Those Were The Days, My Friends

ESPN Reminds Us What It Was Like To Be Young And In Love With The Mets

“But life is just a party / And parties weren't meant to last” — Prince, “1999”

I’ve been a Mets fan since 1969. Since the magical summer when I was 6 and we lived in Rockaway Beach and the Miracle Mets appeared from nowhere, a baseball vision that captured New York. My dad tells me we were at the “imperfect game,” when Tom Seaver, still the greatest Met, retired the first 25 batters he faced before giving up a dying quail single to a guy named Jimmy Quails. But I don’t remember the games, beyond the vague images of Tommie Agee, my first baseball hero, making two diving catches and of Cleon Jones gloving the final out, and these memories were probably manufactured, gleaned from baseball cards and magazine photos, from documentary footage played and replayed over the years.

The 1969 Mets are in my memory, but not of my memory. But they are the starting point, and I’ve never waivered, even after Seaver was traded, even after many years of ineptitude on the field. They won a pennant in 1973, had winning records for a few years, but then descended into a kind of failure that was both painful and boring, fielding teams without personality or talent, lacking energy, grit, or much of anything.

Then came what Chuck D, in the powerful 30 for 30 documentary “Once Upon a Time in Queens”, called “the trilogy.” The sudden rise in 1984 of a young, brash, and talented ball club led by a brash manager riding young arms to 90 wins, then 98 in 1985, finishing second both years.

The Mets would win 108 games in 1986, a win total only a handful of teams have reached in the history of the game. They had swagger. Were aggressive. Combustible. Of their moment. And the documentary captures this almost perfectly, setting the team and its success within the context of a New York and America drunk on the false promises of Ronald Reagan, Wall Street money, and the drugs and crime that characterized New York City at the time.

Once Upon a Time in Queens is about the Mets in the mid-1980s, but also about New York and the surrounding region, about the money, the almost apocalyptical need to party, to “run from the destruction,” as Prince sang in “1999.” We tend to forget, because of the mythology surrounding Reagan, a mythos that ignores the kind of damage his presidency did to the nation. He encouraged a level of acquisition and greed that Oliver Stone would center in his film Wall Street in the person of the film’s chief antagonist Gordon Gecko. He stock market was climbing, but the new wealth was being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, a trend we have yet to reverse. Homelessness was growing, racial tensions were running high, and the Reagan administration was flexing its military muscles, encroaching into Soviet waters, and bombing Libya, even as it had begun to trade arms for hostages.

I had just returned to college after three years away, was rebuilding my academic life, writing, writing, writing. Annie was living with her sister and two friends in a rental house in the neighborhood where I grew up. I was there all the time. We were in our early to mid-20s, doing what people do in their early 20s, did at that time.

And the Mets were on TV. A lot. Winning and winning, and doing it with gusto. I’ve been watching the Mets for nearly 50 years, and there has never been a Mets team like the one that steamrolled the National League in 1986.

It was a team for the ages, charging down the highway, pedal pressed to the floor. A Cy Young winner on the mound every fifth day. A future Hall of Farmer behind the plate. Power hitters. Line-drive hitters. Speed. The Mets were loaded and rolling, playing baseball and battling. Bullying. They never backed down from a fight, won 108 games — the most for any team in a single year in the decade. They were on the rise. A dynasty in the making that never arrived.

Still, they won 108 games despite, as someone in the documentary says, the “check engine light” that was blinking on their dashboard, even as many on the team actually underperformed when compared to what we know they could’ve done. That’s what makes this story so compelling. The team’s young stars were careening out of control, which would only become apparent in the years to come as drugs robbed Dwight Gooden of his abilities (even at half his best from ‘87-‘89, he was better than most), as Darryl Strawberry’s various demons consumed him. The rest apparently parties and fought, basking in the nightlife, the end-of-the-world hedonism that had taken hold in the city. And no one disputes this.

The years that would follow — the second-place finishes, the underachieving, the dismantling of the roster, the penny pinching that would give way to years of losing — are hard to take. They live with us now, with a team that lacks the fire, the swagger of ‘86, that has found a way to build on more recent Mets’ history of collapse and failure.

Yet, I remember exactly where I was when Jesse Orosco struck out Kevin Bass in the 16th inning to end game six and give the Mets the National League pennant. I was driving a pickup truck for a courier service, going from bank to bank, picking up paperwork, listening to the game on the radio. It was in Central Jersey, which like all of the extended New York region was Mets country that year. I stopped at probably a dozen banks. No one was working. Everyone was watching the game on portable TVs.

The Mets were up 3-2 in the series, yet game had a live-or-die sense to it. The unhittable former Met Mike Scott was scheduled for game seven, and no one believed the Mets could win if forced to face him.

They were down early. Three in the first off Bobby Ojeda and nothing after — for either team. Whispers of Mike Scott in their heads. The tension was almost debilitating. Down 3-0 into the ninth. Bobby Ojeda had given up 3 in the first, settled in and handed the game off in the sixth to Rick Aguilera. Three relievers — Aguilera, Roger McDowell, and Orosco then pitched the final 11 innings.

Bob Knepper was dealing. Throwing a shut out. Until the wheels came off and the Mets tied it in the ninth. Back and forth it went, and I was driving, making stops, living and dying like all the workers crammed around those tiny TVs. In the 16th, the Mets scored 3. Orosco then gave up two and Bass came up with two on. I’m driving south on Route 18 in New Brunswick, where the highway dips beneath the Rutgers Campus. The game is on and I’m worried that I’m about to lose the signal. Orosco goes full count. Bass swings, misses, the ball game is over, and everyone on the highway starts honking their horns.

The World Series. Mets lose the first two. Lose. The. First. Two. At Shea. What was happening? The documentary helps us understand. The partying. The aftermath. The talent on Boston, which few of us in New York took seriously. Roger Clemens in 1986, says someone on screen (sorry, I wasn’t taking notes), was Doc Gooden in 1985. There were no weak links in the lineup, which featured two future Hall of Farmers. And Bruce Hurst had his nasty curveball falling off the table.

The Mets fought back, evened the series in Boston and then lost game 5 with Gooden on the mound. Gooden was gone after four innings, unthinkable to the Mets faithful. Gooden was a pitching god who suddenly was just ordinary. Mortal. We forget that he was just a kid. We forget that most of these Mets players were kids, most in their 20s being asked to be more than any other 20-something would have to be just because they could throw a ball or swing a bat.

Game six — again, what is it with game sixes — felt like the end. Clemens was on the mound. We went out to eat. Why we did that, I have no idea. We should have been parked in front of the TV, but we weren’t. Perhaps, it was a defense mechanism. If they were going to go down, we didn’t want to watch.

And they were down — Ojeda again. For most of the game. The waiter kept relaying scores back to us. The Mets slowly climbed back in and tying it in the eighth. In the top of the 10th, the Red Sox broke through for two runs for a 5-3 lead. The Mets had three outs to go, had to score at least two. Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez fly out to open the Mets’ half. Two outs. Down two. Then came three straight singles, a wild pitch, and the score is tied.

I remember exactly where I was as this was happening. We were in the bar at the restaurant, Casa Lupita in Lawrence, surrounded by Phillie fans who were rooting for the Red Sox. We were the only Mets fans in the house. When Gary Carter singled to get it started, we could sense something. When they tied the game, there was a groan from the Phillie faithful. Mookie Wilson was at the plate, hitting lefty, fouling off pitch after pitch after pitch until he poked one fair. A dribbler up the first-base line, an easy out. But Bill Buckner, a true professional in the sport who was as good a hitter as you could find, was playing on bad wheels. The series of knee and leg injuries robbed him of his mobility. He never should have been out there — and, as the documentary points out, he was only on the field because Sox Manager John McNamara wanted “his guys” to be on the field when they won. The ball rolled up the line and then trickled through Bucker’s legs. Ray Knight scored from second. The Mets win and send it to the deciding game seven.

Buckner, of course, deserved better. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care that McNamara badly mismanaged the game, either, that as Lenny Dykstra said, he angered the baseball gods. The Mets won and would win the next day and be world champions for the second time in franchise history. The dynasty was just beginning, except it wasn’t, the baseball gods taking their revenge, miring the franchise in what is now 35 years of disappointment.

Steve Cohen, the new owner, says things will be different, but his first year as owner has not exactly gone as planned. It is Sept. 16. The Mets are three games under .500 with 15 to go, looking up at five teams, hoping to qualify for a one-game playoff. The division is out of reach. As the 1986 Mets returned to TV on ESPN, the 2021 Mets were getting beaten — outplayed, out hustled, out classed — by a good-not-great Cardinals team. The Cardinals. Their nemesis in 1985 and 1987. I guess that’s appropriate. All we can do now, Mets fans, is wait until next year. Again.