open mike Mike Vaccaro Mets were forever altered 60 years ago from an unexpected Fresno hero By Mike Vaccaro Published April 4, 2026, 6:39 p.m. ET Tom Seaver upset during game vs Pittsburgh Pirates, Flushing, NY. Sports Illustrated via Getty Ima It almost slipped through the cracks, almost found its way through the five-hole of our local baseball memory, but thankfully there was Gary Cohen on the television Friday night, just as the Mets were finishing off the Giants at San Francisco’s Oracle Park. He mentioned that April 3 was a fairly significant day in Mets history.
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Come with me now. Let’s go back 60 years, and travel 3,000 miles west to the Central Valley region of California. Let’s pick up a copy of the Fresno Bee newspaper and flip to page 4-B of the Monday, April 4, 1966, edition. That’s the first page of the Bee’s sports section.
If your eyes takes you to the upper-left corner of the page, as eyes often do when looking at a broadsheet newspaper, you’ll see the headline: “Heard Captures Fresno City Golf Title With 289.” This was significant news that Jerry Heard, an 18-year-old freshman at Fresno State (who would go on to win five times on the PGA Tour in a career that spanned 1968-80) won that prestigious local tournament.
