But there's no getting around the fact that twenty years is a long time. It's the difference between an infant and a young adult. And it's the difference between young adulthood and middle-age. And for professional athletes, it's a lifetime.
In 1986, Mr. Brilliant and I were still living in the shitty Hackensack apartment we'd moved into in those tentative early days when we wanted a place either of us could afford alone, if it came to that. And the Mets were playing out the string in a season in which they won the division by more than 20 games, winning 108 games in the regular season.
And then there was the playoffs.
We tend to measure our lives by where we were when certain things happened. For my generation, those things tend to be assassinations and scandals -- the two Kennedy assassinations. The murder of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Watergate.
But then there's game six of the 1986 NLCS.
I will never forget that game. We were listening to it at work in New York, and it looked bad for the Mets, who entered the ninth inning trailing 3-0. So this dispirited Mets fan headed home. I was working in lower Manhattan at the time, commuting via PATH and commuter train. I vividly remember losing the radio signal on my Walkman when I entered the World Trade Center, and a few minutes later, hearing a roar wafting through the corridors as I reached the top of the long escalators that led down to the PATH trains. The Mets had tied the game in the 9th.
I got to Hoboken and ducked into a bar to watch the 12th inning. I got on the train and listened to the 13th and 14th innings. I stopped in a video store in Hackensack to watch the top of the 15th before heading home. And I arrived home in time to see the Mets win in 16 innings.
Because no matter who the players are, that's the kind of games the Mets play -- when they're not stinking up the joint.
I also remember the infamous July 4, 1985 game in which they took 19 innings and over six hours to beat the Atlanta Braves on Fireworks night in Atlanta. We had gone to the Macy's fireworks that night, gone home, and fallen asleep with the game on. I remember waking up around 3 AM with the game still going on and and hearing Mets broadcaster Steve Zabriskie say "If you're just tuning in, write and tell us why." The thing I remember most about that game was Braves relief pitcher Rick Camp hitting a home run off of Mets sidearm reliever Terry Leach in the 18th inning and Danny Heep watching it go over the fence and clasping his hands on top of his head in disbelief. Keith Hernandez later wrote about that home run in his book If at First, describing the call Terry Leach answered the next day from a fan who just said, "Rick Camp? You gotta be shitting me!" -- and hung up.
The 1986 World Series and the infamous Bill Buckner Bobble were almost anticlimactic by comparison to Game Six of the 1986 NLCS, which for my money is the greatest baseball game played in my lifetime.
It's hard to describe what it was like to be a Mets fan that year.
So watching the 20th anniversary celebration of the most colorful group of players in the team's history was a bittersweet reminder than none of us are as young as we used to be -- except Rick Aguilera, Tim Teufel, and Danny Heep; all of whom look as if they could still play and are practically unchanged in 20 years, save for Danny Heep, who was a horsey-faced young ball player who has turned into a preposterously good-looking middle-aged man.
Time has been kinder to some players than others. Ed Hearn, he of the infamous Ed-Hearn-and-Rick-Anderson-For-David-Cone swindle of 1987, looks like Ed Hearn's dad. Kevin Elster is unrecognizable, as is Wally Backman, who looks far older than his 46 years. Darryl Strawberry looks surprisingly youthful given the problems he's had, from jail to colon cancer to two failed marriages. Darryl was always a paradox, with a sweet smile that could never quite hide the strange, sad, dead look in his eyes, eyes that are even more sorrowful now. And of course Darryl's presence, due to a last-minute change of heart on his part to put aside a financial disupte with the organization, served to underscore who was NOT present -- his buddy Dwight Gooden, now doing time in a Florida prison.
Then there's Lenny Dykstra, the little engine that could, who at 23, with his trademark tobacco chaw, was the most exciting player on a team that boasted Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry.
Dykstra is the guy you went to high school with who you figured would be either in a wheelchair or dead by the time he was 40. Although he never admitted it, Dykstra's pumped-up physique after he was traded to the Phillies, as well as the back problems that plague him today, are pretty clear indicators of steroid use. But who would have believed that Nails, of all people, who never gave the impression of being the sharpest knife in the drawer, would turn out to be not just a successful entrepreneur, but also a savvy investor and financial writer?
You don't believe me? Believe it, baby.
I'm glad that after years of distancing the organization from its most famous and most fun team ever, the Mets organization has decided to embrace its own best past. Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling are now TV broadcasters. Howard Johnson and Randy Niemann are coaches with the Norfolk Tides. Gary Carter manages the St. Lucie Mets, replacing Tim Teufel. It's far better to embrace that team, with its rally caps and hotfoots and swagger and all its warts, than to remember what happened in subsequent years, when the organization tried to build a team around supposed phenom Gregg Jeffries, trading everyone from the 1986 team that didn't get along with Gregg Jeffries before realizing that it was Jeffries himself who was the problem.
But last night, with a sellout crowd at Shea, and the once again dominant Mets sporting 1986 uniforms, it was almost possible to delude myself for a short time that I was still 31 insteaf of 51, and that nothing really has changed.
(Photos from NY Mets Official Site)
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