METS MOMENT #1: Danny Napoleon’s Triple.
April 23, 1964, Giants winning 7-5 going into the ninth. Till then, every game against the Giants ends with a fly ball into Jesus Alou’s glove. Bases loaded. I smash a line-drive at Alou. Bounces off his glove. Three runs score. Miracle.
Effect on Mets history: First time God notices us. Gets out his book. Writes, “I like Danny Napoleon. I like the Mets. I like October, 1969.”
METS MOMENT #2: Bobby Bonilla and Ricky Henderson play cards in the clubhouse. October 19, 1999. Mets vs. Atlanta for right to go to the World Series. The sixth and deciding game of the most exciting playoffs ever. The night before, Ventura hits his “grand single.” Now the game is in the 11th. Piazza has rallied the team. The fans are wild. Even the old vet, Orel Hershiser, can’t sit. This is a game that, because of its awful outcome (Kenny Rogers walks the winning run in), brings grown Mets fans to tears. This is the team, not the one in 2000, that should go to the World Series and beats the Yankees. And what are Mets Rickey Henderson and Bobby Bonilla doing as baseball history unfolds? Playing cards in the dressing room.
Effect on Mets (and baseball) history: Henderson and Bonilla prove that players give a shit only about themselves. That this is not a game, but a mercenary enterprise, that major leaguers have no clue that fans pay their salaries, that money and animal-growth hormones and chicks and booze and perks and fancy cars melt their brains into objects roughly the size of steroid-shriveled testes.
METS MOMENT #3: Clemens Throws Bat at Piazza. October 22, 2000, game 2 of the first subway series in 34 years. Clemens is facing Piazza for the first time since drilling a fastball into the catcher’s brain, causing him to miss the Allstar game. In the long-awaited rematch, Piazza breaks his bat fouling off a pitch. The barrel of the bat flies towards Clemens’s feet at the pitcher’s mound. Clemens picks up the broken barrel and heaves it at Piazza running up the first base line. An obvious challenge. The wimpy Mets run from the dugout, but the act is purely symbolic. No punches are thrown. They just don’t care enough.
Effect on Mets history: Juiceless Mets lose the subway series four games to one.
METS MOMENT #4: Bobby Valentine sneaks into the dugout in Groucho Marx disguise.
June 9, 1999, in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays, Bobby Valentine, after being ejected from the game, dons a fake mustache and sunglasses and sneaks back into the dugout, violating about twenty rules in the official baseball handbook. The act is at once adolescent, yet so deliriously weird, that no one—baseball officials who eventually suspend Valentine, or Mets brass, who keep their disapproving lips tightly closed—know what to make of it.
Effect on Mets history: Valentine proves he’s the anti-Gil Hodges (and the anti-Joe Torre). His behavior spurs the Mets to their most exciting season since 1986.
METS MOMENT #5: John Rocker slams the Mets and the #7 Train. In a January, 2000 issue of Sports Illustrated, John Rocker, who has been rocked by the Mets in the 1999 playoffs, says about New York: “Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark, looking like you’re riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.” Naturally, this causes controversy and Rocker eventually apologizes (an act he later rescindes). Rocker returns to Shea on June 27, 2000, in front of 46,987 fans screaming for his blood (including Recharger The Dog). His videotaped apology is shown on Shea Stadium’s 26-foot-tall screen in left-center field before the start of the game. The video is loudly booed. Signs stating “NYC Says No to RocKKKer” and “Rocker’s a Bigot” are seen throughout Shea. In the 8th inning, Rocker comes in to replace Jason Marquis on the mound. He is loudly booed and objects are thrown, a large chant of “ASSHOLE, ASSHOLE!” begins. Rocker strikes out Robin Ventura, retires Todd Zeile on a grounder to short, and gets Jay Payton to ground out to third. The Braves go on to win, 6-4.
Effect on Met history: a sad omen for the World Series. Under pressure, the Mets are wussies.
METS MOMENT #6: The ball off the wall. September 20th, 1973.
Mets have played well in early September to get themselves back in the race but going into the week are still in 4th place 2.5 games behind the first place Pirates. There has been a weird schedule this year with the Mets playing the Pirates five straight days on Monday through Friday, with the first two games in Pittsburgh and the last three at Shea. After that, the Mets have only 8 scheduled games left so most observers think they have to win 4 out of 5 games or their season is likely over. To make matters worse, the Mets lose the Monday game 10-3 with Seaver getting bombed pitching on three days rest after he pitches 11 innings to beat the Phillies the previous Thursday. So the Mets need to win 4 straight. They hold on to win 6-5 on Tuesday and then win at Shea on Wednesday 7-3 with George Stone (the unsung hero of 1973) pitching.
On Thursday, September 20th, Koosman is pitching against Jim Rooker. Pirates score a run in the 4th but Mets tie it in the 6th. Then the Pirates score in the 7th but the Mets tie it in the 8th. Then both teams score a run in the 9th and the game goes into extra innings. Ray Sedecki pitches scoreless innings in the 10th, 11th, and 12th, but Richie Zisk hits a single in the 13th. Then Dave Augustine hits a deep fly to left which literally hits the exact top of the fence. A half inch higher and it will be a homer. A half inch lower and it falls to the ground and Zisk scores easily. Instead it bounces back on a fly to Cleon Jones. Some folks assume Harrelson and Grote completed the play but they have left the game for pinch hitters. Jones makes a perfect throw to Rusty Garrett who makes a perfect relay to Ron Hodges to tag Zisk out at the plate.
Hodges gets a bloop single in the bottom of the 13th to drive in the winning run and pull the Mets within a half game of the Pirates. On Friday, Seaver beats the Pirates 10-2 and the Mets finally reach .500 (77-77) which move them into 1st place by a half game in that crazy year.
The Mets then travel to St. Louis for an afternoon game on the national Game of the Week and Matlack pitches a shutout 2-0. They win Sunday as well in St. Louis, split two games with Montreal, and win 2 of 3 against the Cubbies with the last game cancelled but meaningless since the Mets have a 1.5 game lead. By the way, on the last Friday of the season, it is still mathematically possible that there can be a five way tie for first in the NL East with all five teams having an 80-82 record.
Effect on Mets History: Mets clinch the East, defeat the Reds for the pennant, then come this close to beating Oakland in the World Series. This, not the 1967 Red Sox, is the real impossible dream team. It also makes famous the late Tug McGraw’s rallying cry “Ya gotta believe!” (actually, when McGraw yelled this, he was mocking team owner M. Donald Grant).
Effect on Mets history: Mets climb from last to first place.
METS MOMENT #7: Buddy Harrelson’s fight with Pete Rose.
October 8, 1973. In the top of the fifth Pete Rose slide hard into Bud Harrelson as he tries (unsuccessfully) to break up a double play. Rose, a macho troglodyte offended that Harrelson has shoved the ball in his mouth, attacks the tiny shortstop. Both teams pour onto the field. Chaos ensues, marked by particularly vigorous efforts from Cincinnati’s excitable relief pitcher Pedro Borbon. Order is restored, but the Shea Stadium crowd showers Rose with debris when he returns to his left field position in the bottom of the fifth. Cincinnati manager Sparky Anderson pulls his team off the field until Tom Seaver and several other Mets players go out on the field and persuade the fans to stop the rowdiness.
Effect on Mets history: The cuddly Mets show they won’t put up with frat boy bullying. They beat the Reds, advance to the series.
Effect on world history: Vice President Spiro Agnew, watching the game from Washington D.C., and under federal investigation, realizes that like Pete Rose, his bully days are over. He resigns (first VP to resign). Gerald Ford takes his place. Congress, no longer terrified of having Agnew as president, proceeds full speed with Nixon impeachment. A year later, Nixon resigns. Ford becomes president. A year later, Vietnam War ends. Thanks Buddy Harrelson!
METS MOMENT #8: Swoboda’s catch: October 15, 1969.
Long-time Mets fan favorite Ron Swoboda, not known for his fielding, in the 9th inning of game 4, makes a diving, tumbling catch of Brooks Robinson’s sinking line drive, preventing the Orioles from scoring more than one run. Some rank Swoboda’s catch as the greatest in Series history. No one who has seen it believes it. Swoboda catches the ball with his glove facing down, defying every law of physics from Newton to Einstein.
Effect on Mets history: Davey Johnson states that after the catch, he realizes God is on Mets side (the shoe polish incident in the final game proved him right).