Book Review: Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life

 

•  Author: Bill Madden
• Pub Date: 2020

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Tom Seaver was my boyhood idol 

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    I cheered when Tom Seaver won the 1969 Cy Young Award the same year the Miracle Mets won their first World Series. I cringed when the Mets spitefully traded Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds in 1977. And I cried when Seaver died at his California home on Aug. 31, 2020.

    All that I knew. As a result, much of this biography -- Seaver's early days in Fresno, the Mets being able to sign him because the team's name was picked from a hat, and his glorious early career as "The Franchise," the player who led the Mets through their Amazin' days -- was a trip down memory lane. 

    I even knew about some of his later days in baseball -- his only no-hitter with the Cincinnati Reds, his 300th win with the Chicago White Sox, and his being on the field in a Boston Red Sox uniform when the Mets won their second World Series in 1986. After all, as a youngster I grew up reading every story I could find about his life, and I stayed enamored of him even after he was no longer a Met, even after I was no longer living in New York.

    Still, I was surprised by what I did not know: How Seaver was sometimes considered arrogant and distant by some teammates in his later years, how some of his best friends were his catchers, how he idolized Gil Hodges and later Tony La Russa, and how he considered quitting after the Mets let him go to Chicago in 1983 because of sheer incompetence.

    He had a falling out with the Mets over that fiasco, and the author notes that the Mets did little to alleviate the situation. The owners from the late '80 to 2020 often ignored the Mets' history and former players. When Shea Stadium was demolished in favor of Citi Field in 2009, Seaver and others lamented that it looked more like a shrine to the old Brooklyn Dodgers than the Mets. No memorials then existed for the franchise's star players.

    So, while it's a positive history, this is no hagiography. Still, it's a great read, with the workman-like sports writing and compelling insights of a newspaperman. Of course, because Madden's an older newspaper guy writing about an old player, some of the analysis isn't exactly modern.

    Statistics, for example. Whenever the author wants to show how Seaver was facing the best of the best players, he gives the hitters' stats from the old days -- BA-HRs-RBIs. No slashlines, no OBP, no WAR needed. He does the same with the pitching stats -- Seaver's prominence is always proved with wins, strikeouts, and ERA. Again, no WAR, no BABIP, no ERA+.

     And both Seaver and the author scoff at pitch counts. Seaver was appalled that starting pitchers today seldom go more than six innings. And while he acknowledges pitch counts are a legitimate measure, he says they were much higher in the good old days. Today, pitchers top out at 80 or 90 pitches per game. Seaver says he often threw 140 pitches a game. Teammate Nolan Ryan often threw 150 or more.

    Still, it's a fun book, and Seaver is overall a likeable guy who led a good life.