In the first half of this baseball season, being a Mets fan was thrilling: there were plenty of come-from-behind victories, exciting feats of athleticism from new players, R.A. Dickey’s pitching dominance, and Johan Santana throwing the franchise’s first-ever no-hitter. Best of all, the thought that the Mets would make it to the playoffs wasn’t far from any New Yorker’s mind, as the team was perpetually only four or five games out of first place.
Then the All-Star Break came and went, and since then the Mets have been in a pretty dreadful skid. Over the last few weeks, they’ve only won a handful of games, and aside from a glimmer of hope for them to make it to the playoffs via the Wild Card—well, let’s just say most fans are already looking ahead to next season.
That’s why now was the perfect time to read Jeff Pearlman’s 2004 book, The Bad Guys Won, a fantastic, well-researched dive into the 1986 Mets. That was the last year the Mets won the World Series, and the players who made their way to the Big Show that year established a reputation for bad behavior that’s made the team legendary.
The book’s subhead—“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”—says it all, don’t you think?
Pearlman, a writer for Sports Illustrated, takes readers through the ’86 Mets’ story with vivid details and dialogue, supported by current interviews with many of the players themselves—though, some of the more controversial players, like Darryl Strawberry and Dwight “Doc” Gooden, clearly didn’t want to rehash a period in their lives that played host to some demons. Even still, anecdotes from the rest of the gang prove to be plenty illuminating, and provide an exciting picture into what must’ve been one of the weirdest years in baseball history.
Of particular interest is the night that four Mets players spent the night in jail after enjoying a few too many drinks at a bar called Cooters in Houston, Texas—an event that, at the time, was known as “Cooter-gate.” And then how the Mets went on to beat the Houston Astros in the playoffs, a situation outlined for me from one point of view right here. Needless to say, it was pretty fun to get the other, more victorious side of the story.
The book also delves into some of that year’s other oddities, such as the fact that players from the team recorded two—one unofficial and terrible, one official and slightly less terrible—different songs to boast of how Amazin’ they were. The first, “Get Metsmerized,” will go down in history as one of the worst things ever. Not even just “worst song” or “worst rap,” just “worst thing”…like, worse, maybe, than even head lice:
The other, “Let’s Go Mets,” is merely goofy and dumb, and an interesting time capsule into what it was like to be a New Yorker back in ’86 (when I was about three years old, and therefore too young to appreciate the Mets’ charms):
Okay, this one’s pretty bad too. But still…it’s hard not to smile at the un-ironic enthusiasm.
All in all, The Bad Guys Won is a snappy, fun read, and a must for not only any fan of New York’s perennial underdogs, but fans of baseball and sports in general. For readers of sports stories and literature, make sure to clear out a space on your bookshelf (or Kindle). It’s like the Bad News Bears, but all grown up, and with lots more drinking, cursing, and vomiting.
Fun for the whole family! I can’t wait to read it again.
