1965 - Spahn and Lary and the Mets are Scary
Warren Spahn is making the Mets at least respectable, if not Amazin'
Connie Mack Stadium, Philadelphia - May 25, 1965
The Sports Time Traveler is following the Mets day-by-day here in 1965.
Yesterday, 44 year old Warren Spahn, the winningest lefty pitcher in MLB history, went to the mound to start his 644th game.
Once upon a time, when Warren Spahn was in his prime and on the same Milwaukee Braves pitching staff as Johnny Sain, sportswriters coined the now-famous phrase, “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.”
Well, the 1965 Mets are blessed to have Warren Spahn as their pitching coach and as a starting pitcher, but they don’t have anybody the likes of Johnny Sain to pair with Spahn.
Yet in the past 9 days, Spahn has pitched in a doubleheader, and twice a journeyman Mets pitcher has paired with Spahn for a doubleheader victory. This is a real rarity for the worst team in the history of baseball.
The Mets, beginning their 4th year of existence, here in 1965, have a legacy of losing. In their first 3 seasons they lost 120, 111 and 109 games. Yet this season, with Warren Spahn pitching well, and a couple of 20-year-olds hitting with the league leaders, the Mets are threatening to become a real major league team.
Last week, I shared the story of Spahn teaming the Jack Fisher to win a doubleheader. Here’s the link to that story:
LINK: Spahn and Fisher and the Mets Don't Wither
Yesterday, the Mets pitching coach did it again. This time Warren Spahn teamed with Frank Lary to take two from the Phillies, a team that nearly, and should have, won the NL pennant last season in 1964.
The 35-year-old Lary played for 3 teams last year, in 1964, and had a 5.03 ERA. But with Spahn yesterday, he looked like the Lary of 5 - 10 years ago when he was a two-time All-Star on the Tigers. Lary didn’t give up a hit until the 6th inning. And he allowed just 3 hits and 1 run in 8 innings, and the Mets won the nightcap of the doubleheader 4 - 1.
In the 1st game, Spahn lost his streak of 7 straight starts in which he did not allow a run in the first 4 innings. In the bottom of the 3rd, Dick Allen doubled off Spahn to score a run.
But Spahn held the Phillies to just 1 more run, and that wasn’t until the 8th inning. Spahn finished out the game, his 3rd complete game victory of the season, and the Mets won it 6 - 2.
And for Warren Spahn, it was career win number 360.
Mets batters were led by 20-year-old Ed Kranepool, who hit a homer and a triple in the 2nd game to raise his batting average to .344. Kranepool ranks 4th in the NL behind Willie Mays, Joe Torre and Dick Allen.
As a life-long Mets fan I have to ponder this for a minute. Willie Mays, Joe Torre, Dick Allen and… Ed Kranepool? It sounds surreal. But it’s confirmed each day in the sports sections of newspapers in the daily list of batting leaders here in 1965.
The other 20-year-old star for the Mets is Ron Swoboda. He padded his batting average in the 1st game with a double in 2 at bats. Swoboda is hitting .297. Ron also has 10 home runs, and that puts him 2nd in the majors behind Willie Mays.
Again, I have to savor that for a moment. The Mets have a hitter who is 2nd in major league baseball in home runs behind Willie Mays. Wow! Okay, let’s move on.
It may not sound like much, but the Mets are now 15 - 23. And yesterday, they outscored an NL pennant contender 10 - 3 over the course of a doubleheader. It’s enough to spawn yet another Spahn refrain that sounds even better than last week’s, “Spahn and Lary and the Mets are scary.”
Perhaps scary is a little much. No one is scared of the Mets right now in 1965.
But I think we could get sportswriters in 1965 onboard with “respectable.” Or perhaps we could call them “worthy.” That almost rhymes. The new refrain could be, “Spahn and Lary and the Mets are worthy.”
What the Mets are doing right now in 1965 certainly qualifies as respectable or worthy. They’re competitive against the top tier teams
And with Spahn, Kranepool and Swoboda, perhaps the Mets can actually do something amazin’ here in 1965.
Joe Donnelly, the Mets beat writer for Newsday, penned this in his article today about the game, “(Mets manager) Casey Stengel swears it was his club that won both games. It’s hard to believe.”
By the way, Mets fans, Tug McGraw is also on this team in 1965.
Donnelly took his crack at coming up with a new gloomy phrase for NL teams that will have to face Spahn and Lary in the future, “Spahn and Lary and a whole lot of rain.”
I love Joe Donnelly, he’s the subject of the final chapter of my book on the 1973 Mets. But, I was disappointed he didn’t come up with a line that was a touch more creative in his article today.
The Sports Time Traveler will continue to follow the 1965 Mets.
NOTE From 2025
For anyone who knows what happens to the 1965 Mets, please don’t tell me. I know they will not contend. But I don’t know day-to-day what happened or how they got to their final win-loss count of the season. And this journey through the first quarter of the season has been surprising and quite frankly, amazin’.