Postseason baseball game footage wasn’t always properly preserved like it is now. Any Mets fan who's ever watched video from Game 4 of the 1969 World Series can tell you that.
Tom Seaver’s epic matchup with the Baltimore Orioles’ Mike Cuellar—a 2-1 Mets win best remembered for an "Amazin’" diving catch by Ron Swoboda in right field that likely saved two runs—is not archived in its entirety for posterity. Watch the official MLB Productions DVD release of the game and you’ll see that the bottom of the fourth and the entire fifth inning are lost to the sands of time.
Fortunately, Swoboda’s miraculous grab took place in the ninth inning, and can be enjoyed over and over again.
Regrettably, game tapes from the 1973 Fall Classic were also wiped clean. That series featured the 82-79 "Ya Gotta Believe" Mets' showdown with the Reggie Jackson-led Oakland A’s, a series that ultimately went to a seventh game and represented the second of three consecutive world championships for Oakland.
Most folks remember Game 2 of the '73 series, a crazy 12-inning affair that the Mets won 10-7 in Oakland. Among other memorable plays was a controversial out call at the plate, when umpire Augie Donatelli ruled that Bud Harrelson was swipe-tagged by Gene Tenace on what would have been a sacrifice fly by Felix Millan. The visual image of Willie Mays dropping to his knees to dispute the call is among the most famous in World Series history.
The game has been shown periodically over the years on ESPN Classic. Sadly, the entire fifth inning is missing, and that's particularly disappointing for George Theodore.
Best remembered as "The Stork" due to his gangly six-foot-four frame, the Salt Lake City, Utah, native was a rookie in 1973 and would only play one more season in the bigs after that year. A spare outfielder for the ’73 club, Theodore was looking to get things started as a pinch hitter in the fifth inning against Vida Blue with one out and the Mets trailing 3-2.
And with one solid swing of the bat, he thought that he did. "The first pitch from Vida Blue, I didn’t see it," Theodore said in a phone interview recently. "He was really throwing hard, so I thought I better start swinging as he’s in his windup . . . so I wound up and I hit the ball right over his head up the middle and I’m thinking, ‘Geez, I’ve got a base hit.’"
It was the realization of every kid’s dream: A base hit in the World Series. But sadly it was not to be. Shortstop Bert "Campy" Campaneris appeared out of nowhere and made the putout.
"(He) apparently was sort of shading me toward the middle and he went over second base, grabbed the ball, and threw me out," Theodore recalled. He says he really smoked the ball, but concedes that everything gets a little better over the course of 40-odd years. "Usually those are base hits right over the pitcher’s head," he said.
Instead, it was just another 6-3 putout on the scorecard, and an empty stroll back to the dugout.
Theodore would love to relive that at-bat, so if anyone had one of those primitive top-loader VCRs back then and taped the game, let him know. "That would be precious for me to have," he said. "I’d like to see that."
Despite the letdown, the moment was still magical at the time for Theodore. "I was a little disappointed, but I was just happy to be there, happy to be participating after having been injured," he said.
And was he ever injured. Theodore missed nearly two months that summer after a hellacious collision in the Shea Stadium outfield with Don Hahn on July 7 against the Atlanta Braves. It resulted in an inside-the-park homer by Ralph Garr that knocked both outfielders out of the game, with Theodore carried off the field on a stretcher.
The play before—a pinch single by Frank Tepedino that plated an unearned run—had a direct bearing on the bang-up, Theodore said. "So the reason it happened (was) the play before, the guy hit a ball and I made an error on it," he began. "It was like a ground ball or something and it got by me and (Tepedino) got an extra base . . . Well, in my subconscious it was, ‘Anything hit I’m gonna go get I don’t care what’, and sure enough Garr hits a ball into left-center and I’m going as hard as I can and Don Hahn as hard as he can, and we both meet at the ball and the fence at the same time."
The result was a dislocated left hip and a trip to Roosevelt Hospital, where The Stork ended up spending a month in traction. "I remember it took four hours to get there and I was in agony, and they couldn’t give me pain medication because they didn’t know if they were going to operate or what," he said.
Theodore didn’t appear in another game until September 20, when he struck out as a pinch hitter in the famous "Ball Off The Wall" game that the Mets won against the Pirates at Shea in 13 innings. In that game, a batted ball caromed off the top of the left field fence and into the glove of Cleon Jones, enabling the Mets to nail Richie Zisk at the plate on the way to a 4-3 win and the Eastern Division title.
Theodore returned in 1974 but was relegated to pinch hitting duties, a role in which he never excelled.
"They had released Jim Beauchamp, who could do that quite well, but for me to get up to bat once every two weeks or something like that and not play, my skills deteriorated," he said. "It was hard for me to be a pinch hitter and not play every day."
Theodore was outrighted to the minors when the year was through and spent the entire 1975 season as a bit player at Triple-A Tidewater, where he hit .253. He reported to minor league camp again for spring training in 1976, but was given the pink slip on the eve of the season. "They called me into the clubhouse and said, 'I’m sorry, we’re releasing you,'" he recalled.
While disappointed at the time, his release allowed Theodore to use his degree in psychology from the University of Utah to launch a career back home in Salt Lake City as an elementary school counselor/social worker for the Granite School District, a job that has fulfilled him every bit as much as his brief stint in the big leagues did.
He’s been doing it now for 37 years.
"At the elementary level you can work on things and it’s the best place to have counselors and therapists, you can see changes happen in a hurry," Theodore said. "And I’m energized by seeing the hope in so many kids' eyes, helping them to have dreams and possibilities in their futures."
Like his dream as a boy of somehow making it to the majors—a dream fulfilled, if only for a short time.
Along the way, Theodore was immortalized in Mets lore by outfielder Jim Gosger, a teammate on the 1972 Tidewater club who pegged him with his moniker "Stork," presumably for his resemblance to a big bird taking flight whenever he ran toward first base from the batter’s box.
"It sure stuck," Theodore said. Or maybe Gosger, who appeared briefly with the Mets in 1969 and again in 1973-74, had another meaning behind it.
"I think Jim thought I was a doctor; he thought I delivered babies or something like that, but of course that wasn’t true," Theodore said.
What The Stork delivered were happy memories for Mets fans lucky enough to have been around for his brief flight in the bigs.