Bud Harrelson and the 1969 Amazin' Mets should not be forgotten
From left, the Mets' Bud Harrelson, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Ed Kranepool celebrate clinching the National League Eastern Division on Sept. 24, 1969. Credit: SPORTS ILLUSTRATED/GETTY IMAGES/Herb Scharfman
Art Shamsky woke up on Thursday, heard the news about Bud Harrelson, fielded the inevitable phone calls and texts, then did what he does almost every day.
“Going to the gym and working out,” he said. “Take out my frustrations and think about all the good times I shared with all these guys, in particular Buddy.”
What else is there to do or say at this stage?
Shamsky is 82, an unofficial spokesman for the 1969 Mets in part because he is good at it, in part because the candidates for the job continue to dwindle.
So he answers calls from journalists, meets up with old teammates when he can and gets on with his life, as healthily as possible.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” he told Newsday after learning Harrelson had died at 79. “So I just deal with it. It’s not easy, because these are close friends of mine, guys you went to war with, so to speak.
“But life goes on, and we still have a little bit of a nucleus left. So I cherish those moments when I can spend with Eddie Kranepool and guys that are still around and share moments with them.
“But it’s tough. Life is what it is. You live and then you die. I hate to sound morbid, but that’s what it is.”
What once was arguably the most shocking achievement in New York-area sports history is starting to fade from living memory, its players succumbing to actuarial tables, its fans now at least 60 years old.
There is a reason the Yankees of the late 1990s are greeted with thunderous cheers on Old-Timers’ Day and those from the late 1970s with polite applause.
Things that happened 25 years ago evoke nostalgia. Seventy-five years ago? That is history. In between is a murky middle in which the ’69 Mets find themselves, still present but not for much longer.
Their championship contemporaries, the 1968 Jets and 1969-70 Knicks, have lost stars, too, but from the start, the ’69 Mets seemed to endure more than their fair share.
It began with the sudden death of manager Gil Hodges on April 2, 1972, at 47, and has continued over decades with the losses among others of Tom Seaver, Tommie Agee, Ed Charles, Tug McGraw, Donn Clendenon and now Harrelson.
The list includes four of the first six batters for most of the five 1969 World Series games against the Orioles and three of the four starting infielders.
Some of the survivors are not in great health. Kranepool needed and got a kidney transplant in 2019.
Sorry. Let’s reset here.
As Shamsky said, I hate to sound morbid, because the deaths of Harrelson and his teammates should be an occasion for celebration and reflection more than grief.
That surely is how the ’69 Mets would want it. They shaped a generation of New York sports fans.
My first sports memory is the sweep of the Expos on Sept. 10, 1969, that landed the Mets in first place in the National League East. And here we are, 55 years later, writing and talking about them, as it should be while we still have the chance.
History is knocking at the door, but as long as there are players and fans around to tell the tale, nostalgia still has a fighting chance.
Shamsky recalled a poignant moment with Harrelson in 2020, when Harrelson already was suffering the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
Shamsky went to visit him in Hauppauge and brought along a glove. Soon the two were playing catch on Harrelson’s lawn. The grainy video is in a post on “X” from Oct. 24, 2020, like something out of “Field of Dreams,” only real.
“I have vivid memories of that on the front lawn of his house, throwing, people honking horns as they went by,” Shamsky said. “We did what we do best: We played catch. It was for me a moment that I’ll never forget.”
Harrelson left a mark, in baseball and on Long Island, a throwback to an era when players had relatively modest incomes and lived among their fans.
Wendy Polhemus-Annibell, 65, who now lives in Laurel on the North Fork, on Thursday recalled living near Harrelson in East Northport in her youth.
“As kids, we loved him,” she said. “We would regularly ride our bikes over to his house on Roderick Court and knock on his door.
“He was always happy to say hello and would hand us a treat: autographed mini-baseballs. I wish I had saved just one!”
No one who was around at the time — even Yankees fans — will forget that ’69 season. So for now, those of us who were there can only bore younger folks with our memories.
“I tell people the New York Mets in ’69 are one of the most known teams in the history of baseball,” Shamsky said. “I think more books have been written about that team than any sports team. I wrote two and I’m working on a third.
“It’s so special. When you lose somebody, it just kicks you in the gut. We’ll move on. Life goes on. But it’s been amazing.”
Or, to put it a slightly different way: Amazin’!
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
