RIP to a legend.
I was reading the
NYT obit and came across this tidbit about why Seaver left the Mets:
Seaver was having a good early season in 1977; he was 7-3 in mid-June as rumors swirled that he would be traded to Cincinnati.
Yet he was just about to sign a satisfying contract extension with the Mets when Young wrote a column suggesting that Seaver’s wife, Nancy, was jealous that Nolan Ryan, a former Met who had been traded to the California Angels (now the Los Angeles Angels), was earning more money than her husband.
Outraged at the mention of his wife and suspicious that Mets management was the source of Young’s story, Seaver refused to sign his contract and demanded a trade.
In what The New York Times called “one of the blockbuster trades in baseball history,” he was immediately sent to the Reds for four players of far lesser stature: Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn, Steve Henderson and Dan Norman.
“Dick Young dragged my wife and family into it, and I couldn’t take that,” Seaver said after the trade. “I called the Mets and said, ‘That’s it, it’s all over.’ This alliance or whatever it is — this alliance between Young and the chairman of the board — is stacked against me.”
The deal, which became known among Met fans as the Midnight Massacre — two other Mets, Dave Kingman and Mike Phillips were traded the same night — has been considered by many as the lowest point — or as The New York Post has called it, “the darkest day” — in Mets history.
Looked up
Dick Young on Wikipedia. He was elected to the writers' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978. Also:
The Sporting News described his career arc: "Though Young's best work was on the baseball beat, his most controversial and memorable writing came later, as a general columnist. He became the Archie Bunker of the keyboard, voicing populist rage." For several years after his 1987 death, the Village Voice ran a parody of a late-period Young column in its sports section, railing at all comers underneath the tag "Dateline: Hell."
Ha.