Read Online THE 1969 MIRACLE METS: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNDERDOG TEAM by Steven Travers - Free Book Online Page A

that.
    When the Civil War ended a large migration
to California occurred. Northerners from Boston and New York who
supported the Union tended to favor San Francisco. Former
Confederates favored Los Angeles. Later, when the Rose Bowl became
popular, Midwesterners flocked to the warm lands of Southern
California. As a result, the north took on a more liberal, secular
nature. The south became more conservative and Christian.
    However, inter-mixing within California
created a general mindset popular statewide. It became a
progressive place, a trendsetter, a place of new ideas. In the
north, a strong civil rights movement developed. Orange County and
environs remained Right-wing, but on matters of race its white,
Christian citizenry developed a sense of moderation unlike their
Southern brethren, who thought like them on most other matters such
as anti-Communism and small government.
    Two Southern California political figures
embodied this way of thinking. Both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan
ascended to the White House in large measure on the strength of
Southern support. Together, they husbanded the South “into the
Union,” so to speak, by making palatable to the South the
conservative-yet-racially-moderate views of Orange County and
California in general.
    So it was that in the 1950s and 1960s, a
young white boy growing up in an affluent California suburb would
feel free to choose as his sports hero a black man without thinking
twice about it; with no repercussions from disapproving friends and
family. When Tom Seaver was a young boy in Fresno, California, the
Dodgers and Giants were still in New York. There were no Pacific
Coast League teams near him. As a fan, he was a “free agent.” He
was not pre-disposed to root for white stars like Mickey Mantle of
the Yankees or Ted Williams of the Red Sox. Willie Mays of the
Giants and Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers, teams whose fan bases he
lived in, were not yet in the Golden State. He chose Henry Aaron,
the smooth-swinging outfielder of the Milwaukee Braves who at that
time was an emerging superstar.
    In later years, Seaver said he was
“prejudiced” growing up in Fresno; that to look down upon black
people was accepted. Perhaps Seaver was correct, but what he
considered prejudice in the 1950s and early 1960s was moderate by
American standards. It did not stop him from admiring Hank Aaron;
at least as an athlete. Inter-racial dating and full-scale
integration may not have been subjects on his radar screen, but
whatever pre-disposed social constructs he was raised with did not
effect his view of black baseball stars.
    “It mush have been his form that made me
pick him,” he said. “I sat through entire ball games, just looking
at Henry Aaron, nothing else, fascinated by him, studying him at
the plate and on the bases and in the field.”
    Seaver once expressed some question as to
why he, a pitcher, chose as his “idol” an outfielder. Later, when
he went to USC, he attended many Dodgers games on season tickets
owned by his uncle.
    “Sandy Koufax became my hero,” he said. “But
he never really replaced Aaron.”
    The choice of the Jewish Koufax is also
emblematic. Tom Seaver became a race-neutral white man. As he
matured and broadened his horizons, he chose his heroes, idols,
associations, roommates and friends strictly on merit and personal
commonalties. At USC his roommate would be Mike Garrett, a black
running back on the football team (also a baseball outfielder who
later played professionally for the Dodgers organization) from the
inner city Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Seaver would
bring his California attitude with him to New York. He would be
part of the “new breed” of modern athletes in the late 1960s.
    But that was all a long ways away in 1962.
The dream of big league glory was gone. Tom had no reason to
believe he had a chance, but his love of the game would never go
away. There was also the matter of college. Coming from a solidly
middle class