It has been a long time since I put together a post of any appreciable depth on this site. To state the facts, I have authored, co-authored, or co-edited 11 books on the Mets. I have been to perhaps 500 Mets games. I attended every Mets postseason game played between 1988 NLCS and the 2015 NLDS (some two dozen games). I listened to thousands of broadcasts on various radio stations with numerous announcers. I watched an uncountable number of games on free, pay, and network TV. Plus highlight films during rain delays and other interludes. Yet at some point in 2020 I lost my excitement about it all. I figured I’d lose my sex drive some day, but my Mets drive? Inconceivable!
Maybe 2020 was a bad barometer. There was so much more to worry about than baseball. I did not watch a single Mets at bat in 2020. I recovered during the Division Series and uneasily watched the Dodgers win their first title since my playoff string started. Yet I was repulsed by Justin Turner, one of my favorite Mets of the bad teen teams, celebrating despite knowing he had the contagious virus that has been fatal half a million times.
And then MLB decommissioned the minor league team I’d spent five years working for on game days. In 2019 the Class A Tri-City Valley Cats were told they would survive the New York-Penn League purge. Later, in MLB’s cruel and infinite wisdom, the course was changed. Troy was ditched almost 138 years after the National League tossed out the Troy Haymakers for the crime of being in not a metropolitan enough area. Ask not for whom the bell tolls…
Al Yellon, who curates my favorite non-Mets site, Bleed Cubbie Blue (and whom I have worked with through two editions of Cubs by the Numbers, along with uniform number savant Kasey Ignarski), had a link to a Mets-Cubs game on Chicago’s WGN-TV from 1981. I am not sure why I clicked on the link, but it immediately became apparent that I had attended this game at Shea. And over nine one-inning sittings this winter, Joe Torre’s team—in the final week of his seemingly endless, childhood-crushing regime—brought me back to the fold 40 years later.
I am not going to bore you with the specifics of my teen angst, but sometime during the 1981 baseball strike, I went off the skids. A reckless accident cost me the privilege to drive just weeks after getting my license. Granted, the car was a yellow AMC Pacer. You could not find an uglier, more girl-repelling car if you tried. But it was mine. And I blew it. Not the last mistake I made that year, either.
Maybe this was why my brother, Michael, took me to two Mets game during the final weeks of the strike-marred ’81 season. Mike—along with his twin, Mark—had graduated from Northwestern, outside Chicago. They fell hard for the Cubs and day games, for which I can’t blame them. When Mike got married in Chicago in 1982 I went to Wrigley Field for the first time. Friday afternoon baseball! I even bought a light blue road jersey—no name—for $15. After sneaking a couple of Old Styles, I pondered the plausibility of stowing away in the Wrigley catacombs, living off old hot dog rolls and rock-hard pretzels, spending the winter under a blanket that once kept Bronko Nagurski less frigid on the sidelines.
But back in 1981, on the final Wednesday night of the year, the Cubs and Mets helped bring me back after the strike that rocked my world and shook my faith in baseball. By the night of September 30, 1981, the Mets had already seen their slim postseason hopes snuffed in the split season that screwed far worthier teams than the Mets out of a place in the expanded playoffs. That weekend at Shea the Montreal Expos would clinch the only postseason berth in a Canadian baseball saga even more star-crossed than the Mets have managed in America.
There were 4,473 on hand, the third-smallest Shea crowd of a season with barely 700,000 fans in a year where almost a third of the games were erased for no apparent gain by either warring side. (The next day against the Cubs, October 1, would see Shea’s second-smallest crowd; a game that ended, fittingly, in a tie.)
The game I witnessed again was a good night for Charlie Puleo. Netted from the Blue Jays as the player to be named later for the flash in the pan of mediocrity that was Mark Bomback, Puleo made his first major league start on this last day of September, 1981. He showed some moxie by whiffing cleanup hitter Leon Durham with men on second and third and then retiring Steve Henderson, traded to the Cubs that year for a second helping of Dave Kingman.
The reason I remember being at this game was the Cubs starter: Doug Bird. A journeyman swingman who’d had some good years for Whitey Herzog’s Royals, Bird was, like Puleo, taking a turn finishing another wasted season by his club. (The Cubs would finish behind the Mets before the strike, after the strike, and overall—the definition of a lousy season, no matter how many ways you cut a rancid pie.) I didn’t realize it at the time, but Doug Bird had an even worse summer than I did. He’d won 12 straight games between 1978 and 1981, yet the day after the strike he was shipped from the AL East-leading Yankees to the team with baseball’s worst record, in exchange for Rick Reuschel. I hope Bird didn’t own a Pacer, too.
What I remember about Doug Bird is that he couldn’t hit. He looked so bad in his first swing in the fifth inning that I felt confident I could use the Shea bathroom and not miss anything. When I returned, literally one minute later, my brother was holding a baseball—courtesy of Doug Bird. My brother Mark had caught a ball while I sat home on the previous homestand. Figures! It would be 27 years and many missed chances until I finally caught my own foul ball at Shea a few months before the place closed for good.
Doug Bird could pitch, though. That, along with the Mets’ inability to hit, enabled him to retire 15 batters in a row. Considering the lineup featured their two worst hitters, Doug Flynn and Ron Gardenhire—with former All-Star Lee Mazzilli riding the pine—the Mets trailed 1-0 entering the home seventh. I was confident while re-watching it that the Mets had won this game. I didn’t remember how, though.
The commercials were an entertaining sidebar in this time capsule. A new Toyota Corolla cost $4,700. WGN had Barney Miller and the half hour version of Saturday Night Live back to back. “No Coke. Pepsi.” Cubs announcer and Hall of Fame shortstop Lou Boudreau, who debuted as a player in 1938 at age 21 and as a manager at 25 during World War II, declared Joe McCarthy the best manager ever. Shea’s “Sign Man” was at the game. We all had time to kill.
Even for a September midweek meaningless game, it moved quickly. The Cubs led, 1-0, as 22 batters went up and down between the teams as I sat re-watching the game on my computer during snowstorms, drizzle, sun, and night. The Mets—as only they could—hit three straight balls to the gap and scored only once as Kong was thrown out at second in between doubles by Hubie Brooks and Rusty Staub. But it was tied. Puleo got a hand cramp in the seventh and, damn the pain and the pitch count, the trainer massaged it out on the mound. Puleo then struck out rookie Pat Tabler with the game on the line. The managers looked as unconcerned about their starters as if the game were played in 1891 instead of 1981. This was the tonic I needed to see in 2021 to get my Mojo back.
Convention finally gave way to practicality and managers Torre and Joey Amalfitano pinch hit for their starters after eight innings. Neil Allen got out of a jam when rookie Mookie Wilson ran down a drive in the gap in the top of the ninth. John Stearns greeted Randy Martz with a swinging bunt in the home ninth. Hubie Brooks conventionally bunted the winning run to second. The first Met of the night to walk—Kingman—was passed intentionally. Mighty Mazzilli came up as a pinch hitter and future Cy Young winner Willie Hernandez made the arduous 338-foot journey in the Cubs bullpen car.
Batting righty, Mazzilli’s ground ball found its way through the hole and Stearns scored ahead of Steve Henderson’s throw. Years before the term “walk off” was a thing, my brother and I were walking off the Shea ramp holding a major league ball. It was the last at bat of Maz’s I would see in Mets pinstripes for five years—when the Mets would somehow be positioning themselves for a World Series run. Charlie Puleo would be a key piece in the December 1982 trade to bring Tom Seaver back to New York—if only for a year. And Detective Fish would offer some sage wisdom on Barney Miller.
Next thing I knew I was back in 2021 watching spring training, laughing at Keith, and listening to Darling talk about pitching. Maybe this is the year. Did you hear there’s a new owner? And the GM, who’s since been fired for horrid behavior to women with these same Cubs, traded two shortstops for one really good one. Or maybe someone else engineered that trade. All I know is it wasn’t that Brodie dude. And what’s with Luis Guillorme’s cult following? Luis probably would have batted behind Kingman on those ’81 Mets.
I don’t know if I’m fully back, but sitting for hours at a time at home watching a kid’s game as it is actually happening sounds surprisingly natural. And simple. You know, I think I’ve got this.