Jerry Koosman, the left-hander who got the last out of the 1969 World Series for the “Miracle Mets,” has passed away. He was 83.
The Mets announced the news Sunday afternoon, Nov. 1. Koosman passed away in Osceola, Wisconsin, with his family around him, according to the team’s memorial post, as reported by Forbes.
What Was Jerry Koosman’s Cause of Death?
No specific cause has been made public. Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ longtime PR man, said Koosman had been “battling multiple illnesses.” He didn’t say which ones, and the family hasn’t shared more. We’ll update this story if that changes.
The Other Ace on the 1969 Mets
Koosman spent 12 seasons in New York, from 1967 to 1978, and for most of them he pitched in the same rotation as Tom Seaver. That made it easy to overlook him. “Jerry was so underrated because Seaver was there, too,” former Mets catcher Duffy Dyer told SNY in 2021.
He didn’t waste time. As a rookie in 1968, he went 19-12 with a 2.08 ERA and finished second to Johnny Bench in the National League Rookie of the Year vote. He made the All-Star team that year and again in 1969.
That October, the Mets faced a Baltimore team almost everyone expected to win. Koosman won Game 2, then pitched all nine innings of Game 5 at Shea Stadium to close out the series. It was the franchise’s first championship.
He got the Mets back to the World Series in 1973, when they lost to the Oakland A’s in seven games. In 1976, he won 21 games and finished second in the NL Cy Young race.
Twins, White Sox and Phillies
The Mets traded him to the Minnesota Twins, his home-state team, after the 1978 season. He won 20 games for them in 1979. He later pitched for the Chicago White Sox and finished his career with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1985.
Over 19 big-league seasons, Koosman went 222-209 with a 3.36 ERA and 2,556 strikeouts. The Mets put him in their Hall of Fame in 1989 and retired his No. 36 in 2021, as Men’s Journal noted.
Found on an Army Base
Koosman was born Dec. 23, 1942, in Appleton, Minnesota, and the Mets found him by luck. He was drafted into the Army in 1962 and ended up pitching for the base team at Fort Bliss in Texas. One of his teammates there, catcher John Luchese, wrote home about him. Luchese’s father worked as an usher at Shea Stadium and passed the tip along to the Mets, according to his SABR biography.
The Mets sent a scout, and by the time Koosman signed in August 1964, the bonus offer had dropped from $2,000 to $1,600. “I figured I’d better take it or I’d owe them money!” he joked years later.
After he retired, he stayed in the Upper Midwest and ran a machine design business in Osceola, the same Wisconsin town where he passed away.
