One-Year Dynasty: Inside the Rise and Fall of the 1986 Mets, Baseball's Impossible One-and-Done Champions

by Matthew Silverman

Overview

Relive the games, moves, and players of the hard-hitting team that won the 1986 World Series. Vin Scully called the tenth-inning groundball in Game Six of the 1986 World Series—Mets versus Red Sox—that sealed a comeback, fueled a curse, and turned a batting champion into a scapegoat. But getting there was a long, hard slog with plenty of heartache. After being knocked out of contention the previous two seasons, the Mets blasted through the National League that year. They won blowouts, nailbiters, fights, and a 14-inning game that ended with one pitcher on the mound, another in right field, and an All-Star catcher playing third base. Matt Silverman covers famous baseball players including: Ron Darling, Dwight Gooden, Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry and more. Going beyond the partying and excess, Silverman recounts in this book, step by step, the team’s meteoric rise in 1986, when they captured their first division title in over a decade, shattered the franchise record, and then won it all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493009091
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	05/01/2016
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,122,429
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Matt Silverman is the author of Swinging ’73: Baseball’s Wildest Season, New York Mets: The Complete Illustrated History, Mets Essential, 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, and Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York’s Most Agonizingly Amazin’ Team. He served as associate publisher for Total Sports Publishing, working with partners Major League Baseball and Sports Illustrated. A longtime member of the Society of Baseball Research, he was lead writer, editor, and spokesman for Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. Profiled in the New York Times, Silverman has been interviewed on ESPN radio, NPR, Sports Net New York, and numerous other programs and publications. He blogs regularly at MetSilverman.com and lives with his family in High Falls, New York.

Table of Contents

Part I Dominance

1 The Waiting, April 1962 to October 1985 2

2 Life of Collusion, October to December 1985 24

3 Exquisitely Bored, January and February 1986 36

4 The Perfectly Strange Couple, March 1986 48

5 Comet, Computation, and Chemistry, April 1986 66

6 Top Gun, May 1986 89

7 Not Your Father's Mets, June 1986 105

8 Sledgehammer, July 1986 118

9 Just Routine, Ma'am, August 1986 135

10 Everybody Wang Chung Tonight, September to October 5,1986 148

Part II Destiny

11 Scuff Enough, October 8-15, 1986 168

12 So Far Away, So Good, October 18-23, 1986 193

13 "Can You Believe This Ballgame at Shea?" October 25, 1986 207

14 Haven't Had That Spirit Here Since 1969, October 26-27,1986 226

Part III Decline

15 Break Up the Mets 240

16 Tilting at Windmills 253

17 Kid's Curtain Call 267

Acknowledgments 280

Notes 283

Sources 309

Index 316

About the Author 329

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Swinging ’73: Baseball’s Wildest Season by Matthew Silverman "A fantastic ode to a year that began with the Yankees wife-swap and ended with the Mets’ second miracle." —New York Post "Silverman sets his sights on one of the sport’s greatest, most dramatic, and colorful seasons ever, a go-go moment in pop-cultural time. ... Swinging ’73 is a sharp, finely detailed, engrossingly entertaining snapshot of a country and its national pastime, both grooving along—though not always smoothly—to the beat of a new era." —American Profile "Swinging ’73 chronicles the ups and downs, the ins and outs of one of pro baseball’s most exciting years ever, and it does it in casual, breezy style. .. [A]nyone who enjoys immersing themselves in the annals of baseball lore will find Swinging ’73 to be the perfect kind of read: a fastball right down the plate." —Bleacher Report "One of the most entertaining new baseball books of the spring." —Hardball Times

From the Publisher