Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing #51 : Jim Beauchamp: The Forgotten Mets Bench Hero Who Shined When It Mattered

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush the dust off the bubble gum cards, flip through the curling pages of old yearbooks, and rediscover the players who once made you pause mid potato knish and mutter, “Hold on… he was a Met, right?”

Last week, we told the story of Randy “Moose” Milligan, a man whose Mets career could fit comfortably on a cocktail napkin but whose fingerprints somehow wound up all over the franchise thanks to his role in discovering David Wright. It was another reminder that in Mets history, impact is not always measured in plate appearances. This week, we stay in that same neighborhood, just a few lockers down.Our subject logged more time in a Mets uniform than Milligan did, hit a few home runs that actually mattered, played in a World Series, and still somehow ended up as a trivia question even the diehards squint at. Today’s lesson centers on Jim Beauchamp, a bench player in Flushing whose best work came when the Mets needed him most, even if he rarely got his name announced with any enthusiasm. Fun trivia for the number nerds: Beauchamp was the last Met to wear #24 before Willie Mays arrived. He started the 1972 season with #24, then graciously switched to #5 when Mays joined the team—unlike Brett Baty, he did not get a car from Willie the way Baty got one from Juan Soto. Today’s lesson centers on Jim Beauchamp, a bench player in Flushing whose best work came when the Mets needed him most, even if he rarely got his name announced with any enthusiasm.

Jim Beauchamp came to the Mets late in his career, already carrying the résumé of a baseball lifer. By the time he arrived in New York, he had been around the league enough to know where all the good coffee was and which bullpen phones never worked. He had come up through the Cardinals system as a can’t miss Oklahoma kid with speed, pop, and just enough promise to get everyone dreaming big before the injury gods stepped in and said absolutely not. By the early seventies, Beauchamp had already been traded so often he may have inspired Johnny Cash to start scribbling lyrics for I’ve Been Everywhere, bouncing from St. Louis to Houston to Atlanta to Cincinnati and back again, always hitting just well enough to stay employed and just inconsistently enough to stay overlooked.

The Mets acquired him before the 1972 season as part of a large, multi-player trade on October 18, 1971, when the Cardinals sent Jim Beauchamp to New York along with Harry Parker, Chuck Taylor, and Chip Coulter in exchange for Art Shamsky, Jim Bibby, Rich Folkers, and Charlie Hudson, a deal that only makes sense if you squint hard and remember that rosters used to be assembled like garage sales, with teams wandering around saying, “Yeah, sure, throw him in too.” Beauchamp was not brought in to be a star. He was brought in to be useful, which in Mets history is often a much tougher assignment. He was thirty two years old, right handed, capable of playing first base or the outfield, and perfectly suited for the role of guy who stands next to the bat rack waiting for Yogi Berra to nod in his direction.

In 1972, Beauchamp did exactly what bench players are supposed to do and almost never get credit for. He hit when his name was called. He gave the Mets professional at bats. He showed some pop. In just over a hundred plate appearances, he launched five home runs, the most he would ever hit in a single major league season, which feels backward, slightly illogical, and extremely Mets. These were not empty swings either. These were pinch hit swings, late inning swings, the kind of “we really need something right now” plate appearances that never come with a highlight reel but quietly keep a team afloat. And somewhere in America, that probably made his 1972 Strat-O-Matic card one of those sneaky good ones — the kind you draft late, smirk about, and then ride all season while your friends demand a rules check.. Three of those home runs came in a glorious two day stretch against the Astros that still stands as the loudest chapter of his career. One night he hit a late inning homer to give the Mets the lead, then followed it up by ending the game with a walk off blast, sending Shea Stadium into the kind of modest delirium reserved for bench players doing unexpected things. The next night he drove in all four Mets runs, because baseball likes symmetry when you least expect it.

If Jim Beauchamp had done nothing else in a Mets uniform, that two day stretch would still earn him a warm nod from anyone who was there or anyone who has spent too much time on Baseball Reference at two in the morning. But he came back in 1973 and quietly became part of something bigger. The seventy three Mets were not a masterpiece. They were a patchwork quilt held together with duct tape, good pitching, and vibes. Beauchamp fit right in. He hit better than he had the year before, continued to give professional at bats off the bench, and even had a four RBI game in May that helped remind everyone he was still capable of flipping a game on its head.

When the Mets stumbled their way into the postseason and then somehow kept stumbling all the way to the World Series, Beauchamp was there. He did not appear in the National League Championship Series, but October still found his name on Yogi Berra’s bench card, which in itself felt like an achievement. He did get four pinch hit appearances in the World Series. He did not get a hit. And then came his final major league at bat, the kind that lives forever in Mets footnotes.

It was Game Seven. Shea was tense, Oakland was rolling, and the Mets were already down 4 to 0 in the fifth inning when Beauchamp was sent up to hit for Harry Parker. There were two outs, Bud Harrelson stood at first, and Ken Holtzman, calm and merciless, worked the count. Beauchamp took a third strike looking, the inning ended, and with it, quietly, so did his playing career. It was not a storybook ending, but it was a very Mets ending. Not quite Carlos Beltrán frozen by Adam Wainwright, but cut from the same cloth. A moment of hope, a called strike, and the slow realization that this was how it was going to end. No fireworks, no heroics, just one last plate appearance under the brightest lights, closing the book on a career defined less by headlines and more by persistence, professionalism, and the stubborn refusal to ever stop showing up.

That persistence was really the point. Jim Beauchamp was never a star in New York, but he was a pro. He was the kind of player managers trusted even when fans barely noticed. And when his playing days ended, he simply stayed in uniform. He managed in the minors. He taught. He barked. He mentored. He eventually became Bobby Cox’s right hand man in Atlanta, spending years on the bench of one of the most successful franchises of the modern era, helping shape players who would go on to October after October. By the time his life in baseball finally came to a close, he had spent roughly half a century inside the game, which feels like the most Jim Beauchamp statistic of all.

Jim Beauchamp never had his number retired. He never made an All Star team. He never became a household name in Queens. But for two seasons, he was a Met when it mattered. He ran into a few pitches at exactly the right moments. He stood ready when his name was called. He was part of a pennant winner. And like so many Forgotten Faces of Flushing, he reminds us that Mets history is not just written by stars. Sometimes it is written by the guy at the end of the bench, gripping a bat, waiting patiently, and being ready just in case.