Dynasty Denied -- The Stunning Fall of the 1988 Mets

DAVID CONE WAS UNBEATABLE. Rookie Gregg Jefferies was knocking the cover off the ball. The 1988 New York Mets came roaring down the stretch, winning 24 of their last 32 games and opening a 15-game lead over the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates.

Clockwise from top left: stars Keith Hernandez,
Kevin McReynolds, Howard Johnson, Gary Carter,
Darryl Strawberry and Dwight  Gooden

Seemingly invincible, they ran away with the National League East title.

This after a calamitous '87 season that started with ace Dwight Gooden checking into rehab and effectively ended with St. Louis Cardinal Terry Pendleton's devastating home run off Roger McDowell, a blown Sept. 11 save that kept them from moving within a half-game of the first place Cards.

They were playing like the squad that won the 1986 World Series.

The swagger was back.

Their 100-60 record was the best in the league. Armed with good pitching, good hitting and a rich farm system, the Mets had the makings of a dynasty.

The sky was the limit and then they flamed out, done in by hype, hubris and human frailty.

They wouldn't fully recover for a decade.

Resurrection

Their '88 starters included the in-recovery Gooden, who went 18-9, and Ron Darling, who won a career best 17 games. Cone, a reliever at the season's outset, joined the rotation in May when veteran Rick Aguilera got hurt. He went 20-3, winning his last eight decisions. The streak tied Tom' Seaver's franchise record.

Lineup mainstays Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez both had subpar years, but they no longer needed to lead the way as they did two years earlier. Outfielders Darryl Strawberry and Kevin McReynolds combined for 66 homers and 200 runs batted in. Third baseman Howard Johnson, who brightened '87 with 36 taters and 32 stolen bases, bashed 24 more round-trippers while swiping 23 more sacks.

Light-hitting, good fielding Kevin Elster supplanted World Series shortstop Rafael Santana. Fellow farm system grads Dave Magadan and Keith Miller also vied for infield playing time. Reliever Randy Myers came up from AAA to stay in '87. A year later, he was a dominant 26-save closer. Highly-touted pitching prospect David West and others awaited their chance.

Out of the yearbook -- The almost great Mets of 1988, orange, white and blue all over. 

And then there was Jefferies, a switch-hitting 21-year-old prodigy -- twice named Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year -- who arrived Aug. 28 and immediately began spraying line drives to all fields. In 29 games, he batted .321 with 35 hits in 109 at bats. Nearly half of them went for extra bases: eight doubles, two triples, six homers. He struck out 10 times, walked eight, scored 19 runs and drove in 17 more.

He ignited the Mets, who were 76-53 and 6 1/2 games ahead of Pittsburgh before his recall. They finished 40 games over .500, compiling the second best winning percentage in franchise history. They're still the last Mets team to win 100 games.

Conceit

The '88 Mets seemed to restore order to a universe knocked helter skelter by the prior year's disappointment, if one can call winning 92 games and finishing three games out of first disappointing. Five years earlier, they'd endured the last of six straight last- or next-to-last place finishes while new owners revamped the farm system and rebuilt the parent club.

They won 90 games in 1984, 98 the next and in 1986 a championship. Being contenders was a given. Titles were expected now. And, for a while, every move paid off. They could do no wrong. Aforitiori, if they made a move, it was bound to be right. Right?

Securing their second division title in three years, New York turned to the NL championship series where they'd face the West Division-winning Los Angeles Dodgers. The Mets had taken 10 of 11* from the ex-Brooklynites during the season.

What could possibly go wrong? Plenty.

The phenomenal Dr. K, Dwight Gooden, from the 1988 Mets yearbook

Before game 1 on Oct. 4, the Los Angeles Times published an article quoting Strawberry as saying he'd like to play for the Dodgers someday.

That evening, Gooden faced off against Orel Hershiser, who'd tossed a record 59 consecutive scoreless innings that summer. The Mets ace outdueled his counterpart, yielding just four hits and striking out 10, but the Dodgers scratched out two runs and led 2-0 going into the ninth.

Jefferies led off the top of the last with a hit, a Hernandez groundout moved him to second. Strawberry's double brought him home. Exit Hershiser. Reliever Jay Howell walked McReynolds, then fanned Johnson. With any other man due up, the Dodgers might have been home free, but the next man was Carter.

Two years earlier, he refused to be the final out of the '86 Series, keying a legendary extra-inning, two-out game 6 comeback. Now the future Hall of Fame catcher doubled off LA's reliever, scoring Strawberry and McReynolds, giving the Mets a 3-2 lead. Myers threw two scoreless frames for the win. Howell took the loss.

Cone, who once aspired to be a sportswriter, penned a New York Daily News column published the next day comparing the flame-throwing Myers with the curve-ball-reliant Howell, whom he likened to a high school pitcher. The Dodgers, who'd won 94 games in the regular season, responded by ripping Cone for five runs, driving him from Game 2 after just two innings. With a 6-3 win, LA evened the series.

When two was greater than five.

Game 3, in New York, brought a measure of revenge. Stifled by Hershiser for five innings, the Mets battled back to tie the game in the sixth, 3-3.

LA broke that tie with a bases-loaded walk in the 8th, then handed the ball to Howell. As the Dodger closer ran the count full on McReynolds, Mets manager Davey Johnson asked umpires to inspect the pitcher's glove.

Pine tar.

Howell was summarily ejected and later suspended. The Mets erupted for five runs off a string of Los Angeles relievers then brought in Cone to close it out. The chastened author set his opponents down in order.

New York now led the series, 2-1, with Dwight Gooden -- alias Dr. K -- on tap for game four.

Failure

The doctor delivered, holding the Dodgers to two runs on three hits while the Mets scored four, two on back-to-back homers by Strawberry and McReynolds.

Johnson allowed his ace to pitch into the ninth where Gooden walked centerfielder John Shelby, then grooved his first pitch to Mike Scioscia. The LA catcher belted it into the NY bullpen. The Mets' potential 3-1 series lead vanished. Shea Stadium fell silent.

Scioscia, interviewed years later, said he could hear his cleats crunching the infield dirt as he rounded the bases.

Like Pendleton's blast off McDowell a year earlier, the Gothamites were stricken. The Mets reliever would re-live the horror again in the 12th, yielding a two-out homer to outfielder Kirk Gibson. LA 5, NY 4. Though the Mets loaded the bases in the bottom of the frame, Hershiser came out of the pen to lock it down, tying the series at two wins a piece.

Los Angeles carried its momentum into game 5, thwacking their onetime prospect, Sid Fernandez, for six runs in four innings en route to a 7-4 win. New York had dropped two of three at home. They returned to LA facing elimination.

Pitcher, author, provocateur
from the '88 NLCS program, Mets' edition

There, backed by McReynold's four hits and three RBIs, Cone tossed a complete game gem, winning a stay of execution. He allowed just one run on five hits, struck out six and walked three.

Game 7 pitted Hershiser against Darling. The Mets starter didn't make it past the second, surrendering six runs -- four earned -- on six hits. Hershiser scattered five hits and two walks en route to a complete game shutout.

By the time he'd frozen the Mets' last batter, Howard Johnson, with a late breaking curve, the outcome had long been clear. The Mets' season was over. Though it wasn't immediately clear, so too was their era of dominance. There would be no dynasty.

LA won the World Series, beating the Oakland A's, 4 games to 1. Kirk Gibson was named NL MVP. Strawberry finished second. McReynolds, third.

Hershiser won the NL Cy Young Award. Cincinnati Reds hurler Danny Jackson was runner-up. Cone came in third.

1989 and Thereafter

From 1984 through 1988, New York had had the best overall record in the majors but little to show for it. Efforts grand and small to retool and reset failed to slow the decline. It started gradually in 1989 and accelerated to full-blown catastrophe in 1993 when they lost more than 100 games for the first time in 26 years.

Reigning American League Cy Young winner Frank Viola was acquired for Aguilera, West and minor leaguer Kevin Tapani. Fan favorites Wally Backman, Mookie Wilson, Len Dykstra and McDowell were traded away. Their replacements underwhelmed, as did Jefferies.

In his first full season, the wunderkind struggled to hit just .258 after replacing Backman at second base and earned the lasting enmity of teammates who believed he should have been sent back to the minors. In time, he'd fulfill some of his immense promise, but mostly as an ex-Met.

Wonderboy Gregg Jefferies,
from the Mets' edition '88 NLCS program

Hernandez and Carter were let go at season's end. Davey Johnson was retained, but not for long. With the team sputtering at 20-22, he was fired midway through 1990. They played better for his replacement, longtime player and coach Bud Harrelson, but only well enough to finish second for the fifth time in seven years. It would be their last winning season until 1997.

In November 1990, Strawberry departed for the Dodgers as he'd said he would. A year later, Jefferies, McReynolds and Miller were traded to the Kansas City Royals for one-time Cy Young winner Bret Saberhagen and utility man Bill Pecota. Soon after, Viola signed with the Boston Red Sox.

Cone, who'd solidified his ace status by leading the NL in strikeouts in 1990 and 1991, was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in August 1992, and helped them win the World Series. He won the AL Cy Young Award in 1994 as a member of the Royals. In 1998, 10 years after he burst to prominence, he won 20 games again, this time as a New York Yankee.

He returned to the Mets for a cup of coffee in 2003, then called it career.

* An earlier version of this entry said it was 11 of 12.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Tom Terrific and the Turning Point 1983 Mets

WHEN TOM SEAVER came back to New York Mets 35 years ago, he might as well have stepped into a time machine, the Guardian of Forever or that strange void connecting a World War II Navy yard with the '84 Nevada desert in The Philadelphia Experiment.

The '83 Mets were an infinite loop, a continuum through which one could see the team's amazing past, its sparkling future and the shabby but significant season to come. Even though they'd come nowhere near the post-season, a dozen members of that year's squad had played -- or would play -- for one of the Mets three pennant winners, 1969, 1973 or 1986.

Top: John Stearns, left fielder George Foster
and fireman Neil Allen. Bottom: Tom Seaver,
Mookie Wilson and slugger Dave Kingman

They were a team in transition. Their roster, a mashup of once and future heroes as new owners worked to repair the Mets' relationship with their fans while buying time to build a winner.

Seaver had left the Amazin's at the start of their epic fall in a lopsided one-for-four trade with the Cincinnati Reds. That deal, and the concurrent exchange of their biggest home run hitter for lesser players, came to be known as the Midnight Massacre, June 15, 1977.

From 1969 to 1976 the Mets had been a slightly better than average team occasionally kissed by the miraculous. Riding the arms of Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Nolan Ryan and others, they won the '69 World Series by coaxing just enough offense from Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee and a cast of platoon players managed by Gil Hodges with pre-sabermetric brilliance.

Hodges had a fatal heart attack just before the 1972 season. Three days later, the team acquired clutch-hitting Rusty Staub from the Montreal Expos. Seaver, Koosman, Staub and the Mets eeeked out a second National League pennant in 1973, aided by reliever Tug McGraw, hurler Jon Matlack who'd been '72 NL Rookie of the Year, shortstop Bud Harrelson and, in his last big league campaign, Willie Mays.

But the '73 flag was a fluke, a happy accident that allowed management to overlook some of the shortcomings laid bare the next year when the Mets went 71-91, their first losing season since '68. The retooling began that winter. McGraw was sent to the Philadelphia Phillies for catcher John Stearns. Slugger Dave "King Kong" Kingman was acquired from the San Francisco Giants.

A '75 Mets sensation, Kingman hammered a club-record 36 homers. Staub drove in a club-record 105 runs. Tom Terrific went 22-9, struck out 243 batters, and won his third Cy Young Award. Shea Stadium attendance surpassed 1.73 million, but the Amazin's went just 82-80, costing Manager Yogi Berra and replacement Roy McMillan their jobs.

With free agency dawning, the Mets sent Staub to the Detroit Tigers, making room for rookie Mike Vail, who flopped. The '76 season would be about the lefties in Seaver's shadow. Koosman won 21 games, Matlack 17. Kingman extended his single-season home run record to 37 and the Amazin's won 86 games, their second-most in franchise history.

Darkness descends

Seaver -- so synonymous with the team he was nicknamed The Franchise -- had a hard luck year, going a modest 14-11. It would be his last winning season with the Mets.

Seaver, the 1983 version: older, better paid
and out to prove he could still bring it.

Though Tom Terrific had inked a three-year deal at $225,000 per annum, less accomplished players were getting more on the open market, prompting him to seek an adjustment. Kingman too sought a raise. He was making just $95,000.

Seaver and the Mets struck a mid-season deal, but withering criticism from sports columnist Dick Young prompted him to spurn it and demand a trade. He got one. So did Kingman. The foundering post-Massacre Mets finished last.

Matlack was dealt to the Texas Rangers in a four-way swap that left them with less than they gave up. The Cellar Dwelling of '78 was followed by the trade of an unhappy 3-15 Koosman to the Minnesota Twins for minor leaguer Jesse Orosco.

Finally, after a third straight last place finish in '79,  the Mets were sold to new owners promising fans, "The Magic is Back."

But how to make it so?

Attendance had sagged to 788,905, nearly a million less than in 1975, the halcyon year of Rusty, Kong and Tom Terrific. Seeking to rekindle lost good will, that's where they ultimately went.

Good will hunting

Neil Allen emerged from the wreckage of '79 as the Mets fireman and saved 22 games in 1980. That year, the Mets briefly flirted with .500 before settling to fifth place. Meanwhile, Kingman -- now a Chicago Cub -- was routinely torching his old team, burning them for 20 homers after his trade, three of them off Allen including a devastating grand slam. The '80 Mets hit just 61 as a team.

Kingman and Staub in '81.
The boys were back in town.

To boost their own power and halt the rampaging Kong, the Mets reacquired the slugger. They also signed Staub, a free agent. Rookies Mookie Wilson and Hubie Brooks stayed with the team all year but the Mets still finished an aggregate fifth in the strike-split 1981 season.

Eighty-two saw another power bat acquisition, former NL Most Valuable Player George Foster, fail spectacularly as he hit just .247, with 13 homers, 70 runs batted in. Kingman led the league with 37 homers, but hit just .204.

Again, they finished last.

But Orosco, the kid acquired for Koosman, finally stuck in the majors and scrappy young infielder Wally Backman saw significant playing time. Plus, the Mets had something going down on the farm.

In 1980, they'd drafted outfielder Darryl Strawberry. In '82, they took pitcher Dwight Gooden and traded fallen star Lee Mazzilli to the Texas Rangers for pitchers Ron Darling and Walt Terrell. Now, those kids were on their way.

Things would take a dramatic turn in 1983, starting with Seaver's return from the Reds.

He'd had a bad year in 1982, the worst of his career, going 5-13 for last-place Cincinnati. His re-acquisition was more about righting a grievous wrong than it was about getting results. The biggest, most consequential roster moves were still to come.

On April 5, 1983, Seaver started the season opener. His catcher was Ron Hodges, who'd come up with the Mets as a rookie during the pennant-winning '73 season. Through all of the changes and almost never a starter, he'd remained as did another '73 rookie, pitcher Craig Swan.

In May, the Mets recalled Strawberry from the minors, anointed him the future of the franchise and installed him in right field, displacing placeholder Danny Heep.

They weren't done.

From the '83 yearbook, a rhapsody in blue and orange.
The Mets ended the year a better team than the one pictured here.

Early in the year, Allen came undone, struggling on and off the field. On June 15, 1983 -- six years after the massacre -- he and pitching prospect Rick Ownbey were traded to the St. Louis Cardinals for first baseman Keith Hernandez, a perennial gold glove winner and co-MVP in 1979.

Turning the corner

His acquisition fortified the Mets lineup and forced Kingman to the bench. Bolstered by Hernandez and Strawberry -- who won Rookie of the Year honors -- Foster bounced back with a 28 homer, 90-RBI campaign. Staub set a record with eight consecutive pinch hits and 25 pinch runs batted in. Orosco replaced Allen as closer, saved 17 games, won 13 others and finished third in Cy Young balloting. Reliever Doug Sisk joined the bullpen. Pitching prospect Ron Darling came up in September.

Seaver started 34 games, pitched 231 innings and went 9-14, proving he wasn't finished. But, at season's end, they were still a last place club. That would change with Gooden's arrival the next year, by which time Seaver would be gone again.

That winter, in a calculated risk, the Mets had left their icon unprotected from the free agent compensation pool and he was claimed by the Chicago White Sox. In their uniform he won his 300th game on the mound at Yankee Stadium two years later.

Gooden would pick up the mantle as the team's best pitcher, winning 17 games, striking out 276 hitters and winning Rookie of the Year. The new-look Mets -- Hernandez, Strawberry, Foster, Wilson, Brooks, Backman, Darling, Terrell, Orosco, Sisk and Heep -- went 90-72, finishing second in the NL East behind the Chicago Cubs.

Boosted by the acquisition of catcher Gary Carter from the Expos, two years later, they'd reach the World Series. So would Seaver, as a member of the Boston Red Sox, though a knee injury would keep him from pitching. The Mets prevailed in seven games.
_____________________________

This entry is dedicated to the great Rusty Staub, who died on March 29, 2018 while it was still being written. Staub came through in the clutch on and off the field. His charitable causes, feeding the hungry and caring for the widows and orphans of first responders, hopefully will live on forever.  

For more information, visit www.rustystaubfoundation.com and www.answerthecall.org

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Of Doc and Darryl

DARRYL AND DOC. Doc and Darryl.

Demigods and heroes upon which we Mets fans of the 1980s projected all of our hopes and dreams. Darryl Strawberry, who arrived first in 1983, was going to be part Ted Williams, part Willie Mays, a colossus whose silky swing propelled baseballs into orbit. Twenty-six in his freshman year, to go along with 74 runs batted in and a .257 average.

Naturally, he was the National League's Rookie of the Year.

Oct. 18, 1988

Teen-aged Dwight Gooden arrived the next spring, firing fastballs and spinning curves en route to 17 wins, 276 strike-outs and the Mets' second straight Rookie of the Year award. The next year he was even better, 24-4, 268ks, 1.53 ERA and the N.L. Cy Young Award.

The following year, -- 1986 --amid the Mets' first world championship since their miracle of 1969, it all began to come apart. 

When this New York Magazine issue hit the stands in October 1988, the man called Dr. K. had already been through drug rehab and the Mets had returned to the playoffs after a 100-win season, during which they swept their National League Championship Series opponents, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Unimaginably, unknowably, the end was near. The Dodgers pushed past the Mets, taking the series in seven games, on their way to humbling the Oakland A's. Kirk Gibson was the hero that year, not Darryl, not Doc, not anyone who wore a New York uniform. The team wouldn't return to the post-season again for 11 years, by which time Strawberry and Gooden -- battling drugs and other ailments -- had gone on to other glories, ironically, with the New York Yankees.

Tonight, they're the subject of an ESPN 30-for-30 documentary. 

What might have been. What could have been.

Follow me on twitter @paperboyarchive.