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Funny, I just finished writing up this episode as part of an entry (technically for another game -- wins only, remember) for the third volume of The Happiest Recap, which covers 1987 through 1999. Consider this a sneak preview.
285
SEPTEMBER 23, 1989
Mets 13 Expos 6
Shea Stadium
Two National League East teams geared up for a pennant drive. Both of them sputtered. Neither of them reached its destination.
The Montreal Expos struck first, in late May, by acquiring the most wanted arm on the trade market, prospective free agent Mark Langston. Seattle knew it wouldn’t resign the lefty so it was willing to listen to offers for the pitcher who far outstripped the club for whom he toiled in futility. The Mets reportedly had a grand chance to nab him. They would have had to have sent Howard Johnson and Sid Fernandez, plus pitching prospects Kevin Tapani and David West, to the Mariners and they would have received the 28-year-old Langston along with potential-laden power hitter Jay Buhner. But the deal never came off, so Seattle did business with Montreal instead. Acquiring Langston made the Expos an instant favorite to take control of the tight N.L. East. They got an established ace pitcher and all it took was a package of unproven talent, most notably a tall, gawky southpaw named Randy Johnson.
Changing on the fly might have worked for the Montreal Canadiens, but for Les Expos, the ice melted beneath their feet. The ballclub saw its summertime divisional lead melt in early August, even though the rental of Langston gave them a metric ton of quality starts.
Deprived of Langston, the Mets snapped up Frank Viola on July 31. He was an upgrade to the rotation in the wake of Dwight Gooden’s shoulder injury but, ultimately, not a difference-maker of the highest order. He pitched well for the Mets sometimes, less well some other times. While Tapani and West became part of the package used to pry Viola loose from the Twins, maybe the best news from the trade talks was what the Mets didn’t give up when they didn’t get Langston.
Fernandez finished third in the National League in strikeouts, ninth in ERA and first in winning percentage by going 14-5. Johnson, meanwhile, bounced back from his disappointing 1988 and exceeded his breakout 1987: 36 homers, 101 ribbies, 41 steals, a league-leading 104 runs scored. Though Mike Schmidt was voted onto the N.L. All-Star team after tearfully announcing his retirement, it was Johnson who was given the honor of starting at third base in the Midsummer Classic. He was also identified by the Mets as one of their “cornerstone” players and compensated with a three-year contract extension that (pre-Viola) paid him more than any Met not named Gooden.
Despite the next steps up taken by El Sid and HoJo, the Mets could never quite put together a concerted run at first place. They stayed within shouting distance of the Cubs, but never made enough noise to seriously disturb them. Thus, as September wound down, what might have loomed as a classic pitching matchup of the modern age served only as preface for a milestone that proved significant only in retrospect.
Shea’s last Saturday of 1989 gave the wind-whipped Fan Appreciation Day crowd of nearly 37,000 an idea of what might have been gigantic: Mark Langston versus Frank Viola. It was the Expos’ hired gun taking on the Mets’ hefty contract. They were two celebrated pitchers who were moved midyear largely for financial reasons and were supposed to change a division’s competitive equation.
Instead, the two lefties pitched out the string in uninspiring fashion. Langston was undermined by shoddy defense and didn’t last four innings. Viola allowed a grand slam to Hubie Brooks and muddled through five. By the time Davey Johnson pinch-hit for his pitcher with Tom O’Malley, the Mets were ahead 8-6, en route to a 13-6 victory that kept the Mets barely mathematically alive. As it grew windier and rain began to spritz Shea, the fans appreciated the exits more than all the scoring. But those who sat tight got a treat they couldn’t have recognized as it happened.
In the home sixth, with the bases loaded, the Mets No. 7 hitter doubled off Andy McGaffigan. Three runs crossed the plate. Earlier the same batter singled in a pair. That made five RBIs on the day for a player who had only collected ten all year until now...a player who entered this game batting an unsightly .173.
But those five RBIs were a reminder of who this player had been when he came to the Mets — from the Expos — nearly five years before. This was the Gary Carter whose trade from Montreal in December 1984 transformed everything about these Mets. They went from contenders to prospective champions; from maybe to just about definitely. Carter showed up at Shea a catcher who could hit, and drove in runs like no Met before him: 100 on the nose in 1985, 105 to tie Rusty Staub’s team record in 1986. No Met had driven in nearly as many in consecutive seasons. No consecutive seasons had been so altogether powerful as those.
In the succeeding two seasons, Carter produced decently, considering his age, his aches and his position. He was still the fulltime catcher even as he ceded the cleanup position in the batting order in 1987. He was the fulltime catcher again in 1988 even as he endured a slightly embarrassing three-month home run drought while his lifetime total sat and sat and sat some more on 299.
Come 1989, in the fifth year of a five-year contract, Gary Carter was done. He didn’t hit. He didn’t catch. He couldn’t play. But on September 23, in the shadow of a would-be pitching duel, Carter drove in his final Mets runs.
He drove in five of them.
Eight days earlier, the other man who changed what it meant to consider the Mets drove in his final runs for the franchise, also against Montreal, this time at Montreal. It was the fourth inning of a scoreless game. Darryl Strawberry was on first. Dennis Martinez was on the mound. And Keith Hernandez belted a two-run homer out of Olympic Stadium. The 2-0 lead provided the basis for David Cone’s 5-0 win that night. The homer was Hernandez’s fourth of the season. The “ribeye steaks,” as he’d someday call them as an announcer, were his eighteenth and nineteenth of the year. That figure was a fraction of the 94 he drove home in 1984, his first full season in Flushing, the first season the Mets as New York had come to know them began to take shape. Hernandez fielding at first. Hernandez batting third. Hernandez leading the way.
Hernandez arrived in 1983. The Mets grew up in his wake. Then Carter came and they had a team in full. The Mets of the 1980s, the ones that would be remembered as part of a perennial powerhouse, were stocked with youngsters nurtured within the organization. But the team to which they came up was an aspirational entity because of how Hernandez adjusted to his new surroundings after leaving St. Louis and how Carter embraced his once he departed Montreal.
In October 1986, they led the Mets to the mountaintop. In September 1989, they were completing their descent. Carter was 35. Hernandez was about to be. Neither had a contract for 1990. Neither would get one from the Mets. A few nights after Carter’s final big bang, they made their last appearances as Mets at Shea Stadium. The team had by now been officially eliminated. The only pennant race rooting interest Mets fans had left was for the Toronto Blue Jays, who were on the verge of clinching the American League East title thanks in great part to the savvy addition of unwanted Met center fielder Mookie Wilson. Mookie underwent a career renaissance and became as beloved at the new SkyDome as he was at old Shea. The Jays had Mookie and Lee Mazzilli and a playoff date pending. The Mets had Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez, but not for much longer.
Davey Johnson didn’t start either of his veterans on September 27, the final home game of the season and the decade. But he saved each of them an at-bat. Hernandez pinch-hit in the eight and flied out. Carter, who replaced Mackey Sasser behind the plate in the top of the ninth, led off the bottom of the inning with a ringing double. He received a standing ovation. So did Keith. The Mets were about to lose, 5-3, but it was a lovefest anyway.
Then it wasn’t. The Mets were playing the Phillies. Roger McDowell was in their bullpen and came on to get the last out. It was Gregg Jefferies, the 1988 wunderkind who never quite got untracked in 1989...and who apparently never forgot a slight. After grounding to second for the final out of the home season, Jefferies ran to first and then zipped toward the mound to mix it up with his former teammate over some lingering or perhaps recently exacerbated hard feelings. Gregg’s phenom ways — overprotecting his bats to the point where he fretted they’d come into contact with other players’ lumber, for example — might have played better in the clubhouse had he played better in the field. But his first full campaign (though it elicited scattered Rookie of the Year votes on top of the handful he received for what he did late the year before) won him few fans internally or externally. So although both teams’ benches emptied and everybody scrambled about, it wasn’t exactly a case of bad blood between the division rivals. As Philly manager Nick Leyva put it, “There were 30 guys on our side rooting for Roger and 20 guys on their side rooting for Roger.”
But there were no hard feelings evident between Mets management and their departing veterans once the season was over and business demanded inevitable turnover. After the Mets swept Pittsburgh to put a decent face on their rather underwhelming season (87-75, six games out), Carter and Hernandez were the guests of honor for a farewell press conference at Shea, in the old Jets locker room. They were leaving, not retiring, yet it all felt very final.
Kid: “I can still play this game, and I know there’ll be an opportunity out there. But these have been five great years. I heard the cheers and I heard the boos, and I like the cheers a lot more. Maybe I’ll hear more of them.”
Mex: ”It’s sad because these have been six-and-a-half great years, and I’ll always be a New Yorker and a New York Met. But then come the cold realities. You can’t retire at 65 in baseball.”
And with those statements, 1986 ended yet again. Eight members of the world championship team had been, in one way or another, removed from the premises in less than ten months’ time: Wally Backman, Lenny Dykstra, McDowell, Wilson, Mazzilli, Rick Aguilera, Hernandez and Carter. The Mets were still a team with a winning record but nobody was of a mind to think of them as winners three years after their last World Series. Davey Johnson teetered on his usual razor’s edge where Frank Cashen’s judgment was concerned before the GM declared the most successful manager in New York Mets history would remain in his post. Darryl Strawberry, whose production plummeted (as a fractured toe sapped his speed), was still making discontented statements regarding his contractual future. Gooden had come back to test his shoulder in relief in September, but couldn’t yet be slated as a sure thing for 1990.
There weren’t many ’86ers left besides them, and the post-’86ers who were supposed to help make 1989 special simply hadn’t. Jefferies regressed. Cone struggled. Kevin McReynolds ebbed. Juan Samuel imploded. Viola (5-5, 3.38 ERA in 12 starts) didn’t save the day.
Enormous aspects of the greatest era Mets fans had ever known were now consigned to the past. Their club would have to build on what was left. After winning fewer games than in any season since contention became a chronic Met condition — and failing to win it all had become a constant Met complaint — remaining “excellent again and again” appeared more easily sloganeered than accomplished. |
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