"When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing. I told him I wanted to be a real Major League baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"See that fella over there? He's 20 years old. In 10 years, he's got a chance to be a star. Now that fella over there, he's 20 years old, too. In 10 years he's got a chance to be 30." - Casey Stengel

"I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it." - Rogers Hornsby

"I can remember my years with the Mets, just hoping that I'd get four years in so I'd qualify for my pension. That was my goal. Then, after I did that, I thought maybe I could hang on long enough to get ten years in." - Nolan Ryan


Ron Swoboda, like countless others before and after, has experienced both the highs and lows of earning a living in the Majors. The solid feeling of connecting on that convincing drive into the gap. The empty feeling of swinging at a ball that has already thudded into the catcher's mitt. The exuberance of realizing the club wants you around for a while, so you can finally unpack your bag. The emptiness of realizing your body just can't do this anymore -- where is that old bag, anyway?

Mr. Swoboda does have one high on his resume that most never will. In 1969 he was a New York Metropolitan. And a damn important one, one may add. XMFan was privileged to spend a morning with Ron and just soak in the history of our national pastime. His insights on the people who are the game of baseball were most welcome even as another new season sparks the hopes of the baseball faithful from Boston to San Diego.


XMFan: What are a few of your earliest baseball memories?
Ron: Well, I was one of those guys who were lucky enough to have a father who threw him his first pitches and played catch with him the first time, which essentially introduced me to baseball. I'm at the age of sixty, going on sixty-one, and my dad is still around - although we haven't played catch in a while. But I think back to that scene out of Field of Dreams when you find out the whole point of the movie was for Kevin Costner to have a catch with his dad, which they never had. I did have a catch with my dad and that's how it all got started.

XMFan: How about your road to the majors, beginning in high school?
Ron: I played on a pretty decent high school team in Baltimore County, at Sparrows Point High School. I believe we won the Baltimore County Championship my senior year, which involved only playing maybe eight or twelve games.

The way I developed any ability to attract professional scouts was by playing for two people. The first was an amateur team in Baltimore named Gordon Stores, which was a cleaning company that no longer exists. The guy who managed that team was a fellow by the name of Sterling "Sheriff" Fowble. This was a team for sixteen-year-olds that played in several leagues in the city, and we played a pretty high caliber of ball. If your team did well you played in a tournament that ended up having a championship game in Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, which is where the Orioles used to play.

The team that really made the difference for me was a couple of years later when I played on a team called Leone's (Boys Club), which was a sixteen to nineteen team. I played for them one year, and we played at least eighty or ninety games - I don't remember the exact number - but during the summer you played two and a half months of everyday baseball. We'd usually play two games on a Sunday, and of course lots of practice. I played for a guy named Walter Youse, who was a scout for the Orioles. He was really professionally oriented about the way you played, along with the way you were expected to dedicate yourself to the game based on the professional model. I played every day in the summer and believe that this concentrated program is what really helped me to sign a professional contract.

We played in the Johnstown (AAABA) Tournament in Johnstown, PA, which still goes on today. This was one of those places where you'd play and the scouts would come and see you. Interestingly enough, when it came to signing a contract, "Sheriff" Fowble was a bird dog scout with the New York Mets and brought to the tournament a regular scout named Wid Mathews. Wid Mathews was the scout who signed Stan Musial back when he was working for the Cardinals.

Wid came to our house and offered me a number. So I signed with the New York Mets, who were my original team.

XMFan: How about a young twenty-year-old's impression of Casey Stengel?
Ron: Probably what's most amazing to me is when I first met him in 1964. He was already in his early seventies and it was my first Spring Training. You know, there is something so amazing... I may end up using the word "amazing" more often when talking about Casey Stengel, because he was truly amazing... The fact that he was still in the game. He was bent over, had a big knot in his leg where he'd gotten hit by a taxicab, walked bowlegged and a bit stooped over. He had this face that looked like it came off of Mount Rushmore. But with all the wrinkles and crinkles of age, his eyes were very blue and very young. His face was prone to all kinds of expressions - mostly he was smiling.

He was an incredible character to be around. I suspect he was more of a character with the New York Mets than he was with the Yankees during the forties and fifties, winning all those American League Pennants and World Championships. He had to become more of a character with the Mets, because he realized that expansion teams back then were going to struggle to develop themselves into something. There was no free agency or other paths to find the more instant success. You would have to grow your own players, and your system was going to have to work. So my first time around him I considered him to be a delightful character. He understood the process, and I think he may have "hammed it up" a little more because his job was to entertain the media and keep them from turning on the franchise. He knew the team was not going to be successful for a while.

So in a sense, while he was doing his job for the Mets I think he was eroding his legend as a great manager. Unfortunately people tend to remember him as the clown, which he did play occasionally. As smart and savvy as he was, he did play that clown part a little bit as the Mets Manager. You tend to forget he was a pretty damn good manager of some pretty damn good teams while wearing the Yankee pinstripes.

XMFan: Many people believe the Mets started to turn the corner right around '67, with the addition of Tom Seaver to the roster.
Ron: When Tom Seaver came to the Mets I don't remember there being any transition from a young, inexperienced pitcher to the guy people quickly recognized as being on track to the Hall of Fame. It seemed like he came out of the box fully formed and was able to pitch and compete at a very high level. Incredible. And he was able to maintain that level - I believe his ERA was over 3.00 just once during his first ten years in the big leagues. That level of consistency and success was just incredible.

XMFan: Then of course there was Nolan Ryan, who took a few years to tame his fastball.
Ron: Nolie was a different kind of pitcher - he was a power pitcher who was a fastball and curveball guy. And he was a highball pitcher. His success was up in the zone, and the National League was a lowball zone league. At that time he also didn't have the command of Tom Seaver and it took a little while to develop. Ryan had awesome stuff, but his command would wait.

I think it was a good thing for him to go to the American League, which was more of a highball league at that time. The AL umpires were still umpiring with those big air cushions on their uniforms, while the NL umps used the inside gear which allowed their heads to be in a lower position behind the catcher. AL umpires were up above the catcher's head while the NL umps faces were almost level with the catcher's face. Even today I don't believe umpires get as low as I recall seeing the NL umps in those days. I played in both leagues and it seems to be the general consensus that the NL was more of a lowball league because of the perspective of the umpire on the strike zone.

XMFan: There is little new to be said about the 1969 Miracle Mets, but when do you think the team realized something special was happening that season?
Ron: You can look at it and see that near the All-Star Break we were fluttering around .500 and not causing any great alarm. At that time we really didn't have a whole lot of reasons to start dreaming dreams, but something happened just before the All-Star Break - Donn Clendenon showed up and started to add something to the offense. By the time August rolled around we had started playing some pretty good baseball and things came together rather quickly. Tom Seaver was Tom Seaver, but Jerry Koosman had some physical problems early in the year unrelated to his arm. I think Jim McAndrew had some problems early. Don Cardwell didn't have a great first half, but my recollection is early in the month of August we really started putting it together.

It started getting interesting because by that point in the season you have played everybody. We started putting together some win streaks and the quality of baseball we were playing started getting much better - and the league had not gotten away from us. Because of a very long 162 game season, you can be of several different minds depending on how things are going. I think that's how a team like us, who had never been anywhere, basically taught itself that it could play. The awareness grows on you as you win games that, "Hey... We've played everybody, we've seen what they have, and we've even snuck up on a few of them." Now you're playing much better baseball and have surprised a bunch of people. You eventually get to the point where you are no longer surprising people because you have proven you can play at that level.

It was pretty exciting, because all of a sudden we realized we could look back at every team we had played in the league and wonder, "Who is there that we can't play with?" Well, there was nobody. We were in solid shape, our pitching was great, and we were scoring enough runs. But pitching was really our forte. We knew that. We didn't need a whole lot of runs to win, and we played great defense behind that pitching. Because of the solid pitching we didn't need to make as many great catches and tough plays. They kept people off the bases.

Seaver and Koosman were just an incredible one-two punch. You know, Seaver was the number one starter, as he should have been, but Koosman tended to draw the tougher match-ups - and he was just the guy to do it because he was fearless. Gary Gentry was another young arm who was fearless - he didn't know he couldn't do it. He had great stuff, though this arm would not hold up over a very long career. McAndrew was a big power pitcher and Cardwell was the veteran starter who had plenty good stuff.

XMFan: Does it make sense to you after all these years that the Miracle Mets still rank as one of the all-time favorite sports teams?
Ron: We do a certain number of appearances each year related to that team. I just did a speaking engagement up in Hartford, Connecticut. I'm sixty-one years old and haven't played baseball since the spring of 1974, and yet people clearly had remembrances of my career and the Mets. Over the years we've had a number of reunions. It's incredible when you appear at some of these card shows and people are walking in front of you with their kids, trying to explain to them why this team was a benchmark in their lives.

I think the improbability of the whole thing, as well as the generation and time which it happened, has something to do with it. It was an important time with the war in Vietnam that was disturbing the culture, as well as the protests of the war. There was a man going to the moon, Woodstock, and the 1969 New York Mets, which seemed to be above a lot of the fray. Because of its improbability more than anything, it embedded itself into people as a time in their lives. Things like the JFK assassination or man on the moon were "short" events I guess, as far as the duration of the event itself. Our campaign was this whole event that went though August and September, and then into October with the Playoffs and World Series, which was a good deal of time to reinforce that imagery. We live inside a lot of people who believe the '69 Mets were a pretty neat thing.

XMFan: Have you managed to save any memorabilia from your playing career?
Ron: I have my glove that I made the catch with in Game Four of the World Series. After a trip to Paris I got inspired to sketch a pencil drawing of it, and spent about three days working on the glove until I got it the way I wanted it. I think it's a pretty good rendering - drawing is more about observation that hand-eye coordination, so I am told. I've got some stuff that came to us as a result of the World Series, as well as the last pair of baseball shoes I used with the Yankees. I believe I still have one of my first bats, but I didn't really collect stuff back then.

XMFan: Is there any particular pitcher you hated to face?
Ron: The first and foremost would be Bob Gibson. I've given this answer so much over the years, but occasionally I'm in his presence and he still makes me uncomfortable. He was such a competitor. He's an impatient guy who has to consciously work on being warm and fuzzy - he wasn't warm and fuzzy then and he isn't today - and he's a very smart man who is very impatient with lesser intelligences, which most of us are. I think I got a base hit off of him one time... You know, I've hit home runs off of Juan Marichal, Fergie Jenkins, and Sandy Koufax - but I think the little infield dribbler base hit I got off of Bob Gibson is probably more important to me. He was by himself in terms of difficulty for me.

XMFan: Catfish Hunter was the last pitcher to throw thirty complete games in a season back in 1975. Since 2000, no pitcher has even thrown ten complete games in a season. Do you feel pitchers are over managed these days, or has the game just evolved?
Ron: During my era we were just starting to move to a time when the "closer" was becoming a part of the game. You know, it wasn't solidified or a defined role at that time, but managers would put in pitchers who had proven success in as many save opportunities as possible. The closer really developed right after I retired in the spring of '74. Your middle relief were players that were really just nowhere in your pitching staff, and I don't even know if there were left-handed designated pitchers in your relief corps then.

Now you have setup guys who are specifically setup guys for specific closers, so the pitchers are being managed more. The other thing not to forget is, even though Orthopedic Surgeons are so much better at reconstructing injured arms - especially elbow problems more than shoulder problems - and there is a great ability these days to fix arms, pitchers are just such a valuable commodity and always have been. In this age of multi-million dollar salaries they are even more expensive, so teams tend to protect them. Managers today try to spread the innings out by using more people, and I believe they are convinced that this strategy has saved arms.

One other observation is this age of pitchers "standing tall." Remember Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and those other guys who would always get their knee dirty because they really used their legs to drive? You see less of that now. I think you see pitchers on a lower mound wanting to stand taller, and some of the pitching motions almost seem to encourage injuries from overuse. Pitchers are doing it to get movement on the ball and to get that downward plane if they can.

It's hard to complete games now - not because guys can't do it - but I think the mentality has changed on the part of pitching coaches and managers. That attitude is also a part of the pitcher's mentality too, knowing they won't be expected to labor the complete game.

XMFan: Do you have any other observations on changes to baseball over the past forty years that have really affected the quality of how the game is being played?
Ron: Well I think the best thing recently is working hard to get the umpires to call the strike zone, both high and low. There was a period - right before the umps totally overestimated their power - where they really needed to call a correct strike zone and not their strike zone. On the other hand, I don't like QuesTek, and all that other technical stuff they try to use to define strike zones and rate umpires. I think they are trying to second-guess these guys, and they should be judged on consistency as defined by the strike zone according to the rules of baseball.

Guys are bigger and stronger now, and are in many ways better athletes than we used to be. I help broadcast games for a Triple-A team here in New Orleans (Zephyrs) and I remember one year when I was the play-by-play announcer and traveled with the team on the road. The team played a day game somewhere and came back to the hotel around five. Well, based on my baseball career, I was thinking, "Cocktail hour!" These guys put on their shorts and t-shirts and got back on the bus to go to a gym somewhere and work some weights. Well that's a bit different from when I was playing, because we would have found the lounge and had a few cocktails before dinner. (Laughs)

We seem to be near the end of a fifteen-year "ignoring steroids" era. Now all of a sudden various things have conspired, like Canseco's book coming out, which has heightened everyone's awareness of it. The owners and players agreed on a testing program, whose efficacy has yet to be proven, so it will be seen whether this is just an attempt to sway some of the anxieties about steroid use or actually a legitimate attempt to police it. We'll see. They don't test for amphetamines, which I think is interesting because it was the primary drug of choice back when I played. You always wonder when looking from the outside whether some of the steps they take are just for public relations or if they are really putting some meat behind it. I see a lot of interest right now with the steroids issue, but I don't see any outrage.

I wonder if the bottom line isn't that we like our heroes larger than life... Steroids are one way to get there. (Laughs)

XMFan: How long have you been affiliated with the Zephyrs?
Ron: I did about twenty years of local TV broadcasting as a sportscaster and anchor guy until about 1995. Right after that I started doing color for the Zephyrs. One year I was the play-by-play guy, but the travel schedule is pretty rugged for a broadcaster. When the new owners came in they added some community relations work, which I also do for them.

I really enjoy broadcasting and love Triple-A baseball. I like the way these guys (management) go about their business and the fact that they have managed to somehow keep quite a few veteran players around. In other words, there's enough money for the parent club to keep these vets at the Triple-A level, which really helps prepare them for the big leagues. So you see guys playing the game who have been around a while, and I think that experience takes the game to a higher level than when I was playing. I appreciate being around these guys and they all know something about the game. I'm at a point in my life where I enjoy exchanging ideas with these guys, who have made themselves long-time professionals.

XMFan: Do you see baseball weathering the latest crop of trials and tribulations? How do you feel about the general health of the sport?
Ron: Base what I am saying on the things that have happened to baseball before... There's the Black Sox scandal in 1919, cocaine scandals in the '70s and '80s, the 1994 strike that wiped out the end of the season and World Series, and the steroids scandal that is happening today - which seems to be less upsetting to people now than the cocaine scandals back then. Because of the nature of the game, baseball seems to have a resilience that is pretty amazing if you just find guys who play hard out there and let them play it the way it's supposed to be played. Let the champions win.

I think the economics of baseball are pretty good. All the stadiums have the expensive suites that appeal to the higher levels of the socioeconomic scale, and even the worst ticket in a major-league ballpark is expensive when you buy it as a season ticket. The product sells on TV - next year the Mets are moving into their own cable operation, like the Yankees. Hopefully it'll be profitable like the Yankees. (Laughs) I'm looking at all of this and thinking how we've had some pretty upsetting things in the history of baseball, and the game has survived all of them to become stronger economically.

I love to watch baseball now more than ever, and believe free-agency movement has helped interest in the game in a way that nobody could predict. Everything in our society today is about change, and the need for change - go buy a pair of sneakers and look at the choices. Teams are willing to let expensive players go and let younger players try to fill their spots, which is a very delicate balance. I first went to the Mets when I was twenty-years-old and it was not a good thing for me. These days players that are "rushed" to the big leagues are twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, so that's really not so young.

The way the seasons have gone over the past few years have been interesting as hell, and I can't wait for 2005. I really can't. There'll be loads of surprises.