Like any good Mets fan, even when it seems hopeless– even when we know it’s hopeless, and brain cancer is as hopeless as it gets– you still gotta believe. And we did, right up till the last out.
Like any good Mets fan, even when it seems hopeless– even when we know it’s hopeless, and brain cancer is as hopeless as it gets– you still gotta believe. And we did, right up till the last out.
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It’s very sad. My condolences. Tug was a great sportsman.
We couldn’t help but cry when we heard.
I was just barely old enough to know about baseball when the ’73 Mets came along, but “Ya Gotta Believe” is firmly planted in my early Mets memories, alongside Seaver, Koosman, and Matlack, alongside Harrelson and Kranepool.
I think it’s far to say that “Ya Gotta Believe” forever echoes in the clubhouse and the dugout at Shea, and that every time we root for those underachievers to get back to the top, Tug will be there with us. Even if he’s also right there in the new ballpark in Philly, trying to get a second World Series title there.
RIP, Tug.
This really is sad. I’ll never forget the Phillies-Mets game last summer where he was introduced. The response he got from the crowd was chilling. It really seemed like he was going to make it.
I was a little little LITTLE kid when the Phillies won the world series in 1980 and he’s still an icon to me.
RIP
He’ll be greatly missed.
As a Phillies fan, I think that this is one of the few times that I’ll ever agree with a Mets fan.
We’ll miss you, Tug. You were one of the great ones.
I couldn’t believe the news today. The last few times I saw Tug, he looked like he was getting better. I saw him at the 4th of July game, when he and his son drove around the outfield. And I saw him at the last Vet game. He seemed to be so full of life.
It’s a gøddámņëd shame. Bleeping cancer. At least it sounds like his family were around him when he passed.
I’m sorry, I’m a mess about this. Tug was LOVED in Philly, and not just because of the save in ’80. He was part of the personality of that wonderful era of Phillies baseball. Schmidt, Rose, the Bull, Carlton, Bowa, Trillo, McBride…and so many more.
Tug had a wonderful viewpoint of life. It is true- you really have to believe. Nothing can be done without the faith in yourself.
We were blessed to have him, and he’ll never be replaced.
Forget about the Mets! What about that TREMENDOUS Knick trade. I like the Mets, but they haven’t been almost worth watching since 1986 and 7 season. Keiko Matsui might help some this year. We’ll see.
Sounds to me like most of us were actually talking about the Phillies. And as was said before I think this man was the one thing Phillies and Mets fans can agree on.
Though one of his “obituaries” for lack of a better word in the Philly papers featured this choice quote.
During the Phillies 1980 victory parade, he thrilled fans when he said, “New York can take this championship and stick it!” =)
(http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/7640461.htm)
Having said that, if you’re interested in him you New Yorkers should check out some of the Philadelphia articles as well as the NYC ones. They’re touching.
Tragic. RIP Tug.
The 1980 World Series is one of my most pristine sports memories. I saw Tug regreate his strikeout at the last game at the Vet this fall, and felt that same pride for the home team welling up in me.
Rest in Peace, Tug.
My prayers go out to his family and close friends. He’ll be missed by all.
Chris
I’m the sort who cries at movies … if they’re BASEBALL movies, that is. And I’m a lifelong Philly boy and lifelong Phillies fan. You’ve no idea how hard it hit me last night.
While we sat in training, my coworker, checking out ESPN on his cell phone, leaned over and said, “Tug McGraw just died.” Right then and there, I felt my stomach hit the express elevator DOWN, and my face must have gone ashen.
I remember watching the Tugger sail that Peggy Lee pitch (“Is that all there is?”) by Willie Wilson, sitting in front of the television on that glorious October night in 1980, and I remember sitting Vet Stadium this past September, watching Tug strike Willie out yet again, as they closed out that glorious, memory-filled šhìŧhølë.
And for all the cheers that had ripped from the throats of the fans that afternoon, for all the larynxes scraped raw to the point of nonfuctionality, when our bright, bonkers, blessed Tug leapt straight up in triumph again–as he will in all our memories, a cheer went up to dwarf all those before it, on that day when the Vet heard its loudest.
First, we lost “The Pope,” Paul Owens, the man who built those dynastic Phils teams of the Seventies and Eighties, and now the Tugger. It’s enough to rip the baseball-beating heart right out of your chest–that is, if the memories of those two men weren’t enough to put it right back in, throbbing harder than ever.
Still, what a life! To live the crazed life of a Seventies loon, a closer when the position was first being invented, as did Goose Gossage, Sparky Lyle, Bill Lee, and our Tugger, then to win division title after division title, then to close out the decade by giving us the only World Series title this city has ever had … and then, to become even MORE beloved in retirement–and to find a biological son, then see that son go on to superstardom (even if it IS in country music). To become a father later in life, to a now-eight-year-old, to whom my bruised-yet-beating heart goes out … and to be taken from us far too early. 59 was far too early for Frank Edwin McGraw; 99 would have been too early.
“You gotta believe.” We do, Tug. Because you always did.
Fûçk the other teams in baseball: This year, in the new stadium, with the statues of Whitey Ashburn, Steve Carlton, and Michael Jack Schmidt looking on, with Greg “the Bull” Luzinski in the concourse selling barbecue, and with the spirits of The Pope and The Tugger looking on, We GOTTA go all the way. We GOTTA believe.
Max West, a player known mostly from his time in the Pacific Coast League has also just died of brain cancer. The PCL Hall of Famer was 87.
He played MLB for seven years that were interupted by a stint in the military during WW2.
He hit a 3 run home run in the 1940 All Star game to give the NL a victory.
In 1973, my sister was 9, I was 4, our mom was 36. The summer was long and, in vague memory at least, glorious, as were so many of those that followed. While Dad and my other sister engaged in less obsessive, less heartbreaking pursuits, my mother and the family’s biggest sports fan taught me about baseball. In my family, on my part of far eastern Long Island, that meant they taught me to be a Mets fan and a Red Sox fan. (Yeah, in church we were Irish-American Roman Catholic, but in sports we took after our mothers’ Scots Calvinist ancestors….) I can’t remember many of the details of that summer, of course, but I remember the feelings, and I remember the mantra, the life-lessons, the gotta believing. It’s a helluva lot rarer than it should be to find a philosopher-athlete, and we’d all be a lot better off it the world had more Tug McGraws in it.
I love my Dad with all of my heart. He was an amazing man! Never once complained about his illness. Always cracking jokes. Thank you to all the wonderful supporters, fans and beautiful comments. Please know that we were all there and he left us in a very peaceful and comfortable manner! May all of remember to believe! Ya Gotta!
RIP DAD,
Cari Lynn
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