Tom Seaver dead at 75
- Thread starter CTOkie
- Start date
So far as I know, Vince LaRosa was the only New York City high school player, to ever start at OU. In 1969, Vinny played OLB in the unfortunate decision to play a 4-4-3 defense. We did it, to try to deal with Texas' new fangled wishbone in its second season. We did a pretty good job against Texas, who eventual national champion. Then we went into the conference, where several teams could really throw the ball, and got embarrassed, with 2 and a half white guys in the secondary, trying to keep up. First, KState's Lynn Dickey, and a real passing game embarrassed us 59-21.. Then in Columbia, Mel Gray had a field day, Soph Glenn King moving into the starting lineup, didn't help much, with only three in the secondary. 44-10 final. They ended up co conference champs with Nebraska. The Huskers had two soph quarterbacks. Jerry Tagge was their best guy, but they started the other soph, Van Brownson, who led them to a 44-14 win. They also broke Steve Owens' streak of 100 yard rushing games, in his Heisman year.
When we switched back to a four deep in 1970, Vinnie switched to offense and started at OG.
I brought all this up, as evidence that he was a decent player, starting both ways. Vince had to be the biggest Mets fan ever to play at OU. (also the Knicks who won the NBA one year he was at OU) I've never pulled for any New York teams, but he was so thrilled about his NY teams, in an exaggerated way, you couldn't dislike him. When the Mets, playing at home, went up 2 games to 1 in 1969, Vinnie said, "I don't think it's going back to Baltimore.
That Oriole team would win the World Series a year later. They had an unbelievable pitching staff, an All Star at three infield positions, and Frank Robinson, a multiple MVP batting cleanup. But in that Series, while Seaver and Koosman were really good, as usual, guys like Tommy Agee, and of all people Ron Svoboda played like All Stars, including catching everything in the outfield. Vinnie got more excited every day, and showed pure joy when they won game five and the Series four games to one. He was right. They didn't go back to Baltimore.
After KState beat us for the first time in 36 years, I think it was the Norman Transcript, whose headline read the next day, The Moon, The Mets and now KState.
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Getting back to Tom Seaver, during the stretch run in 1969, Seaver threw 8 consecutive complete game victories from August 26th to September 27th.
The Mets overtook the Cubs after trailing them by 10 games on August 14th, winning 44 of the last 62 games which included 17 shutouts.
While I was enduring a very down time in Yankees history (1965-1975), the 1969 Mets gave me my favorite baseball season ever.
For me, Seaver's death marks another degree of separation in what a great game baseball once was and what it is today.
The Mets overtook the Cubs after trailing them by 10 games on August 14th, winning 44 of the last 62 games which included 17 shutouts.
While I was enduring a very down time in Yankees history (1965-1975), the 1969 Mets gave me my favorite baseball season ever.
For me, Seaver's death marks another degree of separation in what a great game baseball once was and what it is today.
In the summer of 1969 I was attending a business meeting in Chicago. The meeting ended earlier than expected so an associate and I hopped a cab for Wrigley Field ( day games only back then ). When we got to the ballpark the game was sold out so we began looking for a bar where we could watch the game. I gentleman walked up to us and asked if we needed tickets. He had 2 extra because out of town friends couldnt make it. He gave them to us free. The seats were right behind the Cubs dugout. This was in the yellow hard hat era of Cubs baseball. The matchup that day...Holtzman vs Seaver
Another NY area Sooner was DE Victor Brown 1974-77....from Newark NJ, directly across the Hudson River from NYC.
Wish I could have seen Seaver, Gibson, Koufax, Drysdale, Spahn, Ryan, Marichal, Lolich, Palmer, Carlton, etc. pitch to jerks like Barry Bonds, David Ortiz and other home run posers and bat flippers.
