These Mets hope to play — and not party — like '86 Mets
NEW YORK — The New York Mets trail the Kansas City Royals two games to none, but they’re coming home. They hope that’ll jumpstart a run to their first World Series title since — well, they know.
That’s because the 1986 Mets are never far away. These Mets see those Mets everywhere.
Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling broadcast their games. Tim Teufel is their third base coach. Wally Backman manages their top farm team. Sometimes it can seem as if the ’86 Mets are forever peering over the shoulders of their less worthy successors through three decades of overpaying free agents and squandering late-season leads.
These Mets, though, are the ones who can break that spell. To do it, they’ll need to win four of the last five Series games. No worries: That’s what the ’86 Mets did. They trailed the Boston Red Sox two games to none — losing both at home, no less — and came back to win in seven games, including that little roller down the first-base line in Game 6 that got by Bill Buckner and made Mookie Wilson a patron saint of comebacks.
And so now, just as these Mets are called on to make miracles of their own, that Greek chorus cheering them from the wings includes many of the legendary 86ers, who were as well known for breaking curfew as breaking records (franchise-best 108 wins). The 2015 Mets reached the World Series winning 90 games — and without nearly as much living it up in the city that never sleeps.
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“It’s a lot of quiet, soft-spoken guys,” Hernandez tells USA TODAY Sports. “Athletes are more that way these days.”
The way Howard Johnson figures it, they have to be.
“It’s a different era,” says the former infielder. “Back then there weren’t cell phone cameras. Nowadays it’s a lot more controlled. I know these guys and they like to have fun, but it’s a different kind of fun than maybe the guys back then.”
And what if there’d been cell phone video back in the day?
“Oh my gosh,” Johnson says. “It would’ve been a lot of trouble.”
Sometimes those Mets found trouble at 2 a.m., such as mid-July of ’86 when four of them were arrested after an altercation with police in a Houston bar. Those Mets carried themselves with a certain strut in their step, on the field and off.
“We had a good team,” Hernandez says. “When you win 108 games, you play with a little swagger.”
That certitude came right from the get-go.
“We knew we were good, but when (manager) Davey Johnson came out in spring training and said, ‘We’re not only going to win everything, but we’re going to dominate,’ I was really shocked at that,” Hernandez says. “Kind of put us behind the eight ball there. It was very Earl Weaver-esque of him. And we responded.”
Those Mets won their division by 21½ games. Drama displaced dominance in the playoffs. The Mets beat the Houston Astros four games to two in the National League Championship Series, including a 16-inning classic in Game 6.
“We knew we had our hands full with Houston,” Hernandez says. “That was a six game series; it was more like a seven-game dogfight.”
By contrast, 2015’s Mets swept the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS. “Little different road to get there,” Johnson says.
The regular season was a different road, too. These Mets were 49-48 when Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe came by trade from Atlanta. Then, in short order, they acquired Tyler Clippard from Oakland and Yoenis Cespedes from Detroit.
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“They were basically dead in the water before the trade deadline, going nowhere,” Hernandez says. “I’ve never seen three trades — and the call-up of (Michael) Conforto — turn a ballclub around like this one did.”
Cespedes changed the team’s momentum with his bat. Uribe altered it with his personality.
“I think the biggest move internally, in that clubhouse, was when Uribe came,” Hernandez says. “Very serious, hardworking team and Uribe came in and was gregarious, humorous, and I think he loosened everybody up — the Latin players, everybody. Very, very important to the last two months of the season and turning that around.”
The succession of Mets teams that have been haunted by the heroes of 1986 were mostly forgettable. Exceptions include 1988’s division winners (who’d lose a seven-game NLCS to the Los Angeles Dodgers), 1999’s wild-card entry (who’d lose a six-game NLCS to the Atlanta Braves), 2000’s pennant winners (who’d lose to the rival Yankees in a five-game Subway Series) and 2006’s division winners (who’d lose a seven-game NLCS to the St. Louis Cardinals).
One 90-loss team was too terrible to forget, much as Mets fans might want to — 1992’s Mutts, about whom the book The Worst Team Money Could Buy was written. Things would not get better in 1993, when the Mets lost 103 games.
It is standard in any major league city for the home team’s most recent champion to be remembered fondly. But this is New York, where everything is magnified — and where the cross-town Yankees don’t tolerate three-decade gaps between championships. But maybe the biggest reason the 86ers loom so large is their larger-than-life aura, personified by stars the likes of Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Gary Carter, Lenny Dykstra — and, of course, Hernandez. Even his mustache carried an aura.
“The similarities between our team back then and this one is the pitching staff is deep,” Johnson says. “You’ve got capable starters who can pitch out of the bullpen, if necessary. They have probably not quite the offense we had, although the way they’ve been swinging the bat recently, with Cespedes in the lineup, they can be comparable.”
Johnson was on deck when Wilson hit that fateful bouncer toward Buckner in ’86’s Game 6, driving Ray Knight in from second with the walk-off score. These days, Johnson can call to mind twin views of that magic moment. One’s the one the rest of us have, the TV-eye view of countless replays. The other is how he saw it from the on-deck circle, history happening right before his eyes.
“You have both views in your head,” he says. “They don’t lie. They’re in there forever, for sure.”
Johnson says he often wears his world champion ring when he visits New York. Fans will ask to see it. “They all remember where they were when all that was going on,” Johnson says.
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Well, not all of them. Some weren’t born yet. “They’ve heard all the stories from their parents,” Johnson says, “and now they get to experience it.”
How these Mets are remembered depends entirely on what happens next. Those Mets want company on memory’s top shelf.
“We’re pulling for them,” Johnson says. “And we’re going to be watching — and critiquing.”
Lacques reported from New York and Kansas City, Mo.
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