"Ya Gotta Believe!"

"Ya gotta believe!”  Tug McGraw shouted those words after a meeting Team President M. Donald Grant held in the lockerroom after another loss entering the final weeks of the 1973 season.

It became the rallying cry for the team as they marched through late August and all through September, 1973 until the last day of that season . They had been 12 ½ games behind in mid-August and ended up at 82 and 79 to clinch their second division title. They may have had a just over .500 season record, but for the final six weeks, they dominated all of Major League baseball with their play.

They went on to beat Pete Rose and the Cincinnati Reds “Big Red Machine” for the pennant. And almost completed the trifecta against the Reggie Jackson-led mighty Oakland A’s, coming up short after leading the World Series three games to two.

But the cry “ya gotta believe” inspired the team and the fans to actually believe in the impossible, because it almost happened. Because a quirky, funny relief pitcher showed in his insolence that it could be done if you believed.

The Wilpons never really took to retiring numbers of the Mets great ballplayers until 2016 with Piazza.  Seaver’s number was retired by the Doubleday-owned team, and Stengle and Hodges were retired by the Payson ownership. It seems to this Mets Fan that the Wilpons did not appreciate or respect Mets’ history.

But thankfully, Steve Cohen has righted that wrong, by retiring Koosman, Hernandez, Mays, Gooden and Strawberry, since he bought the team at the end of the 2020 season.

Now he needs to retire one more from the distant past, #45, Tug McGraw, because without his swagger, the 1973 Pennant would not be flying above the stadium.

“Ya gotta believe!”