RetroSimba

(Updated Sept. 23, 2022)

During a night when Steve Carlton pitched great, he wasn’t good enough to win.

On Sept. 15, 1969, Carlton became the first pitcher in the majors to strike out 19 batters in nine innings, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Amazin’ Mets.

Ron Swoboda hit a pair of two-run home runs against Carlton, giving the Mets a 4-3 victory over the Cardinals at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.

In addition to striking out 19 times, the Mets committed four errors, but they were a charmed club destined to become 1969 World Series champions.

In his game story for the New York Daily News, Dick Young wrote, “The Mets were absolutely no match” for Carlton, but their win “goes to prove how utterly amazin’ they really are.”

Said Mets manager Gil Hodges: “It’s great to win when you play badly.”

Getting better

Carlton, 24, wasn’t feeling well before the Monday night game with the Mets and wasn’t sure he could pitch.

“I had a fever all day and I felt so bad that I slept an extra hour and didn’t get to the ballpark until 7 o’clock, an hour before the game was to start,” Carlton told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

He said he took aspirins and got a rubdown from the team trainer.

The start of the game was delayed 26 minutes by rain and there was a 54-minute rain delay in the first inning.

Despite his aches and the damp conditions, Carlton struck out the sides in the first and second innings.

“I had a great fastball that kept rising and my curve was falling right off the table,” Carlton said to the Post-Dispatch.

Making mistakes

With the Cardinals ahead, 1-0, Donn Clendenon drew a walk, leading off the fourth for the Mets, and Swoboda batted next.

Carlton got ahead in the count 0-and-2 and “tried to burn another over without a waste pitch,” the New York Daily News reported.

The fastball was “right in his wheelhouse,” Carlton said, and Swoboda hit it deep into the left-field seats for a home run and a 2-1 Mets lead.

Carlton struck out the side in the fourth and the Cardinals scored twice in the fifth against Mets starter Gary Gentry, regaining the lead at 3-2.

In the middle innings, Carlton told the Post-Dispatch, “I became dizzy, tired and nauseated,” but he recovered and remained in the game.

In the eighth, Tommie Agee led off for the Mets with a single, Clendenon struck out and Swoboda came to the plate.

With the count 2-and-2, Carlton hung a slider _ “I didn’t get it inside enough,” he said _ and Swoboda lined it over the wall for a home run and a 4-3 Mets lead.

(In a January 2015 charity fundraising appearance in St. Louis, Carlton drew a laugh from the crowd when he jokingly blamed catcher Tim McCarver for the Swoboda home runs. “Tim put down the wrong fingers,” Carlton said.)

In the book “After the Miracle,” Swoboda told teammate Art Shamsky he got a batting tip before the game from Hall of Famer and Mets broadcaster Ralph Kiner.

“I went to Ralph and said, ‘I’m struggling a little. I’ve never done much against Carlton. Is there anything you might suggest?,’ ” Swoboda recalled. “So Kiner takes me down to a batting cage they had behind the left field fence. He fed me a bunch of balls off an old pitching machine and said, ‘Get your hands higher.’ I started hitting some balls real good. I went into that game with Carlton, who had extra-great stuff that night, and got some good swings off him.”

The two home runs gave Swoboda nine for the season. For his career, Swoboda batted .130 (6-for-46) versus Carlton with the two home runs.

“He’s primarily an inside fastball hitter,” Carlton said. “He has a tendency to swing through outside pitches and sometimes doesn’t reach them. If you go inside with him, you have to go way inside.”

Magic number

Carlton went into the ninth inning with 16 strikeouts and said he made up his mind to go for the record. Three pitchers had struck out 18 batters in nine innings. They were the Indians’ Bob Feller, the Dodgers Sandy Koufax (twice) and the Astros’ Don Wilson.

Carlton struck out Tug McGraw for No. 17 and Bud Harrelson for No. 18, tying the major-league mark. The 18 strikeouts also established a Cardinals club record, topping the 17 by Dizzy Dean versus the Cubs in a 1933 regular-season game and by Bob Gibson versus the Tigers in a 1968 World Series game.

The next Mets batter, rookie Amos Otis, already had struck out three times in the game.

“I was tense,” Carlton said, “but I knew Otis was tense, too, because nobody likes to go into the record book that way, as the No. 19 strikeout.”

For Otis to avoid becoming the 19th strikeout victim, Carlton said, “I thought he might bunt.”

When asked whether he considered bunting, Otis said, “If I’m going in the books, I’m going in right. I wasn’t doing any bunting.”

With the count 2-and-2, Otis swung and missed at a slider in the dirt. The ball eluded catcher Tim McCarver, who retrieved it and threw to first base in time to complete strikeout No. 19 for Carlton.

“I’m very elated to have done something no other pitcher had ever done,” Carlton said. Boxscore

Big numbers

According to the Post-Dispatch, Carlton threw 152 pitches, including 106 for strikes. He got 12 strikeouts on fastballs, five on sliders and two on curves.

Since then, four pitchers have struck out 20 batters in nine innings. They are Roger Clemens of the Red Sox (twice), the Cubs’ Kerry Wood, the Diamondbacks’ Randy Johnson and the Nationals’ Max Scherzer.

Carlton is one of four pitchers who have topped 4,000 career strikeouts. The four are Nolan Ryan (5,714), Randy Johnson (4,875), Clemens (4,672) and Carlton (4,136).