Bill Madden - Tom Seaver: A Terrific Life

Praise for Tom Seaver

Tom Seaver is among the greatest pitchers of all time. He is also one of the most thoughtful and perceptive athletes I have ever known. Sadly, this deeply interesting man is now unable to provide us with a memoir of his own. The closest we will ever come is found here, from the Hall of Fame baseball writer who was exceptionally close to Tom and chronicled his entire career. Bill Madden renders Tom Seavers story with the detail, insight, and care it deserves.

Bob Costas

In the minds eye, Tom Seaver, the consummate power pitcher who transformed the hapless Metsies of my youth into the Miracle Mets of 1969, is forever reaching back for that last ounce of strength and thrust, his knee grazing the dirt of the pitching mound. New York Daily News columnist Bill Madden witnessed and chronicled it allthe misbegotten trade of The Franchise, the failure of the front office to ensure his place on the team after his return, and the cruel descent into dementia that forced him to withdraw from public life. Drawing on their longtime friendship and thirty hours of exclusive interviews with Seaver and his wife, Nancy, Madden has crafted a biography as terrific as its subject.

Jane Leavy, author of New York Times bestseller Sandy Koufax: A Leftys Legacy

Tom Seaver mastered the craft of pitching about as well as any man who ever climbed a mound. A true virtuoso, he also was intellectually curious and very much in touch with the world around him. Precise. Creative. Thorough. Enthralling. The same descriptions apply to the work Bill Madden has done here. This is the biography an icon like Seaver deserves.

Tom Verducci, New York Times bestselling author, and Fox and MLB Network analyst

Ive known Bill Madden since my playing days in New York. Never was there a more straightforward writer on the New York beat. He brings all his knowledge and experience to the fore in this terrific book. Add in his special relationship with Tom Seaver, and you have a must-read about one of the games most intelligent and greatest players to ever put on a uniform. Bravo, Bill!

Keith Hernandez

Bill Madden was the only person who could write this book of our dear friend Tom Terrific. Tom Seaver was Terrific. A Mans Man. Brilliant, funny, the best competitor I ever knew, and my friend.

Johnny Bench

For two years with the White Sox Tom fulfilled our very high expectations every time he pitched. What we learned about Tom went way beyond giving us a great chance to win. He is the smartest teammate we ever had and knew winning in all phases of the game! In our family culture, Tom quickly became one of our leaders with a personality that bonded with teammates on and off the field. This book by Bill Madden, who had a close personal relationship with him, captures all of that.

Tony LaRussa

A LSO BY B ILL M ADDEN

1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever

Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball

Pride of October: What It Was to Be Young and a Yankee

Bill Madden: My 25 Years Covering Baseballs Heroes, Scoundrels, Triumphs and Tragedies

Zim: A Baseball Life (with Don Zimmer)

Lou: Fifty Years of Kicking Dirt, Playing Hard, and Winning Big in the Sweet Spot of Baseball (with Lou Piniella)

The Zen of Zim: Baseball, Beanballs, and Bosses (with Don Zimmer)

Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2020 by Bill Madden

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2020

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Jackie Seow

Jacket Photographs: (Front) By Bet Tmann/Getty Images (Back) by Andrew Theodorakis/New York Daily News

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-9821-3618-5

ISBN 978-1-9821-3621-5 (ebook)

For Lillian, Steven, and Christopher and in memory of Thomas Madden

HE HAD ALREADY WON 273 GAMES in the big leagues, along with a record-tying three Cy Young Awards, a no-hitter, and Sports Ilustrateds Sportsman of the Year Awardnot to mention having led the New York Mets to the most improbable World Series championship in baseball historywhen Tom Seaver received the news that fateful morning of January 20 in 1984.

He was going to have to leave New York for the second time in his career.

Unlike the first time, 1977, when he was still in his prime, Seaver was thirty-nine now and coming off two successive losing seasons, which had already caused him to question privately whether it was time to start seriously considering life without baseball.

Other than miraculously regaining the lost two miles per hour on his fastball or winning the Sporting News Comeback Player of the Year Award, Seaver had nothing more to prove when the Chicago White Sox shocked the baseball world that day by selecting him as the number one pick in something called the free-agent compensation draft, passing over hundreds of far younger established players and prospects.

I just dont know if I want to do this, Seaver said to his wife, Nancy, that morning in the kitchen of their home, a converted barn snuggled within a parcel of seven heavily wooded acres in Greenwich, Connecticut. Leave home again? With his two daughters growing up? Why?

In recounting that conversation years later, Nancy Seaver said her husbands anger at the Mets for leaving him unprotected in the draft was tempered by his own self-doubt as to whether he had anything left in that durable right arm that had already logged more than four thousand innings across seventeen major-league seasonsand whether it was worth it to find out, in another city, in a different league with the designated hitter, halfway across the country from his home and family.

I think he was questioning himself whether or not he needed to put himself out there again, Nancy said during an interview at Seavers vineyard in Calistoga, California, north of San Francisco, in 2017. Maybe it was time for him to come home and start to think about his future. But Nancy said she suggested that he give it a try. Go to the new team. I started thinking, Well, we could live in the city. How fun that would be for the girls. We could actually live in a high-risewed never done that before.

Seaver pondered what she had said, still uncertain about how much he had left.

Well, he said, maybe if I just get two hundred ninety wins. Whats so wrong with that? Maybe I could be content with that.