Being a Mets fan can make you crazy. Being a Mets historian—or whatever this is—can make you look at every event and try to compare it to something that happened long ago. The 2021 season has been strange in many ways, but it reminds me a little of a year that was outlandish as it was happening: 1984. No, the 2021 team won’t win 90 games like the 1984 version, but it likewise came to earth with a thud in August. The ’84 Mets finished second to the Cubs, who rode the tails of the “Red Baron,” Rick Sutcliffe, one of the great midseason acquisitions (back when the trade deadline was June 15, so you could win one league’s Cy Young Award despite spending the first two months in the other league).
After the seven years in the desert that coincided with my childhood, I was thrilled the 1984 Mets had finally shown that all the years of waiting were not in vain. There was a future at Shea Stadium. And it would be good.
But after so many ego bruisings as a kid, I still worried that this was another tease.
When I came across this game for those early heady days of 1984, I did not remember this game at all. I watched an inning per day, as I have with the other games in my rewatching history series: a September Mets-Cubs game I attended in 1981, the loss at Candlestick that would have been completely out of character if the 1979 Mets had pulled a win out of the year of Mets hell, and the 1983 opener that remains fully justified hooky all these years later.
April 18, 1984: Montreal Expos at New York Mets, Channel 9
The Mets had been pounded by the Expos in the Shea opener the previous afternoon, 10-0. This was a new day, a Saturday afternoon. As had happened when the 1983 season opened, Pete Rose led off. Now he was an Expo. It would be his last stop before heading back to the Reds to manage later in 1984—we know how that stint ended: the all-time hits record and a lifetime ban for a manager gambling on his team.
Rose was a left fielder with the Expos. A Montreal writer said, “Pete Rose in left field covers as much ground as any other flower.” Hotshot Expos shortstop Argenis “Angel” Salazar (one of many reasons Montreal would trade Gary Carter for Hubie Brooks and three top prospects and move Hubie to short) didn’t read the local papers about Rose’s range. Salazar gave way to Rose on a catchable pop fly by Wally Backman that fell between them. Keith Hernandez knocked Backman home with a seed off the wall in right and was thrown out at second by Andre Dawson—part of the Expos Hall of Fame outfield with Raines and… oh, that’s right, Rose isn’t in Cooperstown, just hawking products at the gates of the door they won’t let him into.
Raines had become the first player with 70 RBI and 70 steals in the same year—in 1983 Rock actually stole 90 and also scored 133 runs, both career highs and best in the NL. Expos manager Bill Virdon moved him to third in the order and placed him in center field (allowing the ailing knees of Andre Dawson to cover less ground in right field). Though batting in front of Dawson and Gary Carter did not afford him as many chances to steal, Raines still swiped 75 bases in 1984 to lead the NL for the fourth straight year.
With two Expos on in the fourth and the Mets clinging to a 3-2 lead, Raines bunted. The throw hits Raines and the tying run scored, but first base umpire and crew chief John Kibbler overruled home plate ump Lenny Harris. Raines was out and the runners were sent back to first and second. That proved a huge break when Dawson singled and Rose tried to score from second on Mookie Wilson’s arm. Charlie Hustle tried to “Ray Fosse” the youngest catcher in the majors, but Gibbons, who’d broken his cheek in a home-plate collision in spring training, outmaneuvered Rose and slapped a tag on the staggering 43-year-old’s side.
Not only were the 1984 Mets suddenly coming into their own, Tim McCarver showed why he would be everywhere on TV before the 1980s ended. Familiarity and endless I-told-you-so’s made McCarver annoying later on, but this was his prime as an announcer, just as the Mets were coming into theirs.
- During the game McCarver revealed that on a Channel 9 broadcast during Fernandomania in 1981, famed director Bill Webb was the first to note that the rookie phenom’s eyes rolled heavenward before each pitch.
- McCarver was ahead of the curve on on-base-percentage bandwagon: “Something you don’t see every day, Mookie Wilson taking two pitches in a row.” Steve Zabriske, who had a good game in the booth as well, chimed in, “He saw five pitches!” They discussed the improved selectivity of Mookie batting lower in the order—Johnson had Backman leadoff (against righties) while Mookie mostly batted second or sixth. His walk total rose all the way to 26 in ’84. Their theory was logical, though.
- When Hernandez, who made a lunging tag on a bunt earlier in the game, wheeled on a slow grounder and gunned out the lead runner at second base, McCarver astutely observed that he “made a play no other first baseman would make.” Lauding Mex at the plate, McCarver noted that he had “the best bat control in the National League.”
After so many down years, it was good to have an announcer confirming to Mets fans that what they were seeing was indeed good. We had gotten so used to bad.
A few observations that—looking from a fan’s perspective in the 21st century—proved both strange and welcome:
- Starter Walt Terrell was still pitching in the seventh inning despite allowing 11 hits.
- When Terrell came out a few batters later—after Raines crushed a two-run home run to give Montreal the lead—reliever Doug Sisk arrived in the bullpen car.
- Ex-Met/Expos closer Jeff Reardon came on in the bottom of the seventh and remained in the game until a fateful decision by Bill Virdon in the ninth.
- In April 1984 this college freshman committed the thoughtcrime of worrying bad things might yet happen during this titular year of the grim George Orwell book. But the year 1984 would turn out fine. The true parallels of repressed society and evil leaders would come later.
- The April 24 Mets game would not be on TV because either the New York Islanders or New Jersey Nets would be playing a playoff game. You can imagine the vitriol spewed today if a Mets game was not on the tube on a Friday night.
- Oh, and Dan Tana and VEGA$ appear every night at 6 p.m. on Channel 9.
After reeling off six straight wins in the first week of the year, the Mets reached the home ninth looking like they would drop their fourth straight to fall to 6-5. How many Mets teams had we seen start out hot, only to melt like April frost and be buried in the basement by Memorial Day? Yet there was hope.
Darryl Strawberry singled to start the ninth. Of course, Davey didn’t bunt, and Mookie flied to center. Bill Webb caught a great shot of an intense Keith cursing in the dugout when Hubie Brooks, who’d crushed a homer earlier against Expos starter Bryn Smith, fouled a Reardon fastball straight back—Mex knew Hubie had just missed it and was unlikely to get another fat pitch. Hubie didn’t. He struck out on a ball way out of the strike zone.
Straw stole second, just beating Carter’s throw, to reach scoring position. With Danny Heep and Rusty Staub already used as pinch hitters, the Mets had no choice in their last chance at bat but to send up Jay Gibbons, with exactly one career hit. He fell behind Reardon 0-2 before putting together a great at bat and earning a walk. With the go-ahead run on base, Ron Hodges batted for Ed Lynch. He worked out a walk. Virdon came out and made a controversial but seemingly wise choice to bring in lefty Gary Lucas to face Backman.
Backman had been exiled to the minor leagues, where he fell under Davey’s spell and became one of “his guys” at Tidewater, because he was a switch-hitter who could not bat right. Backman hadn’t had a hit off a major league lefty since 1982 and he looked completely befuddled by the Lucas slider.
But Backman lined the fifth straight slider from the southpaw into the left-field corner. The tying and winning runs scored! A game-winning hit from Wally? Batting righty? Watching vintage baseball in 2021 on a computer was as alien in 1984 as was the idea of the Mets contending. Despite knowing all that would transpire in the third of a century to come, I was as stunned now as if it had just happened. I was filled with the good feelings of that year when the Mets Renaissance broke through the seemingly endless Dark Ages of Shea.