The 1969 Mets lost their first seven seasons before winning the title. Jerry Koosman dies at 83, and the left-hander who won Game 5 of that World Series died Sunday, the Mets announced.
He died in Osceola, Wisconsin, with his family around him, according to Forbes. The team said he had been battling “multiple illnesses.” Neither the Mets nor his family has confirmed a cause of death, so we’re not going to guess.
After those seven losing seasons, the Mets beat a heavily favored Baltimore team. Somebody had to close it out. Koosman made two starts in that World Series and won both, including a complete game in the Game 5 clincher at Shea Stadium, per MLB.com.
Then came the image. After the final out, Koosman leaped into catcher Jerry Grote’s arms. Mets fans have replayed that jump for more than half a century, and the news of Koosman’s death only sharpens the memory.
“The 1969 Mets had a multitude of heroes, but no one was bigger than Jerry Koosman,” said Jay Horwitz, the team’s longtime PR director and historian.
Here’s why it matters beyond one fanbase. Koosman’s leap marked the moment a laughingstock franchise became champion, the proof that the longest long shot can win. For fans who watched it, and for the families who passed the story down, this is more than a box score. It’s the loss of someone who gave them a moment they still carry.
That 1969 season was no fluke. Koosman threw 241 innings with a 2.28 ERA and made the All-Star team, as he had in 1968, per CBS Sports. In 1976 he went 21-10 and finished second in the Cy Young voting.
Over 19 big league seasons he went 222-209 with a 3.36 ERA and 2,556 strikeouts. With the Mets from 1967 to 1978, he piled up 140 wins and 1,799 strikeouts. He still holds the franchise records for a lefty in starts (346), complete games (108), wins, innings and strikeouts.
Those 108 complete games say a lot about the pitcher he was. Baseball is still celebrating a title run, too, as the Brewers’ first championship shows, but few pitchers finished what they started the way Koosman did.
The Guy Next to Seaver
Koosman’s career was shaped by the company he kept. He and Tom Seaver anchored the Mets rotation from 1968 until the Mets traded Seaver in June 1977. Seaver got the statues and the Cooperstown plaque. Koosman lived in his shadow.
“Jerry was so underrated because Seaver was there, too,” former Mets catcher Duffy Dyer told SNY in 2021.
Koosman is in the Mets Hall of Fame, inducted in 1989, but not the Baseball Hall of Fame. Some fans will argue that’s a miss. The Mets did honor him fully in 2021, retiring his No. 36 at Citi Field, making him the third Met to get that treatment after Seaver and Mike Piazza. “I’m thankful that they thought so much of me to retire my number,” he said that day.
The Kid Signed for $1,600
The origin story is pure baseball. The Mets found Koosman pitching for a U.S. Army team and signed him in August 1964 for $1,600. He was born in Appleton, Minnesota, debuted for New York on April 14, 1967, and was later traded to his home state’s Twins for a young Jesse Orosco. He also pitched for the White Sox and Phillies before retiring.
It is the kind of path that makes the Miracle Mets pitcher’s death at 83 feel like the end of a very long story, one that started with a small-town kid and a modest check.
The reports we reviewed announce no funeral or memorial plans. Baseball’s attention will move on to the winter ahead, but Koosman’s story deserves a pause first.
What we do know is simple. A kid signed out of the Army for $1,600 pitched the game that made the Mets champions. And the leap that followed is still how a lot of people remember him.
