May 1, 2016 is what’s called the publication date for One-Year Dynasty, my new book about the last Mets world champion, 30 years old. Will we ever see another world champion? It may be sooner than we could dream or it could be another 30 years. (God, I hope not.)
I don’t know when the next Mets parade will be, but I do know all about the last one. I believe the 1969 world championship will always be the most important title in club history, but 1986 is the most significant, surely now, because it is the one in the most people’s mindset. Even if they weren’t yet born, there are everyday reminders of what that team did. But how did they really do it, day by day, month by month, when it was actually happening? How did they own New York? What was New York like in the grips of a Mets frenzy? It was the kind that is all the more rabid because it will not last forever—a fever burning hot and then it’s gone. One-Year Dynasty: Inside the Rise and Fall of the 1986 Mets, Baseball’s One-and-Done Champions is for the people who never lost the fever, and those who cam along too late to appreciate that ’86 team.
I looked at dozens of hours of video (thank you, Larry DC), read tons of old newspapers, magazines, books, and dug up other stuff I had forgotten ever existed. And I dug up people who were there, whether playing for the team, managing them, sitting in the press box, or, in the case of Ed Randall, flying over Shea Stadium when the pennant could have gone either way.
It was an incredible season. The Mets were as dominant as any National League team between the birth of the World Series in 1903 and the addition of the wild card and the extra playoff rounds that, frankly, have watered down division titles and made it hard to compare them with teams of the past who, like the 1985 Mets could win 98 game and go home with nothing. Experts on the subject claim the ’86 Mets are still one of the 10 best teams of all time. And yet their victory after being down to their last out in the World Series with no one on base and down by two runs is still the most unlikely comeback ever.
Relive it with Keith and Davey, Wally and Mookie, Bobby O. and Kevin Mitchell, plus fans, writers, bloggers, and dazed Red Sox players and followers. It’s the ’86 Mets. Still coming to your town, they’re going to party it down. Big ’80s, big life.
As I did with Swinging ’73, I place baseball in the context of its times. Everything from the music (Wang Chung, anyone?) to the movies (Bueller, Bueller? Maverick?) to the Pittsburgh Drug Trials to collusion to Geraldo’s debacle of Al Capone’s vault to MTV to the tragedy of what happened to some of the stars and the whole organization in the years to follow, right up until the current resurgence. Everything about the Mets goes back to 1986. Three decades later, they’re still trying to get back to that stage where they own the late innings of late October. That is how a dynasty is formed, even it lasts a year on the field, it is still in the mind.
I am not planning a lot of promotion, at least not initially, except for a signing at the Low Beat in Albany around 6 p.m. on Friday, May 20. I’m glad to send signed copies to people for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, graduation, and all the days in between. Contact me at the site, if you’d like.
But remember ’86, celebrate ’86. It is the touchstone for Mets fans young and old. It was the Mets painted as big and bold as they can be, backing up the talk, making us sweat, and covering us in the sticky residue of champagne and beer. Maybe the boys stayed too long and loud at the party. But it’s where we come from. It’s our Mets DNA.