It’s 1990 and I’m in the batter’s box facing Tom Seaver.
It’s a publicity stunt. Seaver was drumming up publicity for a baseball art show at the New York Public Library.
I – and the rest of the lineup of professional scribblers – were the stunt. Adding to the surreal atmosphere is that we were taking swings inside the Midtown Tennis Club, a good dozen miles from Shea Stadium, where Seaver led the Amazin’ Mets in 1969 to one of the definitive underdog victories in sports history. He wasn’t just a Met. He was, is, and will remain, The New York Met.
Which is why I couldn’t understand why he would do something as gauche as pitching to reporters.
“It’s fun,” he told me.
For us, sure, but …
“Invariably, newspapers run a photo of Tom Seaver throwing a baseball. In the long run it’s going to get people into this exhibit. It’s going to get the kids here.”
Two years earlier, I asked an editor if I could take a swing at an interview with Seaver. He had been living in Greenwich for two decades, but colleagues failed to get time with him, labeling him as brusque. After a news conference announcing a fundraising celebrity softball game to raise money for the Greenwich Adult Day Care Center, I asked him and event co-chair Heller DeMeritt for an interview. We settled onto nearby benches and I executed my game plan. I threw every question at DeMeritt. A radio journalist spotted us and poked his microphone toward Seaver. Finally, radiohead interrupted to inquire if he could ask baseball questions.
Seaver held out two fingers like a catcher signaling a bender.
“Two.”
He answered them swiftly and I returned to our discourse on senior care….