Saturday Seasons: In 1975, Disappointment, Disillusionment and Despair

The Mets began 1975 with great hopes and expectations. They ended it with disappointment, disillusionment and despair. And if you had to look at a single player who would personify the season’s themes, it would be Cleon Jones. And not in a good way.

               The high expectations, especially in the mind of team Chairman M. Donald Grant, were due to some key offseason moves, most notably purchasing Dave Kingman’s contract from the San Francisco Giants for $100,000, giving the Mets a right handed power bat to complement lefty Rusty Staub’s lefthanded punch, and obtaining slick fielding center fielder Del Unser to patrol center field and compensate for Kingman and Staub’s limited range. True, the Mets did part with Tug McGraw, but Bob Apodaca stepped in to fill the closer void, saving 13 games, striking out 45 in 46 innings and having a 1.45 ERA. Rick Baldwin appeared in 54 games, saving six and striking out 54 in as many innings.

               Overall, the team batted .256, the highest in club history. Kingman hit 36 home runs and drove in 88; Staub had 19 dingers and 105 ribbies. And the starting pitching remained stellar, led by Tom Seaver’s 22 wins, John Matlack’s 16 and Jerry Koosman’s 14.

               But somehow, the team was not even equal to, let alone greater than the sum of its parts. They would post a modest winning streak and just as quickly hit a seemingly equal slide, much to Grant’s consternation. And in the end, their record – 82-80 – reflected their mediocrity.

               All in all, it was an ugly season, marred by incidents that centered on Jones. Left behind in St. Petersburg to continue his rehabilitation after knee surgery, Jones was arrested on May 3 and charged with indecent exposure after being found, according to the arresting officer, naked in a parked station wagon with a woman “not his wife,” who was allegedly similarly unclothed and had marijuana cigarettes in her purse. Jones said the woman, a 21-year-old unemployed waitress from Johnson City, N.Y., had asked him for a lift after he left a party. He said the borrowed automobile had run out of gas (with no gas stations open at the late hour) and claimed the only clothing he had removed were his shoes as he napped while waiting for a gas station to open. He denied using marijuana, a subject that was the focus of a probe by baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

             The charges were dropped – whether the Mets had any role in pressuring the St. Petersburg police to conclude they had insufficient evidence was unclear – and the Mets fined Jones a record $2,000 and forced him to make a public apology during a press conference in which is wife, Angela, appeared by his side. “I am basically a good man and have no desire to be bad. I have made a serious mistake and wish to make amends,” Jones was reported as saying. “I am aware of the serious danger to my career in baseball if my behavior is not what it should be in the future.”

               Jones’ contrition was short-lived, at least as far as endangering his baseball career. Restored to the active roster, manager Yogi Berra used him sparingly, much to Jones’ consternation; Berra felt Jones’ repaired knee was not healed enough to justify full playing time, but Jones disagreed.

It all came to a head on July 18, in a game between the Mets and the Atlanta Braves. Berra looked around his dugout and sent Jones to pinch hit for Ed Kranepool, with the Mets trailing, 3-1. According to a Daily News account, Jones gave less than 100 percent in the at-bat, looking at two strikes, taking a ball and then swinging without striding into the pitch. He hit a ground ball to short, but did not run it out, taking only four steps toward first. He then flung his helmet across the dugout and, when asked by Berra to play left field, refused, went back to the clubhouse, dressed, and left.

               Jones would claim later that he felt physically unable to take the field because he had not wrapped his surgically repaired knee, but whether that was accurately conveyed to Berra, or whether Berra believed him, was never fully resolved. But Jones told Daily News columnist Dick Young a few days later, “I figured Yogi don’t care about me, asking me to go out there without the knee wrapped, and if that’s the way it is, then I don’t care about him.”

               As he had done in May, Jones later apologized – to the Mets, the fans and Berra, saying he hoped to continue playing left field for the Mets. Grant was willing to accept the apology and reinstate Jones from his suspension, but Berra – after mulling it overnight – refused to accept it, and insisted Jones not be on the team. General manager Joe McDonald tried to trade Jones (who as a  recent 10-and-5 player had refusal rights), but when he couldn’t find a taker, he was forced to give Jones his unconditional release.

               Ten days later, Berra, too, was gone, sacked by chairman Grant.

               Actually, Grant had been looking to fire Berra since sometime in the 1973 season, according to published reports at the time. But then the Mets went on that improbable run from last place to the pennant, resulting in a three-year contract extension instead of a pink slip. And each time afterward that Grant was thinking of canning Berra, the team went on some sort of winning streak that postponed what Grant felt was inevitable.

               The immediate reason for the firing was a losing streak that included a doubleheader loss to the Pirates, capping a Pittsburgh sweep that in Grant’s mind struck a serious blow against the Mets' pennant contention. “If we had won Sunday and Monday, we would have been the happiest people in the world,” Grant was quoted as saying in a back page story by Newsday’s Steve Jacobson. “The manager would not have been fired. We were hoping we wouldn’t have to make an adverse decision. It was disastrous losing five games in a row after the team played so hard.”

               In the ensuing couple of days other reasons surfaced, including Grant’s disagreement with Berra’s refusal to accept Jones’ apology, forcing Grant to release Jones (and eat the remainder of Jones’ contract). But more important appeared to be growing sentiment among the leaders in the clubhouse that Berra was over his head in the job. Daily News columnist Phil Pepe reported that Grant had warned Berra that he was making moves too late and making too many late moves and that he had lost the respect of the players. Pepe cited as two examples: Berra not running for Joe Torre after Torre reached base with what could have been a critical run until Torre got Seaver’s attention to get word to Berra that a pinch runner might be advisable; and Berra’s failure to protect a one-run lead late in the second game of a doubleheader against the Pirates by inserting a defensive replacement for John Milner, who misplayed a ball that permitted Pittsburgh to tie the score.

               As Newsday’s Joe Donnelly wrote, “Several players said that he knew his baseball, but it was more one move at a time and several veterans on the bench had to remind him of the two or three moves ahead that should also be made.”

               Which explains the generally tepid clubhouse reaction to Berra being gone. “Hardly a Pause in the Clubhouse,” was the Newsday headline.

               If there was a silver lining to the ugly cloud surrounding Jones, it is that it helped  open a spot on the major league roster a few weeks later for outfielder Mike Vail, obtained from the Cardinals in the offseason in a deal that sent infielder Teddy Martinez to the Redbirds. Vail was tearing up the International League, with a .334 average, 15 home runs and 75 RBI, and he proceeded to tear up the National League as well. Vail pinch hit a single in his first major league at bat and didn’t stop, not until his hitting streak had reached 23 games, tying a major league record that only ended with a hitless seven at bats in an 18-inning game. Vail batted .364 over the streak with three home runs and 15 RBI. (The Mets would look back at that streak, and not his .211 average over the remainder of the season in deciding he was so much part of their future that they would trade Rusty Staub to make room for Vail in the outfield.  In true Mets fashion, Vail would dislocate his left foot playing basketball just before 1976 spring training.)

               If Grant had hoped firing Berra would shock the team into winning, he was wrong. When he fired Berra, the team was three games over .500. Under interim manager Roy McMillan, the Mets went 24-25 and ended up 10 ½ games behind the Pirates and four games behind the Chicago Cubs.

               And the dark cloud continued to hover over Shea Stadium. On September 29, 85-year-old Casey Stengel died in California, hours after his family publicly disclosed that he was hospitalized with lymph gland cancer. A few days later, on October 4, club owner Joan Payson also passed away. She had been hospitalized with a stroke in June but held on until the baseball season was over.

               In-between, Grant and McDonald announced the Mets’ manager for 1976. Bypassing interim manager McMillan and Torre, an active player who made it clear he felt he was not yet ready to manage (he would change his mind a year and a half later), the Mets tapped Joe Frazier.

               No, not the heavyweight boxer two days removed from his loss to Muhammad Ali in the legendary Thrilla in Manila, but the manager of the team’s AAA Tidewater farm team. In retrospect, the Mets might have done better with the more famous Joe. He, at least, would have had a puncher's chance of succeeding.

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