Sport: How the Franchise Went West

He had been baseball's golden boy, the handsome hero with the strong right arm who almost singlehanded wrought the Miracle of 1969—the young New York Mets' rise from happy-shabby obscurity to a World Series championship. In eleven seasons with the team, Tom Seaver had won the Cy Young Award three times. Only two weeks ago, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds, he chalked up the 42th shutout of his career, and in the process struck out ten Reds batters. This brought his lifetime strikeout total to 2,400 and pulled him ahead of Sandy Koufax (2,396 strikeouts) on the list of alltime strikeout leaders. The game was held up for three minutes as the Mets' faithful in New York's Shea Stadium stood to cheer.

After months of acrimonious bickering between Seaver and his team's front office, Mets fans seemed to sense that the game would be his farewell to New York. Sure enough, just hours before the trading deadline last week, the star, known among Mets fans as "the Franchise," was dispatched to the Cincinnati Reds for second-year Pitcher Pat Zachry, Utility Infielder Doug Flynn and two minor leaguers.

The trade, one of the most dramatic in baseball history, climaxed a 16-month dispute between a proud—if sometimes preachy—player and a stubborn management. Early in 1976, when Seaver balked at signing a new contract, Mets Board Chairman M. Donald Grant huffed that the pitcher was an "ingrate" who cared more about his wallet than his team. Seaver lashed back: "My loyalty is to my family." The war was on.

Both men took to airing their views to sympathetic reporters, who eagerly carried on the dispute in the New York tabloids. Eventually, Seaver signed a three-year contract fixing his salary at $225,000 per year, with elaborate performance clauses, e.g., bonus clauses which could increase his pay to $260,000 annually. But the damage had been done: Grant had threatened a trade, thus making a once unthinkable idea suddenly thinkable.

Irate Fans. Neither the Mets nor Seaver had had a good year in 1976. The team finished third in the National League's Eastern Division. Attendance slipped, and with interest picking up in the Yankees, New Yorkers began to regard the Mets less as lovable losers than as just losers, period. Seaver pitched well, but was hobbled by the Mets' impotent offense: the .246 team batting average was the lowest in the major leagues. When training opened this year, Seaver openly criticized Grant's refusal to enter the free-agent draft in search of needed hitting talent. Grant was also locked in a contract dispute with Slugger Dave Kingman, the team's single long-ball threat, and the effect of another round of debilitating negotiations showed up in Kingman's performance. Still unsigned, he was traded to the San Diego Padres within hours after Seaver was sent to the Reds.

In Seaver's view, Grant's tightfisted, unaggressive management consigned the club to a mediocre future. He asked that his contract be renegotiated. Grant, a Wall Street stockbroker, issued a statement outlining club policy against renegotiation, adding by way of explanation that "the contract is the fundamental cornerstone of our country and baseball as well." Seaver asked to be traded.