Jeff Pearlman's The Bad Guys Won Details the '86 Mets

Current day New York is a Yankee town, no doubt about it. As a loyal and long-standing Met fan, it kills me to say it but it’s undeniable. The Mets have just now begun to receive any national attention (positive, that is) while those Bronx Bombers gather back page after back page and hours upon hours of media debate. However, turn the clock back twenty years and the tide was totally different. New York was all about those Amazin’ Mets and 1986 was the culmination of it all.

Jeff Pearlman’s “The Bad Guys Won! A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo-chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform–and Maybe the Best” (YES, that is the full title) is a book all about that single special season that has never and will never be duplicated. Pearlman is a former writer for Sports Illustrated who grew up as big a Mets fan as any and captures that sentiment quite well.

Pearlman doesn’t just focus on the 1986 season but he goes in depth into the mindset of the franchise prior to and the bit by bit building of the team. Such stories are told about the outright mediocrity of the franchise in the mid-late 1970s and the eventual hiring of general manager Frank Cashen and manager Davey Johnson. The acquisitions of all the players are covered in detail. Such names as catcher Gary Carter, first baseman Keith Hernandez, second basemen Tim Teuffel, and starter Bob Ojeda are some of those names.

Ofcourse talking about those 1986 Mets, you can’t go on much longer without throwing the names of the hottest pair of players in the past half century on any team. Outfielder Darryl Strawberry and starter Dwight ï¿½Doc’ Gooden. The two players were both drafted by the Mets organization and developed as players well before that illustrious season. However, as the book throws out there, the two did not develop as human beings and have paid the price for it ever since. Pearlman throws out for discussion the strong belief that Mets pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre’s attempt at teaching Gooden new pitches would lead to the pitchers downfall (on the field). The electric duo’s substance abuse is well documented and as fate would have it, many players were surprised to find out that it was Doc Gooden who was indulging in cocaine throughout the season.

Yes, this book takes a long hard look at all the drug and alcohol abuse the ï¿½86 team fancied themselves doing for practically their entire run. Perhaps the most infamous story is of the plane ride after clinching the pennant by defeating the Houston Astros in the NLCS in a Game 6 extra inning bonanza. Without divulging much information here, let’s just say that nearly everyone on the plane was under the influence and the plane itself didn’t come out as cleanly as your routine flight. When GM Frank Cashen took his upset concerns to Davey Johnson, the players manager shook it off. With a bill in hand for the damage to the flight, Johnson tore it up in front of his team and said to the effect, “We’re going to be making this organization a lot more money” leading towards the fact that the team was heading to the World Series.

Ahh…the 1986 World Series. One of the greatest Championship series’ ever played for major league baseball or any sport. Getting it out of the way now, ofcourse everyone knows the series best for a single player…Buckner…Bill Buckner. The now-infamous first baseman who watched as Mookie Wilson’s dribbler down the first base line, rolled through his legs as the winning run scored in Game 6. What Pearlman does a good job in this book is going in-depth to each game. For example, does anyone remember the fact that Mets secondbaseman Tim Teuffel allowed the game winning run to score because a grounder rolled through his legs in Game 2?…not after Buckner, that’s for sure. But Pearlman doesn’t put the blame of the series loss for the Red Sox at the hands of Buckner, but at then Boston manager, John McNamara. The book offers an entire chapter by itself, for everyone to learn all about Bill Buckner and really what a terrific player he was…before injuries changed his career for the worse.

You’ll also hear the story of the famous B-movie actor who parachuted onto the Shea Stadium field during the World Series. Afterwards, he spent nearly a month in jail. Also quite ammusing was the fact that a Boston Red Sox World Series celebration was being planned as the Mets appeared to have been down and out in Game 6. After the infamous loss, locker room attendants rushed to remove all signs of any potential celebration. These two are just some of the stories covered in the book.

Pearlman offers countless story after story with unprecedented access to members of the team. He spent lots of time tracking down players and workers inside the organization. That work paid off tons with stories you’ve never heard anywhere before. You’ll also get an idea of what was going through the minds of the players concerning their teammates and their opponents.

Perhaps the most saddening item in the book isn’t the constant talk of drug use, violence, alcohol abuse or plain old bad people but (as a Mets fan, I know it was for me) the quick dismantling of the team. Obviously unlike the 1997 Florida Marlins championship team, the entire team was released, let-go or traded but slowly but surely, most of the players who played important roles were gone. The underlining story was GM Frank Cashen’s belief that he had literally assembled a monster of a team filled with terrible character people. After 1986, the Mets were never the same.ï¿½ Many people, Pearlman included,
have a strong belief that the ï¿½86 Mets was one of the best teams to ever play a pro baseball game. It should’ve lasted longer than a year, but their lifestyles and extracurricular activities never let it be.

Reference:

The Bad Guys…@ Amazon
1986 World Series Info
1986 New York Mets BaseballLibrary

Jeff Pearlman’s The Bad Guys Won Details the ’86 Mets

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