June 15, 1977; The Day the Mets’ Traded Seaver, The Phillies Acquired Bake McBride
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I was glancing at MLB news portal Ballbug as I’m wont to do daily to see what if any big news is out there. In so doing, I came across this piece from Greg and Jason, bloggers on Faith and Fear in Flushing, a Mets blog.
Greg contrasts the Mets’ current malaise with club’s insensitive housecleaning or, perhaps cost-cutting of 30 years ago which resulted in Mets’ great Tom Seaver, as well as some other Mets being traded as is documented by Baseball Library.
He writes;
Tom Seaver wanted the Mets to spend more money. Some on him. Some on his team. The Mets were going to do no such thing. They didn’t care for the idea of this ingrate not appreciating that they had lowballed him before free agency took hold. They didn’t think much of Tom Seaver’s 182 wins between 1967 and 1976, his three Cy Youngs, his strikeout and ERA titles, his role in leading one miracle team to a world championship and another to the cusp of a second.
At least that’s how it seemed from here. I was probably more accepting of the idea of Tom Seaver being traded in the days leading up to June 15, 1977 than I am now. It makes no sense now. It made…well, it didn’t make any sense then either, but you understood it. No, actually you didn’t understand it, but you got it. At the very least you saw it coming.
It was everywhere. It was, sadly, all that was keeping anybody’s attention on the Mets in the spring of ‘77. It is perhaps forgotten that prior to trading Tom Seaver to Cincinnati and similarly embroiled Dave Kingman to San Diego and, for weird measure, Mike Phillips to St. Louis on June 15, the Mets were not exactly Camelot.
1977, based on April and May, was already the first …awful year I experienced as a Mets fan. They lost 91 games in ‘74, but there were injuries (the Mets were always injured in the ’70s) and residual goodwill from ‘73 and, quite frankly, I kind of zoned out that summer. 1977 was way worse. Last place was achieved May 4 and maintained steadily thereafter. Make no mistake: We would finish last without Seaver and Kingman and Phillips but we would have likely finished last with them.
The Mets did finish last without Seaver and Kingman. Seaver combined for 21-6 season with the two teams that season and spent the next 5 years with Cincinnati before coming back to the Mets in 1983 after an off-year in 1982. He then had an off-year with the Mets as well before before 2 decent seasons with the White Sox.
In his final season, he went 7-13 splitting his time between Chicago and Boston before retiring.
During that same season, the Phillies, who were in the midst of winning 4 division championships, 1 NL Pennant and a World Championship in the last half of the 1970s into 1980, acquired rightfielder Bake McBride from the St. Louis Cardinals solidifying their outfield for years to come.
Among the other June 15, 1977 entries besides the Seaver deal in Baseball Library is the following;
Philadelphia ships P Tom Underwood‚ OF Rick Bosetti and 1B Dane Iorg to the Cardinals for Bake McBride and Steve Waterbury. McBride will hit .339 after arriving in Philly.
This trade basically came down to Underwood for McBride as the others proved out to a wash. With the addition of McBride, the Phils assembled a potent offensive outfield with Garry Maddox in centerfield and Greg “the Bull” Luzinski in left. Defensively, Luzinski was the one weak link as was exemplified by his crucial error in the infamous 1977 LCS series with the LA Dodgers.
McBride went on to be an vital cog in that Phillies 1980 World Championship team.
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