Coaching Them Up: 1969 Mets Coaches

Gil Hodges skippered the ’69 ship, but he had help. Joe Pignatano and Rube Walker cultivated a young crop of pitchers into world championship material. (Pignatano may also have cultivated vegetables in the Mets bullpen, though details remain vague.) Yogi Berra and Eddie Yost provided coaching support. Between them, they were a deep well of baseball knowledge and experience that Hodges could and did draw from taking the Mets from “worst” to “first.”