During the 1986 Major League Baseball (MLB) season, the New York Mets won the National League East (NL East), the National League Championship Series (NLCS) and the World Series, the team's second and most recent World Series championship. General manager Frank Cashen and manager Davey Johnson built a powerful team that compiled one of the best regular season records in MLB history.
The Mets' season began on April 8, 1986, with a victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium, and they were soon in first place, where they remained the rest of the season. Playing their 25th season in the National League, the Mets improved from a 98–64 record in 1985 to a franchise-best 108–54. They were never seriously challenged in the NL East, defeating the second-place Philadelphia Phillies by 21 games. They went on to defeat the Houston Astros in six games in the NLCS and the American League champion Boston Red Sox in seven games in the World Series. Both series featured a memorable extra-inning Game 6 won by the Mets after being down to their final at-bat: over the Astros to win the NLCS and over the Red Sox to avoid elimination and force a Game 7.
The 1986 Mets have been described as one of the best teams in MLB history. Nevertheless, the failure to sustain the success has marred the team's legacy. During the season, many team members drank heavily, and the 1986 Mets have become known for their lifestyle off the field.
Background
The New York Mets began play in 1962, and for their first seven years were known mostly for losing. Despite this, they attracted considerable fan support, especially once Shea Stadium opened in 1964. By 1968, they had one of the National League's premier pitching staffs, but still finished ninth in the ten-team league. But the following year, the "Miracle Mets" won the National League East with a 100–62 record and swept the Atlanta Braves in the 1969 National League Championship Series. The American League champions, the Baltimore Orioles, who had won 109 games during the regular season, had difficulty taking New York seriously, given the team's reputation for losing. They learned to do so, as in the 1969 World Series, the Mets defeated the Orioles, four games to one.
The Mets failed to build on this triumph. In 1973, the Mets, despite a mediocre regular season, took the defending champion Oakland A's to the seventh game of the 1973 World Series. That would be the last postseason appearance for the Mets until 1986. Minimal success followed 1973, leading into losing seasons in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with low attendance. Many fans were alienated by the 1977 trade of pitcher Tom Seaver in a contract dispute. In 1979, the Mets finished last, 35 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates, and drew fewer than 800,000 fans to Shea Stadium, the lowest full-season attendance thus far in team history.
In January 1980, Nelson Doubleday Jr. and Fred Wilpon purchased the Mets. They hired Frank Cashen as general manager. He began work, warning that it would take four or five years to build a winning team. One advantage the Mets' woeful record had gotten them was the first pick in the 1979 MLB Draft, which they used to select Darryl Strawberry. Cashen made only one minor trade in 1980, spending the season observing, and the team avoided last place for the first time since 1976, finishing fifth. The 1981 season saw improvement, with young prospects such as Hubie Brooks and Mookie Wilson playing well. The team briefly contended in the second half of the strike-marred 1981 season, before fading due to injuries.
The 1982 Mets started well, six games over .500 on Memorial Day, and then fell apart, losing 97 games and coming within two of the team record for consecutive losses, set at 17 by the woeful 1962 Mets. Cashen made a number of trades, acquiring Ron Darling and George Foster, and with the fifth selection in the 1982 MLB Draft took Dwight Gooden. The Mets finished last again in 1983, but Strawberry won NL Rookie of the Year and the Mets' young pitching staff showed potential. The Mets acquired former Most Valuable Player Keith Hernandez from the St. Louis Cardinals.
Before the 1984 season, Cashen hired former Oriole Davey Johnson as manager. Despite an abundance of quality pitching, the Mets were picked to finish last again. Gooden won seventeen games and the NL Rookie of the Year award and Strawberry started the All-Star Game as the Mets finished second, 6 games behind the Chicago Cubs. The Mets improved what was already a strong lineup by acquiring slugging catcher Gary Carter from the Montreal Expos in December 1984. The Mets built by such trades: of the eight position players who started most for the 1986 Mets, only four were originally signed by New York, and of the four regular starting pitchers, only Gooden was a Mets draft pick. In 1985, the Mets won 98 games and took the Cardinals to the final weekend of the regular season before finishing second, three games back. Despite having the most wins in baseball for the combined 1984 and 1985 seasons, in an era before the wild card in baseball, the Mets had no playoff appearances to show for it.
Offseason The Mets signed no expensive free agents in the 1985–86 offseason. GM Frank Cashen did not favor free agency, and most baseball owners, at the request of the new baseball commissioner, Peter Ueberroth, had agreed to refrain from signing free agents to keep salary costs down. For this, they were later penalized for collusion. Given Cashen's views on the subject, the Mets might have stayed out of the free agent market anyway, but their rivals also doing so benefitted New York.
Notable offseason transactions involving the Mets included: November 13, 1985: Calvin Schiraldi, Wes Gardner, John Christensen, and La Schelle Tarver are traded by the Mets to the Boston Red Sox for Bob Ojeda, Tom McCarthy, John Mitchell and Chris Bayer (minors). November 13, 1985: Kelvin Chapman, Brent Gaff and Tom Paciorek were released by the Mets, who sent Clint Hurdle, Randy Niemann and Terry Leach to the Tidewater Mets. December 10, 1985: Hurdle was selected by the Cardinals from the Mets in the 1985 rule 5 draft. January 16, 1986: Ronn Reynolds was traded by the New York Mets with Jeff Bittiger to the Philadelphia Phillies for Rodger Cole and Ronnie Gideon. January 16, 1986: Billy Beane, Joe Klink, and Bill Latham were traded by the Mets to the Minnesota Twins for Tim Teufel and Pat Crosby (minors). March 4, 1986: Tim Corcoran was signed as a free agent by the Mets.
Spring training
One issue that shadowed the Mets as they began preparation for the 1986 season was the involvement of Hernandez in cocaine use–he had testified during a criminal trial in Pittsburgh during the previous year's pennant race. On February 28, 1986, Commissioner Ueberroth suspended Hernandez, along with six players on other teams, for a year, but allowed them to play the 1986 season if they agreed to drug testing, performed community service and donated part of their salaries to anti-drug initiatives. All affected players agreed to these terms.
The 1986 Mets held spring training at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida for the 25th season, at facilities that they shared with the Cardinals. Tired of the arrangement, the Mets signed an agreement in June 1986 to move to a complex in Port St. Lucie, Florida. During the exhibition season, the Mets posted a record of 13 wins, 13 losses and a tie. One major injury during spring training was to Mookie Wilson, whose sunglasses shattered when hit by a thrown ball during a drill. He needed eye surgery and was out for two months.
Regular season
April The Mets won their opening day game against the Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium on April 8, but then lost three of their next four, including extra-inning losses to the Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies. But when the Mets beat the Pirates on April 22 for their fifth straight victory, moving their record to 7–3, they took over first place, a position they would never relinquish.
The Mets had their first off-the-field controversy of the season, with Gooden involved in an altercation at LaGuardia Airport while returning a rental car. Although this later led to Gooden doing commercials for another rental car company, there were negative headlines in the New York press at the time.
Their toughest test in this stretch happened in St. Louis in a four-game series. On April 24, with the Cardinals leading 4–2 in the top of the ninth, Howard Johnson hit a game-tying home run and the Mets won in ten innings, the first blown ninth inning lead for the Cardinals in 90 games. After Gooden shut out the Cardinals in the second game, New York completed the sweep with two more wins. Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog told sportswriters, "The Mets are the team to beat. Hell, they think they won the last two years anyway." The Mets finished the month 13–3, 4 games in front of the Cardinals and the best start in franchise history.
May After posting the best winning percentage of any month in franchise history in April, the Mets won twice more, over the Braves, before losing, but then started a seven-game winning streak, thus winning 18 of 19 games and posting an overall record of 20–5. By then, four of the Mets' five NL East rivals were at least nine games back, including the Cardinals, leaving only the Expos, whom the Mets had not yet played. On May 15, after a victory over Houston and ex-Met Nolan Ryan, Gary Carter stated that the other teams "must be thinking, 'Gee, when are the Mets going to take a dive?' Well, we don't plan on it."
Many of the Mets drank heavily, including on the charter aircraft taking the team from city to city. Davey Johnson, a hard drinker both as a player and as Mets manager, strongly disliked taking on the role of disciplinarian, and avoided it. Though some Mets, like Gary Carter and Mookie Wilson, were well-behaved, others, such as Danny Heep, Doug Sisk and Jesse Orosco, drank heavily in the rear of the team aircraft (and elsewhere) and were known as the "Scum Bunch".
The Mets continued from Houston on a nine-game West Coast swing, on which they went 5–4. The Mets had rarely had success on West Coast road trips in recent years and counted it a victory to return to Shea with the same four-game lead they had left with. On May 27 at Shea, the Mets and Dodgers had an on-the-field brawl after Dodgers reliever Tom Niedenfuer hit Ray Knight with a pitch after George Foster had hit a grand slam home run. The Mets went 18–9 in May and ended the month with a season record of 31–12.
June The Mets had suffered injuries to third baseman Howard Johnson and to Strawberry, the latter causing great concern since an injury to him the previous year was blamed with costing the Mets the division title. Both returned in June, with the Mets 6–3 in Strawberry's absence.
Playing against the Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium on June 6, the Mets were in another on-field brawl, this one sparked by a dispute between Pirates pitcher Rick Rhoden and Mets first base coach Bill Robinson over whether Rhoden was tampering with the ball. The Mets split a doubleheader with the Pirates that day, with Strawberry went 4–7 with a home run on his first day back, and the Mets took four of five games in that series. On June 10 against the Phillies, reserve infielder Tim Teufel hit a pinch-hit, game-winning grand slam in the 11th inning.
New York finally played Montreal in mid-June; the Expos won two of three at Stade Olympique, with Gooden losing the third game, and Montreal also won two of three at Shea, with Gooden pitching poorly in a no decision. Despite an 8–2 record, Gooden was pitching badly enough that there was speculation as to what might be wrong–his increasing cocaine habit was not yet publicly known. Ahead by 9 games at month's end, the Mets went 19–9 during June and finished the month with a season record of 50–21.
July