Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

Continuing along our series related to the baseball game between the Mets and Red Sox that took place on October 25, 1986. Sometime around 3 a.m., after 482 pitches of a wacky Game 3 of the World Series, I asked a couple of folks I knew which game they considered to be crazier- the one which they had just viewed on October 25, 2005, or the one that they had the chance to view on that date 19 years previous. Both selected the one from the past, which pleased me, but it also reminded me of a blog post I wanted to write, about another baseball game that took place on an October 25. The game of baseball was so much different in 1911 than it is today that it's staggering to think this was the same sport. Ninety four years ago there were only 16 teams, and as basketball was played in its infancy on the ground instead of the air, so too was baseball. No American League club hit more than 35 home runs. The National League had the power hitters. The Phillies slugged a major-league best 60 l...

The NBA season opened Tuesday, so you had to figure at some point this week that I was going to chime in with a basketball walk-off story. The problem I had in trying to come up with one is that my team, the Knicks, hasn't had a lot of significant walk-off wins in the time that I've been following them. Yes, there was a Trent Tucker 3-pointer off an inbounds pass with 0.1 seconds remaining that never should have counted in the first place, and I recall Patrick Ewing hitting a buzzer-beater to beat the Bulls sometime about two decades ago. But unless you count some shots of recent vintage by those imposters presently wearing the Knicks jerseys (the Jamal Crawford's of the world), I can't think of too many others. So I'm going to expand the definition of a "walk-off shot" slightly to relate the story of one of my favorite Knicks games, and it's particularly timely given the recent retirement of a well-known Knick. One of the knocks on the NBA is that peo...

I'm on vacation this week, with little to do other than a few fun mini-projects here and there. As such, my mind was wandering the other day, and it turned to a couple of friends of mine in New Jersey, Paul and Gregg. Paul and Gregg are quite entertaining, far more so than I. They used to host a radio program in which they interviewed weird guests, made bizarre jokes, and played an occasional song or two. Gregg didn't like to go by his own name. He preferred to be known as "The Paragon of Excellence." When Paul got married a couple of summers ago, Gregg was the best man and I was an usher at the wedding. Gregg is a weird guy. He's worked as a wrestling announcer among other things and presently is a practicing attorney, as well as an advocate for midgets and lepers rights (don't ask!) His baseball obsessions range from Eddie Gaedel to Win Remmerswaal. But alas, Gregg is pretty sharp too. Prior to the wedding, Gregg came up with idea that all the members of the...

News item: Last weekend, the Atlanta Braves named Roger McDowell to replace Leo Mazzone as pitching coach I am curious to see what kind of big-league pitching coach Roger McDowell is, because his personality as a ballplayer didn't suggest coaching was in his future. Apparently McDowell was smarter than he looked, and often as a player, he looked very silly. He had a reputation, not only as a prankster (master of the hotfoot), but as a jokester. McDowell once walked around the field wearing his pants as a shirt and his shirt as his pants. He didn't exactly exude maturity. I thought he was cool because he blew big pink bubbles with his gum on the pitching mound. I also think he's cool because he was part of a lot of walk-off wins. No relief pitcher since 1986 has had more decisions than Roger McDowell had that season, when he went 14-9 in the regular campaign and added a postseason triumph in only the most important game of the season, Game 7 of the World Series (albeit a che...

Halloween came four months early for Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Dave Parker in 1978. The Mets and Pirates played a ballgamethat June 30th that got wild and crazy for the last three innings, right down to the final play of the game. It was originally a pretty good pitchers duel between Mets youngster Nino Espinosa and his Pirates counterpart Don Robinson that was even at one through six innings. In the seventh, the Pirates took the lead as current big league managers Phil Garner and Ken Macha hit back-to-back doubles, Macha's plating Garner. Future Met Frank Taveras singled home Macha to give Pittsburgh a two-run cushion. The Mets got a run back in their half of the eighth on a Willie Montanez RBI double, but missed a chance for more. Likewise, the Pirates couldn't convert a bases-loaded opportunity with nobody out in the last of the eighth, and the Mets came up in the top of the ninth trailing, 3-2. During the dog days of Metsdom (ie: 1977-1979), there wasn't much to get...

Those of you who are religious readers of my work here may recall my tale of woe regarding a game in which I departed prior to the Mets winning in walk-off fashion. For those who don't: ( http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/07/crying-uncle.html ) I mentioned that there was one other occasion in which I departed early. That took place on October 1, 2000. The 2000 season was remarkable, not only because the Mets won the National League pennant, but also because it included one of the most remarkable runs I've had in attending baseball games. If you include the postseason contests for which I was among those in the stands, I had a streak of in-person viewing of 13 consecutive Mets victories. The ninth of those, the October 1 contest, has an asterisk next to it because of my premature departure. A work shift on the sports desk at the Trenton Times that evening meant that I had to bail out after this regular-season finale (aka "Closing Day") between the Mets and Expos co...

You don't have to have a long, drawn out story about Game 6 of the 1986 World Series for it to be worthwhile. The fact that people can remember anything about that particular October 25 makes it noteworthy. Here are a couple of other memories that my friends shared. If you haven't contributed already, feel free to share yours in the comments section. Mike Duggan October 1986....It was the best of times, It was the best of times. After striking out on getting post season tickets when they originally went on sale, my brother in law was able to get us tickets for three games, Game 4 of the NLCS ( We lost to Mike Scott), Game 1 of the World Series (Mets lost 1-0 when Tim Teufel let a ground ball go thru his legs) and Game 7 of the World Series. The tickets were way up in sec 42 of the Upper Deck, but I was going to post season games for the first time in my life. The Mets were terrible all my life. I never thought this could happen. October 25, 1986. I received a phone call from my...

Sometimes, the best stories come from the moments we miss. Paul Alfieri, a media relations executive for Motorola, continues our series on Game 6 of the 1986 World Series by sharing his recollections of some magical moments. I was in Los Angeles for most of the 1986 World Series. I was 11 at the time, and we lived in New Jersey, but my dad was on extended assignment for his job on the West Coast. My Mom and sisters had flown out there to move him home, right smack on the middle of the Series. I was in the airport, watching the start of Game 6 on a monitor hanging in the terminal. Sometime during the third inning, we boarded the flight, and I lost contact. I was a nervous wreck... The flight was either a late evening or redeye (I don't remember which) but I know that I fell asleep listening to Channel 9 in my headphones (the one where you can hear the pilots talk to the ground towers). I was awakened by an announcement from the copilot, letting "all the Boston Red Sox fans...

Our tribute to Game 6 of the 1986 World Series moves along as Ken Hirdt, statistician for the Elias Sports Bureau, shares his remembrance of the evening of October 25. I was 10 years old, watching the game in my parents’ bedroom with my brother while the family was having a dinner party with a few friends from Queens. (We had moved from Queens to Westchester two years earlier.) Towards the end of the game my brother fell asleep and I went down to watch with the grownups. For some reason, I was drinking warm milk. And I (or my mom – don’t remember the specifics at this point) had left it on the stove too long and it had that skin on top. And it grossed me out. But I watched the end of the game, Mookie’s at-bat and Buckner and all that, went crazy yelling at the TV with all the adults and I have not had warm milk since.

We continue our series on Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, with guest writer Barry Federovitch, a sportswriter and copy editor for the Trenton Times, sharing his thoughts on where he was the evening of October 25. As Oct. 25 turned to Oct. 26 in 1986, I was sitting in my parents' living room in Howell, New Jersey, alone. They were both asleep. I had just broken up with a girlfriend I deeply loved and was in a distracted depressed state anyway. When it got to two outs, nobody on for the Mets in the bottom of the 10th inning, I bitterly muttered to the television set ''I've had a crappy year, why should it be any different for them.'' At that moment, Gary Carter singled. When Kevin Mitchell came to bat, I began pacing back and forth between the living room and kitchen. When Ray Knight got two strikes, I put my hands over my face like I was watching a horror movie. At the instant the ball got away from Gedman, I closed my eyes and at first didn't know what happ...

For those who didn't read the most recent post, this week we are celebrating the 19th anniversary of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. As such, I have asked friends, acquaintances, and colleagues from all walks of life to share their stories of where they were on the evening of October 25, 1986. We begin with Division III sports afficianado Gordon Mann. I was probably either crying or sleeping or both. You see, my mother wouldn't let me stay up past a certain bedtime. While my mother was sympathetic to my sports fandom, that sympathy only extended so far -- roughly 9:30 as I recall. During football season I used to look forward to Monday night so I could watch MacGyver and then the introduction to Monday Night Football. That was back when they used the dramatic music and a simpler intro narrated by Al Michaels ("JimPlunkett knows the Broncos well") instead of scantily clad cheerleaderslip synching in dopey faux-bar scenes to that country guy's played-out"Are y...

Happy birthday, mom! True Metsmoms know... On my mom's 47th birthday, Joe Carter hit a walk-off home run off Mitch Williams to win the 1993 World Series for the Toronto Blue Jays. (Thus making it much easier to remember the date, LOL)

I will be heading out of town at the end of the week for seven to 10 days (those who know me know where I'll be), but I wanted to maintain regular blog postings through the end of the World Series. So, this post will stay up through the weekend and will set the tone for a series of postings from guest bloggers next week. The theme of these posts deals with Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, as part of my "Didja ever notice..." series. I can tell you where I was for all sorts of events of varying significance. I can remember everything from my reaction when my sister was born (March 23, 1981, awoken from sleeping in the middle of the night after having watched the Burt Reynolds movie "The End" with my grandmother) to when O.J. Simpson was acquitted on murder charges (in a dorm room, along with several students at The College of New Jersey, one of whom kept saying over and over again "What a crock!") I can tell you where I was when Ross Jones got his firs...

And no, I'm not talking about Rich Gedman, Bob Stanley, Calvin Schiraldi, and John McNamara. If you're reading this post, chances are that you know about their foibles in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. I'm here to spread the word about the others, whose poor showings hurt their squads in postseason matchups against the Mets. Such as... Tony Gonzalez and Orlando Cepeda, whose eighth-inning errors in Game 1 of the 1969 NLCS led to a five (unearned) run rally, and a 9-5 Mets win that set the tone for the next two games, in which the Mets pounded Braves pitching for 18 runs and 27 hits. Paul Blair, Don Buford, Davey Johnson, Brooks Robinson, and Frank Robinson: The Orioles hit only .146 in losing the 1969 World Series in five games to the Mets. This supposedly fearsome fivesome went a combined 9-for-91 against the Amazins. Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, because if we're going to pick on the Hall of Fame Robinsons, there are two Cooperstown residents who wore the horns in the ...

I have two memories related to Bill Buckner and the aftermath of the 1986 World Series. The first is seeing him on crutches at a National Pastime baseball card show a few weeks after the series concluded. He was there along with Mike Witt and Eric Davis, and while I don't remember getting their autographs (I did on a baseball on which the signatures have since faded away), I do remember the crutches and the sad look on his face. The other comes from working as a tour guide at Shea Stadium in the summer of 1994. We were gathered as a group in the old Jets locker room when fellow tour guide Lane Luckert tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a man applying fresh paint to one of the walls. "Hey look," Lane said, pointing to a man with a bushy mustache and a slight resemblance to a former player. "It's Bill Buckner." That was a good moment for a few yucks, though I don't think the real Buckner would have laughed at the time. Remember that this was just two...

OK, the J.C. Martin piece below completes my tour of Mets postseason walk-offs. Here are the links to a couple that I wrote during the regular season. More "Didja Ever Notice" stuff to come... 1999 NLCS Game 5 (6 yrs ago today-- October 17, 1999) http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/08/walk-off-most-foul.html 1986 WS Game 6 http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/10/didja-ever-notice-how-telecast-ended.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/09/didja-ever-notice-what-they-wrote.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/09/didja-ever-notice-signs-signs.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/08/didja-ever-notice-look-on-his-face.html http://metswalkoffs.blogspot.com/2005/08/didja-ever-notice.html

Before Francisco Cabrera and Jerry Willard, there was J.C. Martin. I'm talking about no-name backup catchers who became noteworthy (at least in my eyes) for their walk-off accomplishments (Cabrera in the 1992 NLCS preceded by Willard in the 1991 World Series). Martin, the Mets primary caddy to Jerry Grote for two seasons, only got one plate appearance in the 1969 World Series, but he made the most of it. The Mets had already surprised many by taking a 2-games-to-1 series lead on the mighty Orioles, doing so on the strength of a ninth-inning RBI by Al Weis to win one contest and a one-man offensive and defensive show by centerfielder Tommie Agee to win another. In Game 4, played on Wednesday, October 15, they had their ace on the mound in Tom Seaver and Baltimore had a worthy counterpart in southpaw Mike Cuellar, who like Seaver, would go on to win his league's Cy Young. Let's appreciate the rarity of that because it marks the last time a World Series pitching matchup featur...

In TV, they call it a tease. When you see a news update during a commercial break in the tv show that you're watching, the goal is to entice you with just enough information to make you watch the news. Teases are well planned out, from the video you're watching to the description of what you can see, IF you tune in later. Sometimes the teases work. Sometimes they're a little too good. Monday nights in 1984 were CBS nights in our household, particularly from 9 to 11 pm. There was a sitcom with family appeal Kate and Allie , a humorously written comedy from a proven talent, Newhart, followed by an hour-long crime drama, Cagney and Lacey. On December 10, Emma McCardle developed a crush on her piano teacher, Dick Loudon got sued for plagarism, and Chris Cagney worried that Sgt. McKenna had given in to his cocaine addiction. Sometime between Dick's courtroom appearance and Cagney's confrontation with her police colleague, real news took over. CBS's New York affilate ...

Next blog post will likely be Friday morning. In the meantime...In case you missed it, Bill Buckner was in New York to help market a beer commercial that has the theme of "Second Chances." Apparently in said commercial, Mighty Casey gets another turn at bat and hits a home run. Buckner did the media tour on Tuesday and here are a few of the stories that were written. I will have something to say on the subject in a "Didja ever notice?" post (part of my series on 1986 WS Game 6) that will run either this weekend or next week. Newsday story http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--billbuckner1011oct11,0,6519370.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork New York Post http://www.nypost.com/sports/yankees/29386.htm NY Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/354875p-302501c.html AP Story http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2187744 Lastly, here's a link to "Elias Says" on ESPN.com. They had an unbelievable nugget linking Hideki Matsui...

Awhile back I was granted a unique perspective on Len Dykstra's walk-off home run that won Game 3 of the 1986 NLCS. A colleague of mine showed me some footage from a camera positioned in, of all places, the upper deck in right field. When given the chance to peek at this discovery, I took careful notes, such that I can almost tell you what it was like to be there (even though I wasn't). Here's some of what I jotted down in the form of both suggestions and observations. Why is it that the No. 7 train still looks exactly the same as it did nearly 20 years ago? (the footage opened with a shot of a train passing just prior to the start of the last of the ninth) They should bring back "Let's Go Mets!" as the ninth-inning rally theme music. It works much better than "I Need a Hero" or the theme from "Rocky." Speaking of which, whatever happened to "The Curly Shuffle?" On that note, bringing back the Rally Cap might be something fun and ...