Late Mets icon Tom Seaver was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot in 1992, receiving one of the highest vote totals of any candidate in history.
And, according to Mets teammate and fellow 1969 World Series champion Ed Kranepool, Seaver's co-ace on the Amazin' Mets, Jerry Koosman, should have a bronze plaque in Cooperstown as well.
Koosman, the left-handed complement to Seaver's dominance from the right side, recently appeared with Kranepool on MLB.com's "New York Mets Podcast," hosted by longtime Mets PR executive Jay Horwitz.
The trio covered a host of topics on Mets lore from yesteryear, ahead of the upcoming retirement of Koosman's No. 36, which is slated for August 28 at Citi Field.
The honor is long overdue in the eyes of many Mets fans and baseball observers, and, according to Kranepool, it doesn't go far enough in recognizing Koosman's brilliance.
"He could have won a lot more games with a better offensive ballclub, no question about it," Kranepool said of Koosman, who won 222 games and logged a tidy 3.36 ERA in his 19-year career. "He proved that he's a 20-game winner. He could have been in the Hall of Fame -- not only the Mets Hall of Fame, but the regular Hall of Fame.
"He was that good," Kranepool added.
While wins and losses are no longer a gold-standard metric for evaluating pitchers, Kranepool's argument seems to have more than a little validity.
In addition to the 200-plus wins and shiny ERA, Koosman's 62.6 fWAR places him ahead of several hurlers whose busts are on display alongside Seaver's, including Dennis Eckersley, Juan Marichal, Don Drysdale, Jim Palmer, Carl Hubbell, Jack Morris, Whitey Ford, and Sandy Koufax, to name a few.
Kooz, now 78, seemed to be overshadowed in his playing days as well as in retirement. He was selected to only two All-Star teams, in 1968 and '69, and finished second in NL Rookie of the Year voting in '68, losing out to future Hall of Famer Johnny Bench of the Reds. He had only two top-10 Cy Young Award finishes, ranking second in 1976 and sixth in '79.
Having fallen off the standard baseball writers' ballot long ago, Koosman's only path to the Hall at this point would be through the Eras Committee, formerly known as the Veterans Committee.
Whether he gets there remains to be seen, but in the minds of longtime Mets fans and his teammates, Koosman was an unsung hero of the Amazin' Mets, and one of the faces of the franchise for the better part of a decade thereafter.
"We always knew when Jerry was going to pitch, he was the toughest guy, I felt, on the staff," Kranepool said. "Because he was the intimidator on the ballclub. Whenever we needed a tough game, or we needed a tough out, we wanted Jerry out there, because he had our back all the time.
"Seaver was a great pitcher, but you know he was a little bit more finesse than Jerry Koosman. ... There was nobody we wanted in there [more than Koosman] in a tight situation. ... He was our stopper."
This proved true in the 1969 World Series, in which Koosman won two games, including Game 2 -- after Seaver took the loss in Game 1 -- and the series-clinching Game 5. Koosman even took a no-hitter into the seventh inning in Game 2 against the mighty Orioles, who won 109 games that season.
He later pitched for the Twins, White Sox and Phillies, turning in fine seasons with each franchise, including a 20-win campaign in his native Minnesota in 1979.
"I'm very humbled," Koosman said of the upcoming ceremony. "What can you say? I'm with a great organization, and I'm joining some great guys ahead of me. And I'm sure there will be some great guys behind me."
Koosman's No. 36 will be retired along with Seaver's No. 41 and Mike Piazza's No. 31. The team also retired former managers Casey Stengel's No. 37 and Gil Hodges' No. 14, as well as Jackie Robinson's No. 42, which is retired throughout the Major Leagues.