NEW YORK – Tom Seaver transformed a franchise and captivated a city, setting enduring standards as he whipped his powerful right arm overhead for the 1969 Miracle Mets and dirtied his right knee atop Major League Baseball’s mounds for two decades.
A consummate pro and pitching icon, he finished fulfilled after a career remembered with awe long after his final strikeout.
“It is the last beautiful flower in the perfect bouquet,” Seaver said on the afternoon he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Seaver, the galvanizing force who steered the expansion New York Mets from the National League cellar to a stunning World Series title in less than a decade, has died. He was 75.
The Hall said Wednesday night that Seaver died Monday from complications of Lewy body dementia and COVID-19. Seaver spent his final years in Calistoga, California.