There surely must have been a support group for pitchers like Jon Matlack. Come to think of it, the original group could have been founded by the 1976 New York Mets starting rotation.
Matlack, Tom Seaver Jerry Koosman, Mickey Lolich and Craig Swan — five hurlers — each pitched their heart out in 1976. On paper, no major league team was better. The Mets team ERA was the lowest in baseball (2.94). Still, the Mets finished 86-76 in third place in the National League East, 15 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies.
It took a complete game, four-hit shutout for Matlack to win his first game that season. On April 10, the Mets beat the Expos 1-0 at Shea Stadium. The only run was scored when Bud Harrelson tripled, followed by an RBI double by Felix Millan in the fourth inning. There’s your run Matlack, now shut them out.
It was a sign of things to come for Matlack and the entire Mets staff.
The team’s hitting was anemic. The Mets batted .246 as a team, with an on-base percentage of .317 and a slugging percentage of .352. The only team in the National League with a lower team batting average was Montreal (.235).
The Mets could hit, but couldn’t run. Bud Harrelson led the Mets with nine stolen bases, while the team stole 66 total bases (worst in the NL). They couldn’t hit the long ball either. Dave Kingman hit 37 home runs, while John Milner (15), Ed Kranepool (10), Del Unser (5) and Joe Torre (5) combined to hit 35.
Slow and powerless is no way to secure a division title, a league championship or a World Series title.
In May, Matlack shut out the Reds through 9 2/3 innings, allowing six hits. The Reds would finally score two runs in the 11th inning to win 2-0. On July 6 at the Houston Astrodome, Matlack pitched to 33 batters, allowing five hits and no runs in nine innings. The Mets lost 1-0 in the ten innings.
On August 22, Matlack pitched a complete game six-hit shutout. Good thing: The Mets only scored one run. Or better put, scratched out one run? It came in the seventh inning when Joe Torre reached first on an error. Pinch runner Pepe Mangual advanced to second on a balk. Moved to third on a sacrifice and finally scored on a double by catcher Jerry Grote.
Matlack’s next start against the Dodgers in New York, he pitched a three-hit complete game, but didn’t win it until the Mets scored a run in the bottom of the ninth.
Whoever said “pitching wins championships,” didn’t live to see the 1976 New York Mets.
Even before he was drafted by the Mets out of Great Valley High School in Pennsylvania as the fourth overall pick in the country in 1967, Matlack struggled to win games. He was a pitcher who relied on control. He didn’t blow hitters away.
“I always felt like I was doing it by the skin of my teeth,” he said. “It wasn’t like walking out there and sailing through. I had to work for it, every pitch, every out, all the way down the line.”
In Spring Training 1969, Matlack’s first camp, he debuted against the Boston Red Sox. After three innings of Tom Seaver and three more of Nolan Ryan, Matlack took the ball. After pitching one scoreless inning, he gave up three home runs in his second inning facing major league batters.
“I came off the field, and (Gil) Hodges was the manager,” remembered Matlack. “He just shook his head and said, ‘Welcome to the big leagues kid.’”
Matlack did not get another taste of major league experience until September 1971. Then, in the off-season, Nolan Ryan was traded to the California Angels. Matlack hoped to fill the void.
On the final weekend of Spring Training 1972, Matlack sat in front of his locker at Miller Huggins Field in St. Petersburg, counting lockers. From a distance, Hodges watched the rookie as his head bobbed and mouth moved, counting lockers and players.
“That’s right kid, you made it,” Hodges said, walking by Matlack.
“I wanted to crawl under the carpet,” Matlack said. “I was scared to death of him,” said Matlack. The rookie pitcher would spot Hodges in the hotel lobby and he’d turn the other way.
Days later Hodges suffered a fatal heart attack on a Florida golf course. The news shook Matlack. “I was lost,” he said. “I was young and impressionable … Gil was the only manager I knew at the major league level.
“He was in tune, he anticipated every possible thing that could happen,” remembers Matlack. “He kept you in the game. He would look down the bench during a game and ask you what the count was …”
With Hodges gone, Matlack was left in good hands. He was surrounded by Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry and Jim McAndrew.
Matlack, 22, was sandwiched between Koosman and Seaver. “It was a good location to be,” he said.
“Pitching is a science and an art and Tom (Seaver) was the master,” said Matlack. “I watched him pitch a one-hitter in San Diego. He didn’t throw anything but fastballs. It was the most awesome display of sheer power and location I’ve ever seen. He was a student of the game.”
He learned quickly, made adjustments and by the end of his rookie year, he compiled 244 innings and won 15 games. In 32 starts, he threw eight complete games and four shutouts to win the National League Rookie of the Year honors.
“I was locked in,” he said. “I was in my own little cocoon.”
He also collected one other dubious honor his rookie year, surrendering Roberto Clemente’s 3,000th career hit and the final his of his career.
“I had no idea he was sitting on 3,000,” he said. “I threw a pitch off the plate and he reached out and hit it to center. The crowd was going crazy and I didn’t know why. So I looked back at the scoreboard and it read, ‘Congratulations on 3,000 hits!’”
Matlack was one pitch away from getting out of trouble. With the Mets leading 3-1 in the seventh inning at Shea Stadium, the Atlanta Braves loaded the bases and Matlack worked the count to 2-2 against Marty Perez.
The next pitch: contact. Off Perez’ bat, back at Matlack. Matlack remembers losing sight of an inside fastball. Contact, again, brushing off Matlack’s Rawlings glove on his left hand. Contact, above Matlack’s on the forehead above the left eye, and the Mets pitcher spun 180 degrees and collapsed on the mound.
“I heard the crack of the bat,” he said. “When the ball was a few feet away, I saw it. I put my hand up and it brushed my fingertips. When it hit me, it was like a flashbulb going off in my face.”
Matlack recalled watching the ball roll toward the Mets dugout. Meanwhile, when the play ended Perez stood on second base.
Mets catcher Jerry Grote rushed to Matlack’s side.
“Don’t touch anything,” said Matlack.
Mets trainer Tom McKenna started yelling for a stretcher.
“They got me into an ambulance to go to Roosevelt Hospital and the driver didn’t know how to get on the Grand Central Parkway,” said Matlack. “He stopped twice to ask for directions. I felt like say, ‘come on guys, let me drive.’”
By then, Matlack was lying in a hospital bed at Roosevelt Hospital. Matlack never lost consciousness and was “resting comfortably and feeling fine,” reported Dr. Peter LaMotte.
X-rays showed a hairline skull fracture. That’s it.
“I had a constant headache for the first 24 hours,” said Matlack.
The biggest bruise was psychological.
“I worried whether I’d blink or flinch on a pitch,” said Matlack. “I think, more than anything, my fielding slipped. I overreacted on balls hit back to me. I protected myself and then I played the ball.”
Matlack kept the ball.
“There’s no dent in it,” he said, laughing. “The ball is my only proof. I don’t have any mark on my head. I point to my forehead and say that’s where I got hit. But now, nobody believes me.”
So there it was. Frustration boiling over in black-and-white: Matlack is ‘fed up,’ wants to be traded read the headline on May 11, 1977.
A cold spring rain fell on Flushing. The Mets-Padres game was postponed. It was perfect opportunity for Matlack to speak face-to-face with GM Joe McDonald.
The Mets had lost six of their last seven games and were mired in last place. Dave Kingman and Tom Seaver, the team’s leaders had already gone public, frustrated with management’s decision not to embrace free agency.
“I’m no rebel,” Matlack told the New York Times, “and this has nothing to do with the guys I’m playing with. This has to do with the way the club is being run and promises that were made to me that it would be run better.”
Matlack confessed he was “fed up” with the “people not trying hard enough to win.” He asked the team to trade him.
“I walked in there with the intention of being traded,” said Matlack. “I thought we had a great pitching staff and could have a good club … Based on what Joe McDonald told me, and Don Grant too. So I signed for three years. Well, the time is now – the promises haven’t been kept and I don’t appreciate being snowed.”
Matlack spent over an hour with McDonald and, for the second time in six months, asked to be traded.
McDonald said “he didn’t want it to come to this.”
“It already has come to this,” Matlack replied.
Matlack meant business. He called the players union and asked if he could “demand” a trade. McDonald said he would relay Matlack’s message to management and “see what could be done.”
It took six months, but Matlack got his wish. On December 8, 1977 the Mets, Texas Rangers, Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves pulled off an 11-player deal.
The Mets shipped Matlack to Texas and first baseman John Milner to the Pittsburgh. In return, the Mets obtained first baseman Willie Montanez, outfielder Tom Grieve and a player to be named later.
Seaver. Gone. Kingman. Gone. Matlack. Gone. The Mets confessed, “we are rebuilding.”
Matlack sprinted across the grass in Pompano Beach, Florida, the home of the Texas Rangers spring camp in 1978. It was an odd sight. Mets fans felt a pit in their collective stomachs when they saw Matlack wearing a cap with a capital “T” in bold red on it. The same feeling they had when Seaver put on a Reds uniform.
“It’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Matlack. “This is a professional organization full of professionals, run by professionals.”
Matlack talked to Seaver after the trade. “He said you might look at that organization and think it may not be what it should be, but the further away you get from it, the worse it’s going to look,” said Matlack.
“I completely can not understand it,” said Matlack. “There’s no way I can fathom how, when I was in the minor leagues, they had the best system, the best talent. When I came to the major leagues, we had the nucleus of a dynasty, with our pitching and defense, we went from the best baseball city in the country to an absolute joke.”
