated infield fell apart — Santo booted one, Kessinger booted one — and Seaver helped himself with an RBI single before Agee doubled off the right-field wall, just missing a home run. Three runs, two of them unearned, and Ken Holtzman was gone after an inning and a third. Ted Abernathy, the submarine right-hander, kept it there for six and two-thirds innings of fine relief, touched only by Cleon Jones's tenth home run of the year, in the seventh. It was 4–0. And nobody in the ballpark was watching the score anymore. They were counting outs.

Eight and a Third Innings of Perfect Baseball

Seaver retired the Cubs in order in the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh and the eighth — Kessinger, Beckert, Williams, Santo, Banks, one after another, 11 strikeouts and not a single walk — until he had faced 24 men and retired 24 men. Randy Hundley led off the ninth and tried to bunt his way on, and Shea booed him all the way back to the dugout after Seaver threw him out. Twenty-five straight.

Then came Jimmy Qualls — the Cubs' number-eight hitter, a .234 hitter, a switch-hitter batting left — and Qualls swung at the first pitch and lined it clean into left-center. Here is Bob Murphy, who was on the the call all night:

"A base hit by Jimmy Qualls — and it breaks up the perfect game. Now the applause for Tom Seaver. Eight and one-third innings of perfect baseball by Seaver."

Murphy made the point twice more before the inning was out: "Nothing fluky about it. It was a clean base hit." Seaver finished what he started — Willie Smith popped out, Kessinger flied to Jones in left — a one-hit, 4–0 shutout, one batter over the minimum. The crowd stood and roared for him anyway, and Murphy, watching him walk off, allowed that the ace looked "a little bit disconsolate." He'd been that close.

It was just the third one-hitter in Mets history — Al Jackson had thrown the first two — and no Met pitcher had ever carried a no-hitter this deep. More to the point, the Mets were now three games behind the Cubs, one back in the loss column, with the series finale the next afternoon and a trip to Wrigley Field the week after. You know how the summer ended. This was the night it started to feel inevitable.

About This Broadcast

Ralph Kiner opens the broadcast reading the lineups — and keep an ear out, because Ralph introduces the Cubs' center fielder as "Jimmy Quayle," which Mets fans of a certain age will tell you is the most Ralph Kiner thing ever committed to tape. Kiner then hands the play-by-play to Murphy ("All right, Ralph — hi, everybody") and works the middle innings himself, including this observation on Abernathy's underhand delivery: "When you hit against Abernathy, everything is just the opposite. Curve balls should rise instead of break down."

The recording comes from the Mets Radio Network feed — it survives as an aircheck recorded off WKAJ-FM in Saratoga Springs, local Saratoga restaurant spots and all, and reaches us through the John Miley collection at the Internet Archive. The period sponsor material stays in, as always: the Rheingold spots, and, in the middle of the ninth inning of a perfect game, a live read inviting you to enter Rheingold's search for the 25 Greatest Mets Fans. Priorities, 1969 style.

One programming note: we told you last time that No. 3 would take you to Philadelphia in May of '62. We've changed our minds — the series is jumping around the archive now, gems first. The '62 Phillies game goes back in the pool for another day.

📻 LISTEN: The Complete Broadcast

Broadcast: New York Mets Radio Network (flagship WJRZ, 970) — Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner.

Box score: Retrosheet via Baseball-Reference.

Next on Rheingold Retro Radio Days: we stay in the gem box — another classic from the archive. See you Tuesday.

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