Art Shamsky

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Over an eight-year career in the majors, outfielder/first baseman Art Shamsky was one of those classic, left-handed-pull power hitters who often had to sit when a southpaw took the mound—which is why he never fully achieved status as an everyday starter. But he was hardly without his moments; his claims to baseball fame included a major league-tying streak of four consecutive home runs—three of which came in one game after he entered in the eighth inning—for the Cincinnati Reds in 1966, and his role helping the Miracle Mets of 1969 win a shock National League pennant and World Series over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles. 

The Midwest-bred Shamsky initially loathed the idea of a relocation to New York after his trade from the Reds to the Mets, but he came to embrace the Big Apple—remaining there after quitting the game, taking on local broadcast work within the city and for the Mets, opening a restaurant and writing two books about the New York sports scene while he played there: The Magnificent Seasons: How the Jets, Mets, and Knicks Made Sports History and Uplifted a City and the Country, and After the Miracle: The Lasting Brotherhood of the ’69 Mets. (A third, currently untitled, book is on the way.) Shamsky has even achieved fame by becoming a popular dog name; the bulldog in the long-running sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond was named after him, as was a pit bull owned by comedian Jon Stewart. 

Our acquaintance with Shamsky began when he contacted us over what he perceived was a snub of his three-homer game from our list of the most unlikely hat tricks in baseball history; it was more oversight than slight and, upon further review, we included his effort, beginning our conversations that led to this interview. (Just to be clear: This was not a quid pro quo.)

As of this writing, Shamsky is still quite active over 50 years since retiring from baseball—writing, making appearances and keeping alive the fabled memories of the 1969 Mets. You can check him out at his web site, artshamsky.com.

As told to Eric Gouldsberry, This Great Game

You were in the Reds’ minor league system for five years. Tell me about your time there. 

I remember that it was so difficult to make it to the big leagues back then. When I signed with the Reds there were only 16 teams, then they expanded to 20 in 1962. And like many young players back in those days, you paid your dues—you had to produce in the minors or you would be ‘here today, gone tomorrow.’ It was no different with the Reds. They had a terrific ballclub in the big leagues. I remember my first Spring Training there in 1963, I had a real good spring coming off a really good year before in the minor leagues and I just couldn’t make the team—they had Frank Robinson in right field, Vada Pinson in center, Tommy Harper was having great years, Pete Rose was playing a little bit of the outfield, and Deron Johnson—they had a really good team. So I had to go back and play another year in Triple-A. 

I was lucky enough to make the club after they expanded in ’62 to 20 teams, and it gave me a little more opportunity. Unlike the game today, where there’s so many teams and the opportunities are so great, back in those days you had to produce or you’d be gone. I think the good thing in my case is that I played against guys who were in the minors who were in the same position as me—they couldn’t make the big leagues because there was no room. They had to go back to the minors and Triple-A, and if you couldn’t produce there you would get weeded out. I think that all made us better players facing good pitching, our pitchers facing good hitters, and good teams all around, and that was the beauty of the game back then. 

It’s a little bit different now, there’s more opportunity, and from what I understand they’re going to expand in a few years. All I can say is that’s it a great time to be playing baseball. 

You mentioned Pete Rose. You played with him in the minors and in your first three years with the Reds. What do you remember about Pete? 

We started together in 1960 in a small town, Geneva, in upstate New York, it was the New York Penn League at the time. On that team was Tony Perez, too. Pete joined us in June after high school graduation, and he really couldn’t do anything well, and I think he’d be the first to admit it. He could run to first base after a walk, but he wasn’t a good fielder, not a good hitter, and they kept him another year in Class B, and Tony, too. Pete went on to Tampa in the Florida State League, somehow transforming himself into a much better player, and then we were together in 1962, in Macon, Georgia, and he was a completely different ballplayer. He did everything well and worked hard at improving his game. In 1963 he went to Spring Training, made the big leagues, won Rookie of the Year, and the rest is history. 

On that team in 1960 with the three of us who all went to the big leagues—it’s really funny, we were so bad as a team and we got the manager fired in the middle of the season, that’s how bad we were. But it was a great time for all of us; we were all 18 years old, Tony didn’t speak much English, Pete and I became best of friends, we lived in the same house together, and we became friends over and over the years. We still communicate, and I think looking back on my career, I was lucky enough to play with both of those guys. 

My experiences with Pete were always great, I don’t think anyone would have thought he’d be the player he turned out to be, but he certainly had the desire to do it. 

Let’s talk about the game where you hit three home runs after coming off the bench late in the game. What’s do you remember most about that day? 

I came off the bench in the eighth inning, then hit the one home run that brought us into extra innings. I think about, it’s two or three days of your life that kind of stand out, you visualize all the time, people never stop talking to me about it. They’ve read about it, they’ve heard about it, I think I’m still the only person to ever hit three home runs in a game in which I didn’t start. (Editor’s Note: He’s correct.) Two of them were in extra innings, which is very unusual—both of them tied the score, we were home in Cincinnati, and we ended up losing that game. 

The next day, we were rained out, and then on Sunday, I’m not in the starting lineup, which is very unusual. I had hit three home runs. Dave Bristol’s the manager—I wasn’t one to confront a manager about things, maybe to my detriment, I’m not sure. In any case, I didn’t start the game, they sent me up to pinch-hit in the middle of the game, off Vern Law—who was a pretty good pitcher for the Pirates at that time—and I hit a two-run homer to put us ahead in the game. And we lost that game, too. So I hit four home runs in a row, and we lost both those games. And that night, Sunday night, we flew to Los Angeles to play the Dodgers the next day, and I’m not in the starting lineup in that game. It’s very strange, I hit four home runs in a row, I’m not in the starting lineup, and I, I…can’t even begin to explain it. I had a short conversation with Dave Bristol, and he kind of double-talked me, and I vowed after that never to talk to another manager again about playing and not playing, because you never really get a direct answer. 

I pinch-hit in that game and I hit a single to right field, and that was it. But there was a lot of publicity going on at that time, it was three or four days of unbelievable time for me, and people still talk to me about it. I get a lot of fans from Pittsburgh still around who were listening to the game. I had a lot of injuries and my career is unfortunately noted for those kinds of things, but the four home runs in a row, and I look at it that and feel blessed to be able to do it. The Hall of Fame was nice enough to ask me that, if I broke the record at five in a row, they wanted my uniform and glove and shoes and hat and everything. As it turned out, they wanted the bat. It was called a ‘special feat’ and it’s on display in Cooperstown in an area that just shows ‘special feats.’ 

Look, I would have loved to break the record, but I can’t complain—four home runs in a row is very special to me. 

In the three-homer game, you were in the hole when the final out was made. We’re you thinking to yourself, “Hey, I got a shot at a four-homer game?” 

The wind was blowing out—not to take anything away from my home runs, a lot of home runs were hit in that game—and I was on the on-deck circle when the game was over. I remember walking through—at Crosley Field there was a little walk path down the left-field line that both teams had to go through to get to their respective clubhouses—and Roberto Clemente was right behind me and said to me in broken English, “Thankfully you weren’t coming up again.” Which made my smile because anytime I got a chance to say hello and talk to those great stars, it was special for me. 

After your first year with the Reds, Frank Robinson was traded to the Orioles because Cincinnati owner Bill DeWitt said he was an “old 30”—of course, he went on to win the triple crown, MVP and World Series for Baltimore. How did you and your Reds teammates feel about losing a player of such elite caliber? 

I always thought Robinson was one of the top players in baseball, certainly in the National League. Behind Mays, Aaron and Clemente, Frank was right there. When he got traded, it gave me a little more opportunity to play more and I ended up having a good year home run-wise. When they said he was an “old 30”…I really questioned that, I think he hit 30-something home runs and 112 RBIs in ’65 and then to trade him…he won the triple crown the next year. I don’t know what to say, except that every team makes bad trades over the years, so I guess in the history of baseball that’s one of the bad ones. 

It was pleasure for me to play on the same team with Frank and get to know him. I admired him as a player. That era in the 60s, I think, had the greatest conglomerate of players in the history of the game, particularly in the National League—pitchers and hitters. For me, I had the opportunity to play with and against some great players. I was very lucky in that regard. 

How did it feel getting traded, after three years with the Reds, to New York and the Mets? 

When I got traded to the Mets, it was a little bit of a shock—I mean (the Reds) didn’t win any pennants or World Series, but going to the Mets, who were losing 100 games every year, was a really a shock to me. The first time you get traded it’s always a shock. 

The Mets were just known as the loveable losers—that’s what their nickname was—so when I heard about the trade from Cincinnati and the general manager said that we’re trading you to New York, I thought it was the Yankees, but then they called me, and basically said, “Well, it’s not the Yankees, it’s the Mets.” And that was the second shock. I said, “Oh, my gosh”…but in the long run looking back, it was the best thing that happened to my career. 

I wasn’t crazy about New York City at the time. Whenever we went there as a road team, the city was so big and so many people, lots of people outside the hotel we stayed at wanting autographs—I wasn’t used to that, we didn’t have that in Cincinnati or other cities. New York was just a big, enormous place to me, and with the Mets at the time, if you didn’t win two out of three games against them, it was a bad series. I was a little disappointed, and you know the first time you get traded, leaving friends, guys you grew up with, it’s always a strange feeling. And to top all of that, I didn’t really know any of the players on the Mets—a couple here and there, a couple guys from St. Louis where I grew up—but I didn’t really know the main guys on the team. 

The very first year in Spring Training, 1968, there were a lot of new faces and a new manager, Gil Hodges. I was part of that group of kid players who came over for the first time, so for me it was just a new experience. But I fell in love with New York after a while, and that first year we finished ninth, a game out of last place, and so the next year nobody considered us winning the division—that was the first year of divisional play, and nobody thought we would win a division, let alone a pennant or a World Series. 

You actually missed the first month of the 1969 season with a bad back. When you returned, that’s when the team started getting hot and you ended up having one of your better seasons. Did you feel your return affected the team? 

I missed almost all of Spring Training with an injury and was on the disabled list for the first 21 days of the season. Back then they didn’t have the best medical situations and the best physical therapy, and I was just laying around not knowing what was going to happen, I didn’t even know if I would be back. But I got healthy and came back after the first 21 days, and started off okay. Then Ron Swoboda and I started platooning in right field, and both of us ended up having really good years. Gil Hodges was a master of platooning, and he was able to get everybody involved. I was able to hit .300 that year…I was second on the team in home runs, so it turned out to be a really good year for me, not knowing if I was even going to play again. 

At what point that season did the 1969 Mets begin to think, “Hey, we could win it all?” 

We didn’t start off well, but we did have good pitching and we had good defense—people forget what a really good defensive team we had, but we weren’t playing great. We did have some streaks getting into the summer, but we were nine games behind the Cubs in that Eastern Division of the National League, and it wasn’t until the second or third week in August that we started to put it together and we became unbeatable. We ran over everybody, and the Cubs—I don’t like to say they blew it, they just got overrun by us, we just came on so strong. I think part of it was that they just played the same lineup every day, they had all day games at home—they had no lights at Wrigley at the time—so I think their starting lineup got real tired towards the end of the year, whereas Gil Hodges was able to put different guys in at different positions. We were stronger and certainly had better pitching than they did, with (Tom) Seaver and (Jerry) Koosman and (Gary) Gentry, (Tug) McGraw, (Nolan) Ryan, Jim McAndrew—we had a terrific pitching staff. So we kind of snuck up on everybody in August, but once we were on the move there in August, we were unbeatable. Everybody contributed, and that was important, too. 

We swept a pretty good Atlanta team in the playoffs, we beat them three in a row, then lost our first game against Baltimore in the World Series, a team that won 108 or 109 games. I had the distinction of making the last out in that (first) game, they beat Tom Seaver in that game and a lot of people thought we were going to lose four in a row. Jerry Koosman pitched great the next day, we won that, came back to New York 1-1 and won the next three, and the rest is history. 

It was an exciting year for me. I’m still in New York because of it. (The 1969 Mets are) one of these teams that nobody ever stops wanting to talk about, even if they’ve heard different versions of what happened, and so many different things happened that year. It really sets you apart from everybody else and it’s still talked about 55 years later, one of these teams that lives on forever, because where we came from and how we won and the cast of characters that were on that team, so I ‘ve got no complaints. I think it’s one of the few teams that will live on forever, especially in New York because it was such an incredible time for all of us. Though my years in Cincinnati were great, playing for the Mets was also very special. 

Unfortunately, we’re losing too many players from that team, which is making me really sad, and it’s making me feel older than I want to feel. But the legacy of that team will live on forever—what we did for the city of New York, we actually made people feel better about their lives in a very difficult time. People have passed that on from generation to generation. I meet kids today who weren’t even born who know about that team from their parents or their grandparents, so it never gets old for me. 

The last team you played for, albeit briefly, was the 1972 Oakland A’s, who won the World Series and were owned by Charles Finley. Talk about that experience. 

I met Finley the first day I get traded over there. We were in Chicago, he was there, said ‘hello’ to me, and that was the only time I really said anything to him. I basically was pretty hurt, I hurt my back again, I didn’t play much. Dick Williams was the manager—they had a terrific team, that was the first of the three that they won. I made some nice friends over there in Oakland, and I wish I would have continued after that. I got healthier over the winter, but I got disillusioned with the game at the end of ‘72 and didn’t try to come back—that was a terrible mistake on my part. But I was lucky enough to play for a number of years, meet some wonderful people and be a part of that ‘69 Mets team—but I don’t talk about ’72 much because I didn’t really contribute that much to the team, a dynasty that won three in a row. Not many people remember that I was there for that first year. 

You took part in the Israel Baseball League. Tell me about that experience. 

Yeah, I managed there in 2007, it was the beginning of a couple people’s desire to bring baseball to Israel. Unfortunately, it lasted only one year, but it was a great experience for me. The fields weren’t very good, they didn’t really have any good ballparks, the equipment wasn’t great. They brought in some players from the States and Canada and even Australia and Europe. The quality of the game wasn’t good, but I enjoyed it, enjoyed managing…and I do believe it was a prelude to Israel taking interest in trying to develop the game over there. They’ve since gone on and played well in the World Baseball Classic and the Olympics, so I think those of us who went over there really laid the groundwork and are proud to be a part of that. 

Luckily there wasn’t a lot of problems going on, but I did learn a lot about the state of Israel and the countries surrounding it. It was a wonderful three months and a great experience, and those moments were very, very special, and it’s nice to say that when people talk to me about it. I think in the next two or three years you’re going to see an Israel-born player in the big leagues. 

What do you think about the ballplayers of today? 

That would take hours to answer that. 

In a nutshell, what do you think? 

I think today’s players are bigger, stronger, faster, better conditioned. Do they play the game better than those from the ‘60s and ‘70s? I don’t think so. I think they’re much bigger and stronger, I think we can argue all day—was the ball juiced up a bit, the parks are smaller…I think there’s a lot of guys who throw hard in baseball now, but they’re not necessarily good pitchers. 

How do you compare the game today? What would say about a road trip—you had to (start in) St. Louis then on to the West Coast before San Diego came into the league, you get Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, then you (go to Los Angeles and) get Koufax and Drysdale, Sutton—all of them in the Hall of Fame—then you go to San Francisco with Marichal and Gaylord Perry. I can argue all day about the ability of players today—there’s no doubt that they’re bigger and stronger, but I have to talk to someone today about whether they’re better than those back in the ‘60s. 

You’ve written two books and, as we speak, you’re working on another. What is it you love about writing? 

That’s a really good question. In 1993, we were getting ready for the 25th anniversary of the ‘69 Mets and there was a card show where most everyone was around, and the attendance at that show was so great, was so unbelievable, that I realized that this team—not that I didn’t realize it before—had longevity, was special, and I did want to write about the team, but also wanted to factor in the Jets winning and then the Knicks winning in May of ‘70. What’s interesting about those three teams is that all of us won for the first time, and that’s what made it so fascinating on top of everything else that was going on in the world at the time between Watergate and Vietnam and the City of New York going under financially, spiritually and socially, also sorts of bad things going on. So I just wanted to write about it, and I saw that there was so much interest in that team 25 years later. I still see it—what, now, 55 years later—how many people want to still hear me talk, hear other guys talk, come ask us questions, even if they have heard the stories before—they just want to hear it again, they want to hear things that maybe we never talked about before…but that’s how I got involved in writing and working and broadcasting and it just gave me an outlet to be able to talk to people and meet people and stay visible. 

The new book I’m working on, which is untitled, I’m going to write about some stories that haven’t been told yet, because so many have been told. I’ll have some personal recounting of my experiences with the Mets and, not only of just being traded to them, but what happened in subsequent years after we won the World Series and how my life changed on that October day in 1969 and all the things that I have done over the years and all the programs I’ve been on, and all the things I’ve been able to do, strictly and mainly because I played on that 1969 team.