The 1996 Mets were going to have the best young pitching in the game, they were going to have a reliable bullpen, they were going to have a clutch lineup, they were going to have spectacular fielding, they were going to win back New York. The 1996 Mets had all of these things. For one day.
The Mets had played as well as anyone the last two months of ’95, but a brutal first three months in the strike-shortened season kept the club from contending. And in 1996 Generation K was going to light up Shea!
Yet it was veteran Bobby Jones who took the hill for the opener against the Cardinals at Shea. He was pummeled. As the rain came down, so did the Cardinals hits. Old pal Willie McGee’s three-run homer sent Jones to the showers in the fourth trailing, 6-0.
But those 1996 Mets could hit. Home runs by Todd Hundley and new guy Bernard Gilkey cut the lead in half. When the Cardinals threatened to blow it open in the seventh, rookie shortstop Rey Ordenez took a relay throw in short left and threw from his knees on the soggy grass to get Royce Clayton at the plate. I was sitting about 50 feet awayin left field, my first opener with tickets down low. It was the most remarkable play I saw an infielder make at Shea, and I saw a lot of magic moments from Rey Rey—with his glove.
In the bottom of the inning Chris Jones singled in a run, and Lance Johnson had the first of a club-record 227 hits to make it a one-run game. Gilkey’s singled tied the game and a short fly scored the speedy Johnson to give the Mets the lead. It was a thrilling day at the park and seemed to portend great things to come for Dallas Green’s Mets. But that was the highlight. The pitching fell apart—young starters and the bullpen—while the field was rotten. Rookie Rey Rey was raw raw with 27 errors. Though the ’96 team hit like few Mets clubs before it, they were incapable of stopping the opponent;s offense. But what a day in the rain at Shea. It was an April Fool on all of us—it wound up being the Yankees’ year under former Mets skipper Joe Torre. The Mets would have to wait for a manager who could assemble a club from spare parts.