Reese Kaplan -- The Wild and Crazy Year of 1986
To many Mets fans the 13 year gap between losing the Oakland World Series in 1973 and the return to the post season in 1986 seemed even longer than it was. The 1986 team led by Davey Johnson's crew was seemingly meant for great things right from the start. Johnson was brought here to turn the Mets into a winner. After his 1984 debut season with 90 victories he followed it up with 98 in 1985. However, no one anticipated the 108-54 season he launched in 1986 which had the Mets finished the regular year 21.5 games ahead of the next closest team, the Philadelphia Phillies. Almost since day one the Mets were unstoppable.
Now the team was raucous in winning. They had a few newcomers with Tim Teufel arriving in a trade with the Minnesota Twins and Bobby Ojeda joining the rotation via a trade with the Boston Red Sox. They fortified an already impressive team that made it nearly impossible for opponents to win games:
Lenny Dykstra CF
Wally Backman 2B
Keith Hernandez 1B
Gary Carter C
Darryl Strawberry RF
George Foster LF
Howard Johnson 3B
Rafael Santana SS
Dwight Gooden P
Now this team was not without other contributors who included Mookie Wilson, Kevin Mitchell, Ray Knight, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Bobby Ojeda, Jesse Orosco, Roger McDowell and yes, even Doug Sisk with a 3.06 ERA.
Of course, the team had its own share of controversies including the evening of July 19th when the Mets celebrated the birth of Tim Teufel's child which resulted in him, Ron Darling, Rick Aguilera and Bobby Ojeda spending the night in a Houston jail after assaulting the police. The highlight as a punch from Darling before he was thrown through a plate glass window.
The next incident occurred just three nights later when pinch runner Eric Davis connected with Ray Knight upon standing up which resulted in a hard punch from Knight that emptied the benches. Kevin Mitchell was tossing players on the Red around like they were children. It was the 4th brawl in the past few weeks which reflected the opponents not liking how the Mets were winning so easily.
On September 17th when the Mets clinched the pennant on Wally Backman's final throw to Keith Hernandez the fans stormed the field, overwhelming the 200 security personnel hired to protect the diamond and ignoring Frank Cashen's directives to stay respectful of the field. Groundskeeper Pete Flynn was heard saying, “These fans don’t deserve this team,” after spending 10 hours repairing the field.
The playoff game six against the Houston Astros was a see-saw battle that ran into the 16th inning but it meant avoiding former Met Mike Scott for a third time. The Mets rallied to take a 3 run lead in the 16th but coughed up two runs while holding onto a 7-6 victory and a spot in the World Series. That plane ride was something of legend which resulted in a food fight, broken seats, lve cocaine usage and all kinds of overindulgence of alcohol. United sent the Mets a bill for $7500 for damages and they have never again let the team fly their airline.
The Mets roared back to life on Ray Knight's home run for which he was eventually named the World Series MVP. The Mets got their second-ever World Series Championship in a way in which no one could have imagined.
2 comments:
That was some season, man oh man.
It was a great team, but Davey Johnson did nothing to control the wildness, and as a consequence, the team never became the dynasty that it should have been. That WS championship should have been followed up by two or three more. Instead, we had players in rehab and subpar performances that led to trades and eventually the dismantlement of the team leading to the awful decade of the 1990s.
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