“Pitching is what makes me happy,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1972. “I’ve devoted my life to it. I live my life around the four days between starts. It determines what I eat, when I go to bed, what I do when I’m awake. It determines how I spend my life when I’m not pitching.”
By Matt Schudel Washington Post
September 2, 2020 at 8:49 p.m.
Tom Seaver, a Hall of Fame pitcher and the hero of New York’s Miracle Mets, who led his once-hapless team from the National League basement to an improbable World Series championship in 1969, died Aug. 31 at age 75.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame announced his death, noting that the causes were Lewy body dementia and covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The statement did not say where he died. Mr. Seaver and his family announced in 2019 that he was withdrawing from public life because of advancing dementia.
From the time he came to New York in 1967 as a 22-year-old rookie, Mr. Seaver began to transform a team that had been known as an inept group of lovable losers since the franchise began five years earlier.
Enduring another defeat, the team’s first manager, Casey Stengel, memorably quipped, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
The clean-cut Mr. Seaver, who had been to college and served in the Marine Corps, brought an orderly sense of purpose to his pitching and to the Mets organization.
In high school, the 5-foot-9, 160-pound Mr. Seaver learned to pitch with finesse, precision and determination. Only later, after he grew four inches and gained 40 pounds, did he have the ability to throw the blazing, pinpoint-accurate fastball that made him one of the most dominant pitchers of his era.
He is generally ranked among the 10 best pitchers in history by baseball historians. “There is a good argument,” noted the sport’s statistical guru Bill James, “that Tom Seaver is the greatest pitcher of all time.”
Pitchers are among the most single-minded of athletes, and few were as devoted to their craft as Mr. Seaver. He always wore a long-sleeve shirt at the beach to keep his arm from being sunburned. When petting a dog, he used his left hand, not his right, or throwing, hand. He brought an intellectual approach to pitching that often led sportswriters to describe him as an artist on the mound.
Related news stories:
Tom Seaver, Pitcher Who Led ‘Miracle Mets’ to Glory, Dies at 75 (New York Times)
Legendary N.Y. Mets Pitcher Tom Seaver Dies At 75 (NPR)
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