AMAZIN': Lindsay, Isenberg, and the '69 Mets

“ ...Tell Lindsay and the rest of the Mets fans to go fuck themselves.”






In 1969, during batting practice at Shea Stadium, Gil Hodges, the manager of the New York Mets, once a Brooklyn Dodger, walked over to Leo Durocher, the manager of the Chicago Cubs, formerly a New York Giant, and said “Leo, I was just talking to Mayor Lindsay on the phone and he said to tell you Chicago is still the second city.” Leo answered “Tell Lindsay and the rest of the Mets fans to go fuck themselves.”

The Miracle Mets of 1969 helped save the reelection of New York Mayor John V. Lindsay. In 1973, he returned the favor to baseball and the City when he began the renovation of Yankee Stadium, thus keeping the Yankees in New York.

To all of this there is a back story of which I was part as a young mayoral staffer in City Hall.


In the mid summer of 1969, the Mets were lagging behind the first place Cubs and the mayor was running behind in the polls. One night while we were campaigning in Brooklyn, I was listening to the radio. Tom Seaver had a no-hitter going. I suggested to the Mayor we go to the stadium; I had a feeling. Scheduled events stood in the way. The next day at a meeting, the mayor said he had seen on television that Seaver had lost his no-hitter, but that he admired how he and his wife, Nancy had handled it.

With sudden inspiration, I said why don’t you call Gil Hodges and wish the Mets luck. You can say you know what it is to have to come from behind (Lindsay had just lost the Republican primary and was running as a Liberal and Independent). And ask him to tell Leo Durocher that Chicago is still the Second City. Lindsay had to be assured this was okay to do. I said it was only late morning, the game hadn’t started.

I only heard his side of the conversation. Hodges left the phone for a minute and Lindsay wound up talking to Seaver. Then Lindsay roared with laughter. After he put the phone down, he told me what Durocher had said. I briefed the press corps and phoned a friend at WOR radio. Hodges was ahead of us in telling the press at the stadium. The New York Post, then an afternoon paper, headlined with a cleaned up version of Leo’s riposte.

What a gift he gave us. Shea is in Queens, a borough critical to the election and one that was sore at Lindsay over a lousy job of snow removal the previous winter. Leo put Lindsay and Mets fans together.

The whole thing took on a life of its own with telegrams to Mayor Daley of Chicago, tabloids in both towns playing it up and Lindsay predicting later in the summer that the Mets would take the pennant. He was right. From 91/2 down in August, the Mets came all the way back to win.


We were together at the first game of the World Series in Baltimore where I had advised him not to accept an invitation to sit with Vice President Agnew (a former Governor of Maryland) and David Eisenhower, President Nixon’s son-in-law, but to sit on the Mets side with their owners. He called me over to him in the seventh inning, “It looks like the Mets will lose this one. When I left New York, I predicted the Mets would win in four straight. What should I do?” I said, “There is only one thing to do. Hold up four fingers and say you are sticking with your prediction. Four straight.”



And so it was. After the last game of the Series, Lindsay went into the clubhouse and had champagne poured over his head. The picture was everywhere the next day. He went up three points in the Queens polls. In the victory parade up Broadway to City Hall, Lindsay rode in the open limo next to Hodges. at Gil’s invitation. That way, Hodges said, “you are boo proof.” They were in every photo and TV shot together. Lindsay won reelection weeks later.

In 1972, Lindsay called me at home one night and said, what would you say if I told you that CBS is considering moving the Yankees to New Jersey. I told him if that happened every newspaper would say the Bronx was dead and compare it to the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn. The Mayor responded, “I thought that’s what you’d say.” And so began our last baseball adventure, a deal to rehabilitate Yankee Stadium that kept the team in New York. Enter George Steinbrenner, and a new era began.

Words: Steven Isenberg