All Too Real

In one of the legendary exchanges of 1969, Leo Durocher dismissed the challengers nipping at the heels of his frontrunning club after his team salvaged the final game of what must have been, from the standpoint of the visitors' clubhouse at Shea Stadium, a very demoralizing series. "Were those the real Cubs today?" a reporter asked following Chicago's 6-2 win on July 10. "No," Durocher answered with his usual grace. "Those were the real Mets." Of course Leo Durocher was completely off the mark. If anything, after blowing a ninth-inning two-run lead two days earlier and succumbing to Tom Seaver's almost perfect one-hitter the night before, the Lip should have known he was facing the surreal Mets. In that dream of a season, New York losing and slipping 4½ behind Chicago ultimately proved a temporary condition. The real Mets were the Mets of the Don Young Game and the Jimmy Qualls Game, not the Durocher postgame snipe. Fast-forward ...