Recently an eBay auction for a “unique” collectable caught my attention. The opening price was only about 4 bucks for an 8×10 mockup of Willie McCovey’s 1968 Topps baseball card. Only instead of the Giant road greys, Stretch was seen in vintage Met road greys (which is slightly odd considering the photo on the card clearly shows McCovey at Shea Stadium). Clearly a fun attempt of the seller’s Photoshop skills to make this wistful thinking item, and certainly something that could be a “Card of The Week” candidate!
But that got me wondering; What if there was a parallel Earth where the Mets somehow landed the Giants’ slugger?
Why would the Giants have traded McCovey instead of Orlando Cepeda, whom in reality was shipped to St. Louis for Ray Sadecki?
Why the Mets, and who would the Mets have traded to get McCovey?
And just how would the fortunes of the two franchises have turned out?
First off, reality sees Cepeda coming off a knee injury that cost him most of 1965. While McCovey and Cepeda, both future Hall of Famers who logged time in at both first and left field for the Giants, were roughly the same age, the Giants figured that McCovey being the better defensive first baseman the logic was to ship the highly popular Cepeda off while he still had value. So suppose the Giants instead put McCovey on the market instead? And more importantly to this story, shop him to the Mets.
While Cepeda was traded even up for future Met Sadecki, it would seem only fair that the Mets give an outfielder in return for the Giants’ losing a fixture in left. So Ron Swoboda would seem like a logical choice. Okay, so the Giants were looking for pitching though, and Sadecki, 25 at the time, had won 20 games in 1964. Looking at the Met pitching register from 1965, there isn’t anyone among the youthful players whom you could match up with the 1964 version of Ray Sadecki, though Sadecki does fall off a bit in 1965, not saying that Jack Fisher would have gotten it done, but with the Giants looking for rotation depth, a quick look at the Mets organization in 1965 doesn’t really reveal much either. I’d guess the 26 year old Gordie Richardson, who spent time both in Triple A Buffalo and New York that season would be a decent enough fit.
So, Swoboda and Richardson for McCovey.
For what it’s worth, and it isn’t that big of a telling sign about what McCovey would have done over the course of an 81 game schedule as McCovey literally played a total of 84 games at Shea Stadium from 1964-1979 (obviously only coming in once per season as a Giant or Padre), but, McCovey did hit .260 and slug .498 at Shea with 16 home runs. Interestingly enough, it is pretty consistent with the road stats McCovey was putting up in this time period.
So, that would have taken care of the Mets’ need for some raw power and run producing numbers that would pretty much elude them until an actual slugging outfielder from the Giants named Dave Kingman arrived in 1975.
Besides that, how long would McCovey have lasted? The Mets would start “breaking up the band” roughly around the same time McCovey’s prime years were coming to a close. We know how Tom Seaver was treated, would McCovey have gotten the same treatment from the partisan commentators in the New York City media, much in the way they, well specifically Dick Young, had influence over Seaver’s eventual demand to be traded? Or would he have played out the remainder of his Hall of Fame career as a Met?
Some good questions to think on though.
From 1966-1970, McCovey averaged 37+ HR and 108+ RBIs a year along with a .997 OPS. He was having another strong year in ’71 until he got hurt in mid-June and then he never approached those numbers again. He was still a threat but no longer an MVP-type guy. And he no longer played in 145 games a year, either.
The Mets weren’t ready to compete before ’69 so McCovey’s biggest impact might have been on how his presence affected other trades. Would they have been so eager to get a power-hitting 3B if they knew they had a slugger entrenched at 1B? Otis, McCovey and Singleton would have been a nice middle-of-the order to have throughout the 1970s.
Nice article. Great image. The Mets don’t acquire Clendennon in this scenario. What was Kranepool’s fate? Does he get dealt for Sadecki?
During the 1961 expansion draft, the Phillies left 18 year old Richie Allen unprotected. The winter of 1962 during the First Year Draft, a draft that netted the Mets Amos Otis from the Red Sox; the Mets passed on Jimmy Wynn of the Reds three times before the Colt .45’s drafted him. I often think that if the Mets had been a bit more astute or even lucky, they would have had both of these two sluggers blossom during the mid-Sixties. Kranepool and Swoboda would have died in the minor leagues. The McCovey fantasy is an interesting one, but the possibility of the other two acquisitions I mentioned were closer to reality and both guys were there for the taking.