Don Buford hits Tom Seaver’s second pitch for a homerun leading Orioles past Mets

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On October 11, 1969 At Memorial Stadium featured game 1 of the 1969 World Series. Baltimore Oriole Don Buford hit Tom Seaver’s second pitch of the game for a home run, which just evaded Ron Swoboda’s leaping attempt at catching it. The O’s then added three more runs in the fourth when, with two outs, Elrod Hendricks singled and Davey Johnson walked. Mark Belanger then singled in a run, followed by an RBI single by pitcher Mike Cuellar. Buford capped the inning off by doubling in Belanger.

The Mets got their run in the seventh on a sacrifice fly by Al Weis. Orioles starter Mike Cuellar was the winner, allowing just that run in a complete-game effort.

Despite the opening-game loss, nobody on the Mets was discouraged. Tom Seaver – the game’s losing pitcher – said years later “I swear, we came into the clubhouse more confident than when we had left it. Somebody – I think it was Donn Clendenon – yelled out, ‘Dammit, we can beat these guys!’ And we believed it. A team knows if they’ve been badly beaten or outplayed. And we felt we hadn’t been. The feeling wasn’t that we had lost, but Hey, we nearly won that game! We hadn’t been more than a hit or two from turning it around. It hit us like a ton of bricks.
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