One of the interesting things is as a 22-year-old rookie Tom Seaver won 16 games for a team that won 61 games total. He has 2 and a half times the WAR as the next player on the team. His second year he won 16 again and Jerry Koosman won 19. The team by 12 wins to 73. Somehow, they put it all together in Seaver’s third year and won the World Series after winning 100 games during the regular season. Seaver won the Cy Young award as the league’s best pitcher and 25 games during the regular season.
That started a streak of 8 out of 9 years getting Cy Young votes, winning two. In the year he didn’t get a vote in the Cy Young Award he had the best strike out to walk ratio in the league. He had two later years in his career where he got Cy Young votes making it 10 years in his career.
Tom was a very analytical player, wrote two books on pitching. He also wrote a book “How I Would Pitch to Babe Ruth”, where he would develop strategies about pitching against the great hitters of all time and have a pretend at bat against them. Then the book would have a short biography on each player.
He started for the Mets and pitched for them 10 and a half years. In his 11th year he was negotiating a new contract with the Mets. Dick Young at one time a good reporter sided with the Mets and wrote nasty stuff about Seaver. Seaver was willing to overlook this and was still negotiating with the team. Young then wrote about Seaver’s wife being jealous of Nolan Ryan’s wife as Ryan made more money than Seaver. Seaver ten demanded to be traded.
I had just graduated from High School and subscribed to the Sporting News. I read Dick Young’s articles. He was a solid writer. However, when I read this I was appalled. I thought to myself how can you print something like this it’s just gossip. I lost all respect to Dick Young then. Tom Seaver was soon traded to the Reds. He and his wife Nancy are still married today. Tom unfortunately has dementia and no longer makes public appearances. But he was sure fun to watch pitch in his prime.
