Well groomed, well dressed, soft spoken, (slightly shy), gentleman baseball players enjoying a well earned championship.Proof positive that men like these once really did exist.
+arkady714 This is true. But you can't really say that Tug McGraw was "shy", and he was really a hippie at heart. He would have let his hair grow as long as that of Jacob deGrom if the conservative Mets management at that time had let him. Ron Swoboda would have, too!
+Glen Slater A minor point, my friend. Later on, some of the players did let their hair grow a bit. I know that I sound like and old man when I talk about this, but you might remember a certain incident in 2003.That prick, Manny Ramirez, called for and GOT time out in order to look for a $15,000 diamond earring that he'd lost during play. Go back in time, go back stage at this broadcast, try to tell any of the gentlemen in this vid a story like that and they'd call an ambulance, thinking that you'd lost your mind.They were rowdy and had their own craziness and hang ups back then. But at least in public and during play, baseball players were gentlemen.
+Glen Slater Few ballplayers today have the manners that men like these do. I had a grade school buddy simply write a letter to Cleon Jones requesting an autograph. It came in the mail maybe a week later.A gentleman baseball player, in a locker room, scribbling out an autograph and mailing it back to a third grader on Long Island. That that'd happen today?My own dad sold wall to wall carpeting to Bud Harrelson. He took me along when doing the measure. Mr. Harrelson wasn't home but his wife was. (They lived in a middle class neighborhood in Suffolk County.) While the two adults talked business in the kitchen, I asked Mrs. H if I could get an autograph. Without missing a beat, she opened a drawer and pulled out an index card (one of a stack at the ready) that simply read "Bud Harrelson, NY Mets." Think that'd happen today? Derek Jeter - who literally made over 100 times what Harrelson did - charges for the same thing.Yeah...heart!
+arkady714 Yeah, I agree. And I think that Bud Harrelson lived in East Northport. I'm from Nassau County on the South Shore. Baldwin, to be exact. I was in 4th grade when the Mets won the world series. By the way, I'll bet that Jeter isn't the class guy that he seems to be. When I see him, I see another Steve Garvey. And I thought he was a role model!!! I had Steve Garvey's poster in my room when I was a teenager, even though I was a Met fan. Usually, things (or people) who seem to good to be true, usually aren't. That turned out to be the truth with Garvey, and I suspect that's the way it is with Jeter, too. Something about Jeter seems phony. At least to me.
I was 13 when they won the World Series. What an exciting time it was!! Our teacher let us watch the Games in the afternoon on the class TV....I can't believe how much Duffy Dyer resembles Kent McCord from Adam 12
Seeing Tug's smiling face brings tears to my eyes. Ya Gotta Believe!! Tug would be beside himself with the way the current team has suddenly taken hold.
This was sad for Chicago. Damn , New York won so many with the Yankees and than here come the Mets. The Cubs were in first place on opening day until early September. So many greats Ernie Banks , Ron Santo , Billy Williams , Ferguson Jenkins, Ken Holtzman , Randy Hundley, Don Kessinger , and Glenn Beckert . If only they kept Lou Brock in 1964 . Of course I'm a white sox fan , but the Cubs deserved a crown. Many veterans were on that team
Shortly after this appearance on Sullivan, several Mets (Shamsky, Seaver, Koos, Clendenon, Jones, Agee and Killer Krane) went to Vegas. THere, they did two shows per evening, dinner and midnight, with comedian Phil Foster. They sang "The Impossible Dream" from "Man of La Mancha". Each made $10K for the 2 weeks. "We were stars wherever we went," said Koosman.
+Glen Slater To that point, I have a 1973 Topps Baseball card of Ken McMullen. On the back of the card, they show a cartoon of Ken pumping gas with a caption that reads "Ken works in a service station in the off-season". Can you imagine a MLB player today pumping gas in the offseason? And by this time,Ken had about 9 pro seasons under his belt.
John one time NY Met 3rd baseman Richie Hebner was an off season grave digger. Way after retirement Willie Mays took a job as an Atlantic City Casino greeter and either or both MLB and the Mets were not happy with this.
LOL yes he & Tom were funny. In the extended video which isn't on YT, Tom pulls one of the guy's ear & then puts his hand in front of the guy in front of him LOL. RIP. Ok if you go to FB and type "Mets on Sullivan" you should see the link to full video from "Remembering Shea Stadium".
Mets Pitcher Jack DiLauro : On appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show "Nobody in NY cared if we could sing or not. They just wanted to see the Mets." DiLauro also did an impersonation of Ed Sullivan. "I almost fell down getting onto the stage, but I got it done. My wife got a VHS tape of that show about 15 years ago (which would have been 1994, given the date of the interview) and that's something I'll always treasure"
Just realized that the Sullivan staff lined the Mets up in alphabetical order ... Agee, Boswell, Cardwell, etc. So that means the bottom row are the players whose last name comes after Seavers alphabetically. I'm thinking that would include Shamsky, Swoboda, and Taylor. Those might be the first 3 guys in the bottom row. Al Weis, one of the WS heroes, is probably on that bottom row as well. I don't know how many of the remaining guys on that bottom row are coaches. The coaches that year were Rube Walker, Eddie Yost, Joe Pignatano, Yogi Berra and the manager Gil Hodges, It looks like Yogi and Gil are missing. The key player missing, as someone already pointed out, is Cleon Jones. Bobby Pfeil was another guy who saw a significant amount of action for the '69 Amazin's so I would suspect he should be here.
+ddenuci Is that Yogi in the bottom row, 5th from left? He's about the right height to be Yogi, and sort of looks like him, but I can't be sure. On their 1969 Album, the following coaching staff are identified as part of the singing Mets: Berra, Pignatano, Yost, Al "Rube" Walker and Hodges.
@@frankbellproductions832 Thanks. DiLauro is out of place alphabetically, and as I posted elsewhere here, it may be because he did an impression of Ed Sullivan at some point during the show.
This must have been the inspiration in the movie "Bang The Drum Slowly" (starring Robert De Niro, Michael Moriarty, Vincent Gardenia, and Phil Foster) for the part where the players formed a singing group and sang on TV. Ironically, that part of the movie was filmed on the set of "Kiner's Korner". Incidentally, most of the baseball scenes in "Bang The Drum Slowly" were filmed at Shea Stadium. If you get a chance, see it. It's a great movie.
+Glen Slater It is a very good movie. One interesting common link to the Mets and the movie is comic Phil Foster. When the seven Mets appeared in Las Vegas as a singing act following their 1969 WS success, it was Foster who appeared with them in a 27 minute act. It turns out the Foster would also appear in "Bang the Drum Slowly" in 1973 as the character "Joe".
@@scooteragnew9248 In the bottom row, players were lined up in alphabetical order, Swaboda was between Art Shamsky and Ron Taylor, the coaches and officials were to the right of Al Weis in the bottom row
Andrew they were. Idk why this video is cut off but they do show the bottom row guys on a video I saw on FB. I check YT every so often to see if the whole one is here & I haven't come across it yet. Ok go to FB and type "Mets on Sullivan" you should see the link to full video from "Remembering Shea Stadium".
Oct. 19, 1969. Other guests that night on Sullivan were the band Smith ("Baby, It's You"), Cyd Charisse, Joan River, Lana Cantrell (Australian singer), Don Ellis Band, Topo Gigio, and Tanya the Elephant.
I think we know the Mets were not actually singing in this clip. HOWEVER, Tom Seaver appears on the Kraft Music Hall with Eddy Arnold and the Lettermen and he actually DOES sing, and quite well I might add.
+DHandelman The only thing an Internet search turns up is some guy claiming that he asked Cleon about this. Cleon was missing both from the Canyon of Heroes parade and this Ed Sullivan appearance because his heart was in his hometown outside Mobile, Alabama, and he wanted to celebrate the WS win there. He may not have known that the upcoming Sullivan appearance was in the works, otherwise he may have stayed in NY
+ddenuci thanks for the research! Now can we find out why the clip is cut off before Shamsky and Swoboda, or why Pfeil seems to be in the bottom row out of alphabetical order?
+ddenuci Maybe, at the time, Jones was parked outside "The Ed Sullivan Theater", as it was called, doing his OWN rock n' rollin' in the back of his van.
+Glen Slater Yes, that was an unfortunate incident. Jones was arrested and then fined a club record $2000. The Mets forced him to issue a public apology at a new conference on 5/14/1975. Jones was accompanied at the news conference by his wife, Angela. But the good news is that Angela has remained married to Cleon for about 50 years now. Tough time, but they got through it.
+ddenuci In all seriousness, M. Donald Grant was awful to Cleon in making him do that press conference. M. Donald Grant, the ultimate stuffed shirt. And how they made his wife stand there with him. Grant just wanted to humiliate Cleon. I would've liked to have seen Grant forced to be humiliated before a press conference the night that Tom Seaver left. That was far more damaging to the Mets than anything that a player did in his spare time. It was humiliating enough that it was in the newspapers, and $2,000 dollars was a lot of money for a baseball player back then.
The 69 Mets also sang another song on TV One line in the song is "we're the Mets we have the power , getting stronger every hour" I cannot find reference to this anywhere...help?
+deloid101 If this is one of the songs that appears on their 1969 album "The Amazing mets", you might be able to hear those lyrics again. There is a website that has some of the cuts from that album. I don't think I can put the link here, but you can easily get there by doing a google search for "tonetunes amazing Mets MP3".
+deloid101 That song was sung to the tune of Ray Charles' song "What I Say". I think that "You Gotta Have Heart" is, by far, the best on the record. I like it better than the version in "Damn Yankees"!
I've seen a photo of the Mets appearance on Sullivan, and it looks very much like a still of this video, but some of the Mets players are shown holding their album "The Amazing Mets".
+ddenuci I see that the 1969 album "The Amazing Mets" is available on ebay, for $7.99 + shipping. It was produced by Buddah Records. The album has nine songs, but "You got to have heart" is not one of them.
+ddenuci Correction: The song they sang on Sullivan is on the album. It's called "Heart". Other classics include "The Mets Ball Game", "Mets Halleluhah", "Green Grass of Shea", "God Bless America", "Mets are Here to Stay", "The Song for the '69 Mets", "We're Gonna Win the Series", "We've Got the Whole World Watching Us", and "La La La (Never on Sunday)".
I think the guy bottom row second from right is Jack DiLauro. They probably had him in the bottom row because he would be the guy impersonating Sullivan.
+Jeff K I agree it looks like Pfeil. However, Pfeil was not on the WS roster nor does his name appear on the 1969 album "The Amazing Mets". Maybe he was a last minute fill-in for the missing Cleon Jones.
+ddenuci Well, they're lip syncing to the album, anyway. I had that album as a kid; my father gave it to me. I was just a young kid. I played the grooves out of it.
Judging by how they butchered this song on their remarkable album "The Amazing Mets" (reportedly recorded while they were all hungover, the day after clinching the division title), I sense this might be lip synced.
+t206kid He must have disliked this big time. His 1969 Orioles won 109 games, which is tied for 7th all-time in MLB history. Incredible pitching staff that year, as well as great hitting. He must have been stunned when his team dropped 4 in a row in the WS. Of course, he won his only WS the following years, so the pain of losing in '69 was probably lessened.
Nowadays half the players wouldn't know enough English to sing it..."necesitamos corazon." Lol. Baseball - and America - was so much better then...*sigh
