This website was intended to promote my Yankees book, but I’m posting this here because I thought people would be interested in learning more about me.

What do the 1986 Mets mean to me?

I was thinking about that this week, with it being “1986 Weekend” at Citi Field as the Mets face the Dodgers.

I was 11 in 1986 and at that point in my life, I was watching a lot of baseball, in the early part of an accumulation of obsessiveness that would lead me down the path that took me to the career I currently have. That team established early on that they were going to be a big deal. They were going to smash both baseballs and their opponents. They were going to win with pitchers who brought both power and finesse. I wasn’t the only one in New York who revered them. The team was a citywide obsession.

When I think of the 1986 Mets, I think of baseball dominance. They’re the last NL team to win at least 108 games in a season. They won 18 of 19 in one stretch, 19 of 24 in another. They won twice as many games as they lost against six different teams. They won the NL East by 21 ½ games.

But more than that, I think of inspiration. The 1986 Mets won games they had no business winning whatsoever. One favorite came on July 3 against the Astros and I like it because of its foreshadowing. The Mets trailed 5-3 in the bottom of the 10th inning, but scored three runs to win, the winning run scored by Ray Knight, who struck out four times in a row, but followed with a walk-off home run.

Another is a game against the Reds on July 22. I didn’t get to stay up to see the end of this one, because it went 14 innings, but I remember how the Mets tied it—when Keith Hernandez’s potential game-ending fly ball was muffed by Dave Parker, allowing two runs to score.

Then, there are the famous games, like Game 6 of the NLCS against the Astros. I have a funny story about that one. My mom made me go to Hebrew School (which I hated) in the middle of the game. But to show just how obsessed everyone was with the Mets that season, we were told that another class would join us for a group project. The group project turned out to be listening to the ninth inning on a transistor radio brought in by the other class’s teacher (funny note: among those in the class: New York Daily News Yankees beat writer Mark Feinsand). So that’s how I heard the Mets three-run comeback to tie the game in the ninth inning. They won in 16 excruciating innings and I was home in time for Billy Hatcher’s tying home run in the 14th and Jesse Orosco’s game-ending strikeout in the 16th.

Years later, I would use the audio tape of that ninth-inning rally as my psyche tape any time I had a big exam (like my high school entrance exam and the SATs). And it worked well in conjunction with Eye of the Tiger.

There’s also Game 6 of the World Series, where once again, the Mets trailed 5-3 in the 10th inning and were one out from defeat when they rallied to score three runs. I took a spot on the floor, in front of my dad and his friends (one of whom fell asleep!) When Bob Stanley began pitching to one, I said aloud “Wouldn’t it be funny if there was a balk or wild pitch or something crazy here” and one of my dad’s friends took that up saying “yeah, a wild pitch, a wild pitch.”

Sometimes you can see it coming.

Game 6 of the World Series is a personal obsession and I suppose that’s not surprising. I’ve read and written a lot about it. In fact, when they gave us access to a new newspaper database at work, my means of testing it was to see how many different newspaper stories I could find from the day after that game. I printed out a rather nice collection of about 40. As Hall-of-Fame honoree Bus Saidt wrote “I’m sitting here and I still don’t believe it.”

The Mets won the World Series two days later and I remember it modestly well, though not quite as well as some of the other games along the way. That season was about journey as much as it was about final destination.

The one other thing I think about sometimes with the 1986 Mets is Cherish the Moment. That was the theme of my graduation from P.S. 190, and when I struggled with the speech I had to give as one of the sixth grade class reps (okay, “valedictorian” if you want to call it that), my mom suggested talking about the 1986 Mets and cherishing their championship. I didn’t, but looking back, it was a pretty good idea.

My father has said to me many times that you have to appreciate every championship your team wins, because you never know when the next one may be. The players on the 1986 Mets were supposed to win a lot of championships, but along the paths of their respective lives, they cherished the moment a little too hard and a little too much. They made mistakes and did some really dumb things. They came close, but they never could reach the pinnacle. The Mets haven’t won a World Series since.

But I have no regrets or bad thoughts when I think of the 1986 Mets. I cherish every moment from that season like no other. It’s one that will remain fondly with me for the rest of my lifetime as a baseball fan.