The End of the World Series Program As We Knew It

OCTOBER 1974: Gerald Ford was two months into his abbreviated presidency. The Muhammad Ali-George Foreman boxing match in Kinshasa, Zaire -- known as the Rumble in the Jungle -- was set for Oct. 30. 

Earthquake, in Sensurround!, starring Charleton Heston, Ava Gardner, Geneviève Bujold and Lorne Greene would strike America's movie theaters in November.

But something else was afoot, something far more subtle and pernicious, but to those of us of a particular bent: horrifically depressing.

Meh, before meh was even a thing.

Fifty years ago this month, Major League Baseball ended the era of team-produced World Series programs, subbing out the often charming, definitely distinct and occasionally iconic locally-designed and produced magazines for more uniform, corporate and nationally available... blah.

Yes, this is entirely about judging these books by their covers. But you only get one chance to make a good first impression. 

MLB's first cover art was a globe stand where the Earth is replaced by a baseball.

Inspired. Clever. Ooh. In other words, not good.

Who's playing in this series? Doesn't matter. And it wouldn't matter again for about 20 years and even then, well... feh.

Less than a decade earlier and from the same spherical starting point, the Los Angeles Dodgers had produced this bit of Project Gemini-inspired whimsy:

Truly out of this world.

Now artistry was banished in favor of mass produced, mass market product. At least they were up front about it, more or less.

"'1974 World Series marks an all-time first,'" the publication self-referentially declared on its page 3. "Previously the two teams involved in a World Series each published a separate program. '1974 World Series' represents the first joint World Series program. It is designed to tell the story of this year's major league baseball season and features both the East and West Division champions of the two leagues."

Yay.

It's tempting to say at least some of this was in response to frugal Charles O. Finley, then-owner of the then-two time defending champion then-Oakland A's.

The famously skin-flinty Finley just they year before had substantially just repurposed the team's joint scorecard and yearbook as its World Series program,  slapping American League Champions on the top left, New York Mets beneath "Oakland A's" at the top right, and re-labeling the bottom right "1973 World Series Souvenir Scorecard & Program."

The post-season publication was otherwise almost indistinguishable from its regular season predecessor.

 The regular season program

The not-so-different World Series edition

To be fair, the only somewhat less frugal Mets had repackaged one of their regular season game programs as their National League Championship Series program.

But when it came to the World Series, they issued a new magazine with split screen cover, the left side featuring a pensive skipper Yogi Berra, the right a photo of predecessor Gil Hodges and the team riding down Manhattan's Broadway amid a ticker tape parade celebrating their 1969 championship. Now that program was special.

Retro-perspective

And retrospective

More likely, the shift from local pubs to national had to do with the money to be had from national advertisers, and from sales to a national audience to which the new mags could be pitched. 

It wasn't a change for the better. Not for the public and, to be honest, not for those of us who collect, as part of the fun of that hobby is collecting things that are scarce. 

Those home-spun programs spoke of the teams that created them, their personas and places they played. More importantly, they spoke to their fans. 

The new generation shifted the game program vibe from Main Street shop owner to chain store shopping mall: deliberately faceless, representative of any town and any team, one size fits all, or -- in reality -- one size fits none.

Just how generic?

In the early '80s, baseball pulled its own Finley maneuver, taking the artwork created for the 1980 World Series program, a contest between the Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals, and re-using it three years later for the three-way AAA World Series involving the Tidewater Tides, Portland Beavers and Denver Bears.

From the grand stage...

... to AAA

Yes, the 1980 program artwork got demoted, and they didn't have to change anything about the image to do it.

They never really got better. In fact, as the years wore on, they got worse, more generic and more forgettable even as the digital publishing revolution allowed for tighter deadlines, more content, more recent content, contestant-specific covers and inevitably, higher prices.

Along the way Major League Baseball gained dominion over all the other post-season playoff programs, plus that of its mid-Summer classic, the All Star Game.

Product. Product. Product.

Montreal? Texas? Who knows?

Recognizably Pujols and Big Papi

Nowadays, we're kind of back to where we started: with team-specific looks, but they're soul-less mass produced representations of what once was, some with cover advertisements, and sometimes ironically shadowed by special stadium-only versions attempting to restore some of that old-time collectible exclusivity.

The 2016 Series program,
Wrigley Field edition

The 2019 series program, 
brought to you by YouTubeTV

Handsome zombies. You can buy the one for this year's showdown between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers online, or just look at it for free. 

-- Follow me @paperboyarchive on the social network formerly known as Twitter

Mr. October's Hip Check Decks Dodgers in '78 Series

WE DRANK BEER and set off fireworks. We looked at skin mags and been bar-mitzvahed. That summer, I even had what you might call a girlfriend. We were two men in 8th grade and we were going to the World Series.

It was October, 1978, and the New York Yankees were playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. Again. A year earlier, the Bombers had beaten -- and humbled -- the Brooklyn fugitives, 4 games to 2. Reggie Jackson bashed three homers in the final game, burnishing his "Mr. October" legend.

A rematch of rivals, and
a fresh new hell for L.A.

Then, as now, the Dodgers were trying to avoid the sad distinction of losing back-to-back championships. And I was sure it was the Dodgers' year.

So sure, I put money on it, making schoolyard bets right before the morning bell at our Long Island junior high school. L.A. rewarded my faith by winning the first two games out on the coast. Let the taunting begin.

My pal -- we'll call him J.D. -- scored us tickets to game 4. I've no idea how. Visions of a sweep danced in my head. What we saw was a different side of Mr. October, a savvy, heads up move that changed the course of the Series.

But about J.D... He was one of those guys who'd hit puberty sooner than the rest of us, looked a little older (or maybe he was), and had enough self-assurance to pull off a beer buy at the local dairy drive-in without being questioned.

He was that kid who sold contraband out of his school locker, the one your mother warned you about. For reasons not clear 40 years later, I was his wingman. Maybe I was part of his shtick, the artifice, the innocent who made him look less conniving. Or maybe he was the devil on my shoulder, urging me to do bad things.

In our brief friendship, he got me into all kinds of vices that forestalled my irretrievable descent into nerd-dom. Along with the aforementioned beer, porn and gunpowder, he impressed upon me the importance of baseball and its crude street cousin, stickball.

Johnny Oates, Steve Garvey, Steve Yeager, Reggie Smith, Jerry Grote, Ron Cey,
Manny Mota, Dusty Baker, Davey Lopes, Rick Monday, Bill Russell, Don Sutton,
Terry Forster, Tommy John, Bill North, Bob Welch, Doug Rau, Vic Davalillo, Lee Lacy,
Rick Rhoden, Lance Rautzhan, Burt Hooton, Charlie Hough, Teddy Martinez and
Manager Tommy Lasorda

The tickets were a major coup, even if the seats were in the right-centerfield bleachers next to that eerie blacked out section that formed the batters' eye at Yankee Stadium. We'd get to the Bronx by Long Island Rail Road and then the creepy late '70s NYC subway.

We were 13.

Somehow, I convinced my folks we could do this. I think I told them J.D.'s big sister was our chaperone. I don't recall if she went or not. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

But about the series... As noted, the Dodgers had taken the first two games out in La La Land, closing out the second with an epic, David vs. Goliath confrontation between Reggie and Dodgers rookie pitcher Bob Welch. Momentum was on their side as the series moved east.

But, once in the Big Apple, Mighty Mo' ditched the Dodgers.

Third baseman Graig Nettles single-glovedly won game 3 for the Yanks. Though the final was 5-1, his stellar defense at the hot corner kept two to six L.A. runs off the scoreboard.

Ken Clay, Jay Johnstone, Ed Figueroa, Ron Guidry, Rich Gossage, Catfish Hunter,
Reggie Jackson, Sparky Lyle, Dick Tidrow, Mike Heath, Gary Thomasson, Thurman Munson,
Cliff Johnson, Chris Chambliss, Bucky Dent, Graig Nettles, Willie Randolph, Brian Doyle,
Jim Beattie, Paul Lindblad, Jim Spencer, Fred Stanley, Paul Blair, Lou Piniella,
Mickey Rivers, Roy White and Manager Bob Lemon

Game 4 was make or break for the Dodgers. J.D. and I made our way to the stadium and, after the obligatory souvenir stop, settled into our seats to watch the action. Tommy John started for Los Angeles, Ed Figueroa for New York.

After four scoreless frames, Dodgers right fielder Reggie Smith -- the other Reggie -- belted a three-run homer, bringing home Steve Yeager and Davey Lopes. 3-0, L.A. at the midpoint. That score held until the bottom of the sixth when, with one swing of his butt -- not his bat -- famous original Reggie changed everything.

With one out, John walked Roy White, then allowed singles to Thurman Munson and Jackson, the latter scoring White.

Then, with Munson on second and Reggie on first, Lou Piniella hit a line drive toward Dodgers shortstop Bill Russell who knocked the ball down instead of catching it. Jackson took a few steps off first base and stopped.

Russell picked up the live ball, stepped on second for the force on Reggie, then threw it to Steve Garvey at first to double-up Piniella. The ball never arrived.

Jackson, still in the baseline, swung his right hip into the throw, deflecting it past Garvey and into foul territory. Munson rounded third and scored.

Russell's throw caroms off Jackson's hip
and past the waiting Steve Garvey
(screen shot from an MLB Youtube video)

Meanwhile, Jackson retreated to first, bumping into Piniella as Dodgers Manager Tommy Lasorda raced out of the dugout to protest Mr. October's interference with the would-be double play.

His argument, though epic, was to no avail. The umps ruled Reggie out on the force at second, but not out of line.

Munson's run stood and the inning ended with the Dodgers clinging to a 3-2 lead. It wouldn't last. The Yanks would tie it in the 8th and then win it against Welch in the 10th. Once again, the Dodger rookie faced Jackson with the game on the line. This time Reggie singled to prolong a rally. Piniella delivered the kill shot.

Me and my pal made it home alive.

Though the series was tied at two games a piece, for the shaken and demoralized Dodgers, it was over. Los Angeles took a two-run lead early in game 5, only to see New York storm back with 12 unanswered runs and the 3-2 series lead.

The Yanks would take the championship two days later in Los Angeles, winning 7-2. Reggie took Welch deep in the seventh, a two-run bomb that sealed the deal. My lunch money now belonged to my creditors.

J.D. and I soon drifted apart. I don't recall a specific rupture, it was more like a widening rift. He got me hooked on baseball and then faded away.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

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

Darkness on the Edge of (Dodger) Town

BASEBALL'S TAJ MAHAL. It's meant to be a compliment.

The Silver Anniversary logo

When it opened in 1962, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles was the newest, nicest stadium in Major League Baseball, far outclassing San Francisco's wind-swept Candlestick Park completed just two years earlier. It was the privately-financed crown jewel of baseball's manifest destiny.

Searching for comparators, scribes turned to the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan's edifice on the Yamuna River in India, perhaps forgetting it was a tomb for the Mughal emperor's wife.

Or maybe they didn't forget, for Dodger Stadium too is something of a monument, a grave marker for the poor mostly Mexican-American neighborhoods wiped from existence during a decade-long battle between liberal and conservative forces over what to do with acres upon acres of hilly land north of downtown L.A., a place called Chavez Ravine.

Stadium construction wasn't how that story started, but that's how it ended, with an ironic coup de grace from the team that integrated baseball.

July 21, 1987, St. Louis Cardinals 6, L.A. Dodgers 1
Winning pitcher, Bob Forsch, Loser, Fernando Valenzuela

I knew none of this 30 years ago this week when I made my one and only visit to Dodger Stadium on the second stop of a two-week, six-ballpark road trip. (Read about stop one here.) Though it was the stadium's 25th anniversary season, the commemorative program and yearbook made no mention of what transpired in the years before the ballpark opened. It was a story they had no incentive to publicize or perpetuate and, to be fair, for which they were largely not responsible.

Much has been written since about what came to be known as the Battle of Chavez Ravine, including a new book published just this year. It went something like this:

The Joe Friday ticket stub.

After World War II, the U.S. embarked on a rebuilding spree, in Europe under the Marshall Plan and at home in the form of urban renewal, clearing of slums and blighted areas in favor of public housing for the nation's destitute.

Los Angeles was no exception and it was proposed that the Chavez Ravine area be redeveloped into something called Elysian Park Heights. The project would include two dozen high-rise apartment buildings and more than 160 two-story residences.

Though the communities there -- Palo Verde, Bishop and La Loma -- had homes, schools and at least one church, they weren't seen as worthy of preservation. The city moved by force of eminent domain to begin clearing those so-called slums of the people and their dwellings. But before Elysian Park Heights construction could begin, in 1953, newly-elected conservative Mayor Norris Poulson -- with a push from a group called Citizens Against Socialized Housing (or CASH) -- canceled the project, leaving a handful of hold-out families living in a largely bulldozed region where they'd remain at loggerheads with L.A. for most of that decade.

In 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers -- after trying and failing to secure a new stadium in their home borough -- won permission to move west with the Giants. They had no home, but Los Angeles had an idea. The city would trade its Chavez Ravine land to the team in exchange for a Dodger-owned downtown minor league ballpark confusingly called Wrigley Field.

Giants' shortstop Jose Uribe
meets Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia

While the Dodgers played the next four seasons at the Los Angeles Coliseum, a gigantic oval built for the 1932 Olympic games, the city forcibly removed the last remaining Chavez Ravine residents to make way for the stadium amid a public referendum and, unsurprisingly, litigation that stopped only at the U.S. Supreme Court door. Among the casualties, the Palo Verde Elementary School, reportedly paved over for a parking lot.

The result: a baseball-only ballpark built into a hillside, facing the distant San Gabriel mountains visible beyond the twin outfield pavilions and scoreboards.

Led by pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, in just their second season there the team swept the American League Champion New York Yankees to win the World Series before about 56,000 home town fans. They'd win the series in '65, '81 and '88 too.

Along the way, the team that gave America Jackie Robinson, its first black superstar, also gave the nation its first Japanese superstar, Hideo Nomo and -- perhaps in a bit of karmic payback -- its first Mexican one, Fernando Valenzuela.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the second part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

FernandoMania Meets the Mets

IN THE SPRING OF 1981 -- nearly 20 years after BeatleMania and and an almost equal number before basketball fans experienced LinSanity -- a chubby, Mexican screwball-tossing phenom named Fernando Valenzuela arrived at New York's Shea Stadium with his Los Angeles Dodgers entourage and the press corps trailing in their wake.

From the '81 Dodgers yearbook

Valenzuela, 20, had been a late season call-up as the Dodgers unsuccessfully battled the Houston Astros for the NL West title the prior season. In 17.2 innings, he'd fanned 16 batters, won two games and saved another.

The Dodgers made him their opening day starter for the 1981 campaign.

Fernando responded by out-pitching Astros 20-game winner Joe Niekro and silencing the division title holders, 2-0. It was only the beginning.

Five days later, he'd defeat the San Francisco Giants and their ace, Vida Blue, 7-1. Next, came a 2-0 shut out of the San Diego Padres, besting veteran Rick Wise and then a complete game 1-0 whitewashing of the Astros and ex-Dodger hurler Don Sutton.

On April 27, Valenzuela pitched another 9-inning shut out. One month into the baseball season, he was 5-0, had thrown five complete games and had four shutouts. Over his first 45 innings pitched, he'd allowed just a single run.

A star was born. It was Fernandomania and it was headed east: first to Montreal, where he beat the Expos and then on to New York to face the Mets.

There was something
in the air that night...

As good as the Dodgers were, already 18-8 and in ensconced first place, the Mets weren't. They were just 7-14 and though they'd beaten the Giants, 3-2, snapping a two-game losing streak on May 7, they'd done so before just 5,653 fans.

Friday, May 8, 1981 -- already 35 years ago -- would be different. A crowd of 39,848 would make it so.

As the Swedish pop group Abba once sang, there was something in the air that night.

To be sure, although they were in the midst of a losing season, their fifth in a string of seven, the Mets roster was already dotted with players who would play key roles in their eventual emergence as an NL power, some by staying and some by being traded away. Among the retainees were outfielder Mookie Wilson, infielder Wally Backman, reliever Jesse Orosco and the briefly exiled Lee Mazzilli. Those destined to be dealt away included infielder Hubie Brooks, relievers Neil Allen and Jeff Reardon and that night's starter, Mike Scott.

Not yet the Cy Young Award winner and Mets' tormentor he'd become just five years later, Scott, 26, pitched valiantly for seven innings. His efforts would be immediately undermined by shortstop du jour Bob Bailor, whose first inning error led to an unearned run. It would be all Valenzuela would need, but not before the Mets would mount their greatest threat.

Phenoms and firemen

Mazzilli led off the Mets half of the first with a hit and then stole second. Bailor struck out, but catcher John Stearns walked as did right fielder Joel Youngblood, loading the bases for slugger Dave Kingman.

Shea Stadium buzzed with anticipation. The underdogs had the phenom in a jam.

Over the course of his 16-year career, the man called Kong played for seven big league teams, clouted 442 home runs and struck out 1,816 times. Valenzuela would fan him three times that night. But not this time.

The often all-or-nothing Kingman made contact of the worst kind, grounding into a 5-4-3 double play extinguishing the Mets' rally. It was as close as they'd get to a run.

Valenzuela scattered seven hits and four walks while striking out 11 over his now customary nine innings for yet another shutout. His record: a spotless 7-0. Scott would yield just four hits, walk one and strike out six, but take the loss on that unearned run, dropping him to 1-3 on the young season. Jeff Reardon held L.A. bats in check for the final two frames.

Along the way, Mets manager Joe Torre was ejected.

Valenzuela would win just six more games in a season remembered mostly for a mid-year strike that cleaved the schedule, produced first-half and second-half division winners which played each other for the right to duel in the league championship series.

The scorecard.

The Dodgers would go on to defeat the New York Yankees in the World Series. Fernando, though his record sagged to 13-7, won the NL's Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards.

Scott, traded to the Astros in December 1982 for outfielder Danny Heep, would blossom into a dominating pitcher and claim his own Cy Young and NLCS most valuable player honors in 1986, though that year's championship would be won by his former team, the Mets.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive