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Hodges' pride in his team's resiliency is well founded. The raw young Mets are less than one season removed from last year's ninth-place finish. The difference is that this year's players are consistently coming through with the big play and the timely hit. Once they could be counted on to lose the one-run decisions (the most famous: a 24-inning, 1-0 loss to Houston in 1968); this year they have won 21 of 31. They have swept eight doubleheaders. What is more, they defy all Met tradition by actually trying when they are down: they have come from behind to win in no fewer than 27 ball games. At Pittsburgh earlier this season, the Mets spotted the Pirates a 6-1 lead after three innings, but finally won 8-7.
Pitching is the key to the Mets' success. Seaver tossed a four-hitter against San Diego last week and became the loop's top pitcher (18-7). He and Jerry Koosman, 25, the Appleton, Minn., farm boy who won 19 games as a rookie last year, give the Mets the most potent one-two delivery in baseball. A powerful lefthander who may be as fast as the great Sandy Koufax ever was, Koosman pulled a muscle deep in his left shoulder during spring training last
March and got off to a shaky start. Still, his two-hit victory over San Diego last week raised his season's record to a respectable 12-8. His earned-run average (ERA), the most reliable index of a pitcher's effectiveness, is an admirable 2.24 per game. Gentry, despite his occasional lapses, is already ranked by Hodges as "just short of Seaver and Koosman." Jim McAndrew, a second-year man, pitched a shutout against the Padres to run his consecutive-scoreless-inning streak to 23. Nolan Ryan, 22, is improving with each game, and the bullpen crew of Tug McGraw, Ron Taylor and Cal Koonce have 19 wins and 28 saves to their credit.
Hodges' dogged emphasis on defense has also paid off. Jones, 27, and his lifelong buddy, Tommie Agee, 27, have regularly made spectacular catches in crucial situations. The team has reeled off 104 double plays. The offense does not exactly remind anyone of Murderer's Row, but the hitting has been increasingly sharp. Agee's performance has been particularly gratifying to Hodges. Tommie was the American League's Rookie of the Year with the Chicago White Sox in 1966, but after he joined the Mets last year, he hit a dismal .217, including only five home runs and 17 runs batted in. This year he is hitting .281 and already has 22 home runs and 64 RBls. He blasted two home runs and a single and made a diving catch of a sinking line drive as the Mets came from behind to defeat Montreal 9-7. Recently he broke a 14-inning deadlock with San Francisco by smashing a home run off Juan Marichal to give the Mets a 1-0 victory. The Mets may even produce their first batting champion in Jones, whose current .350 average is second in the league.
Such impressive statistics raise an important question: Can the Mets continue to play at their present pace? After all, the season's end is still long weeks away, and better teams than the Mets have wilted under September's pennant-race pressure. Still, a durable pitching staff is the essence of late-season success. So who knows?