The pitcher who threw the final ball of the Mets’ first championship, then leaped into his catcher’s arms as thousands of fans poured onto the Shea Stadium field, has died.
Jerry Koosman, the two-time All-Star left-hander of the 1969 “Miracle Mets,” was 83. He died at his home in Osceola, Wis., on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026.
Jay Horwitz, a Mets spokesman, said heart failure killed Koosman on Nov. 1 after a year of health issues. The club announced the death in a post on social media.
A memorial patch honoring Koosman will appear on Mets uniforms throughout the 2027 season, the club said in an announcement on Thursday, Nov. 5. Owners Steve and Alex Cohen counted him among the greatest pitchers in franchise history and beloved across the organization.
Gil Hodges and the Shoe Polish
Koosman pitched a five-hitter in Game 5 of the 1969 World Series and got the last out on a flyout by Davey Johnson, the future Mets manager, to left fielder Cleon Jones. For an instant, Koosman was not sure the ball would come down in Jones’ glove.
“I turn around and look at Cleon and I see Cleon going back and, uh, the first thing is the heart stops,” Koosman told Mets broadcaster Howie Rose in a 2019 interview.
Thousands of fans ran onto the field at Shea Stadium as Koosman jumped onto catcher Jerry Grote and hugged him on the mound. “We were so choked up with emotion we couldn’t talk,” Koosman was quoted as saying in Peter Golenbock’s book “Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team,” published in 2002.
One of the strangest plays in World Series history also belonged to Koosman, and he spent decades explaining it. He told Rose in that 2019 interview that the shoe polish on the ball was his own, applied in the dugout, after the ball bounced to him as he sat next to manager Gil Hodges.
“As I bent down, Gil says: ‘Swipe it against your shoe,’” Koosman said. Jones claimed the pitch from Dave McNally had hit him, and the umpires sent him to first base.
Donn Clendenon, the next batter, drove a two-run homer, and the championship went to the Mets by a score of 5-3. Koosman, years later, left room for doubt about the mark on the ball: “Maybe it wasn’t mine. Maybe it was Cleon’s show polish.”
He had already beaten the Orioles once in the Series, allowing one run over 8 2/3 innings in a 2-1 win in Game 2. Baltimore had taken the opener from Tom Seaver and the Mets, 4-1.
The Expansion Club That Stopped Losing
The Mets launched as an expansion franchise in 1962 and lost 100 games in five of their first seven seasons, including 101 in 1967. They had never finished a year with a winning record.
That changed on Sept. 10, 1969, when the Mets moved into first place during a 10-game winning streak. They won 38 of their last 49 and finished atop the new National League East at 100-62, with Koosman going 17-9 with a 2.28 earned run average in 32 starts.
Koosman was knocked out in the fifth inning of Game 2 of the first National League Championship Series, but the Mets rallied and swept Atlanta in the best-of-five.
He pitched behind future Hall of Famer Seaver for a decade, a pairing Art Shamsky, an outfielder on the 1969 team, wrote about in his book “After the Miracle”: “Seaver was the great pitcher, while Kooz was the great battler.”
The Usher’s Son at Fort Bragg
A farmer and a homemaker raised four children in Appleton, Minn., and Koosman, born there on Dec. 23, 1942, was one of them. He was pitching in semi-pro and American Legion leagues by 13. The University of Minnesota, Morris, where he enrolled, fielded no baseball team, and a transfer to North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton left him ineligible to pitch because of his transfer status.
The Army drafted him in 1962, and his catcher at Fort Bragg, N.C., John Luchese, turned out to be the son of a Shea Stadium usher. Luchese passed word about the left-hander to his father, who passed it to Joe McDonald in the Mets’ front office. A contract worth $1,600 brought Koosman into the organization on Aug. 27, 1964.
His major league debut came on April 14, 1967, at Philadelphia’s Connie Mack Stadium, where he worked 2 2/3 hitless innings of relief. Triple-A Jacksonville got him next, and the International League’s strikeout lead went to him with 183.
A four-hit shutout at Dodger Stadium opened his 1968 season. That year’s All-Star Game brought him in for one batter, and Carl Yastrzemski struck out to end the National League’s 1-0 win at Houston’s Astrodome. He finished 1968 at 19-12 with a 2.08 ERA and ran second to Cincinnati catcher Johnny Bench in Rookie of the Year voting. After the title, a parade greeted him in Morris, Minn.
Still the Winningest Mets Left-Hander
Koosman made two starts in the 1973 World Series, getting no decision in Game 2 and winning Game 5, though Oakland took the title. He finished second to Randy Jones in the 1976 National League Cy Young voting.
The Mets traded Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds in 1977, ending the lefty-righty pairing at the top of the rotation. Complications of Lewy body dementia and COVID-19 killed Seaver in 2020, at 75.
Retirement was the alternative Koosman put to the Mets after the 1978 season: trade him, or he was done. The club sent him to the Minnesota Twins in December 1978 in a deal that brought young reliever Jesse Orosco to New York, and he won 20 games for the Twins in 1979.
He was traded to the Chicago White Sox in August 1981 and pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1984 and 1985.
He retired after that season at 42. His 19 seasons produced a 222-209 record and a 3.36 ERA across 612 appearances, among them 527 starts, 140 complete games and 33 shutouts. He struck out 2,556 batters, 35th all time, and his win total is tied for 79th on Major League Baseball’s all-time list. He threw 3,839 1/3 innings, and his ERA ranks 39th in big league history among pitchers with at least 3,500 innings.
With the Mets from 1967 to 1978, Koosman compiled a 140-137 record and a 3.09 ERA, a win total no left-hander in franchise history has topped.
The club voted him into the Mets Hall of Fame in 1989 and took his No. 36 out of circulation in 2021. Once his pitching career ended, Koosman instructed minor league pitchers for the Mets and went on to run a machinery design company. A guilty plea in 2009 to failing to pay income taxes for three years, which defrauded the government of as much as $90,000, brought him a six-month prison sentence.
His sons, Michael and Shawn, his daughter, Danielle, and several grandchildren survive him.
