1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter: An introduction

The 1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter is a newsletter for Mets fans who understand that Mets is an acronym for “Must Endure The Suffering.”

Hi everyone. This is the preface to this newsletter project, Like It Oughta Be, A 1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter.

I was 11 years old in 1986 and much like Mrs. Sokol at George Costanza's unemployment office, "I saw every inning that year."

OK, so not quite every inning. But you get the point.

I was absolutely obsessed with the 1986 Mets and I have vivid recollections of specific moments. Those include

- My dad and I going to the division clincher and my being fearful that strangers would high-five me too hard.

- Going to Hebrew School in the middle of Game 6 of the NLCS. I still have not forgiven my mom for this. Seriously.

- My dad's friend falling asleep in the bottom of the 10th inning of the World Series while I said to one of my dad's friends "Wouldn't it be funny if there was a balk or wild pitch or something crazy?"

The 1986 Mets have had a pretty good grip on me for 40 years.

- I wrote my elementary school graduation speech about that team (“Cherish The Moment” seems an appropriate theme now).

- My psych music for the SATs was the 9th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS. I wrote college essays about the 1986 Mets as an inspirational team.

- I used to regularly blog at Mets Walk-Offs and Minutiae about Game 6 of the World Series (I wrote several dozen pieces).

I bought all the books. I read all the articles. I watched the highlight films (1986 Mets, A Year To Remember is the standard by which I measure highlight films).

I want to write a book about that team … but a lot of notable books have already been written, and there's also the wonderful four-part documentary Once Upon A Time in Queens that had a great book companion (for only $8!). Books take a lot of time to do. And what could I write that hasn't already been written?

So I decided to start this newsletter. The original idea was to do a rewatch podcast but I already do two podcasts and didn't want to do another.

For now, this newsletter is about fun. If it's not fun, I'm going to stop doing it. I don't have time for unfun projects.

The newsletter will come out once per week, and maybe sometimes twice. I don't know what I'm going to do for the playoffs and the World Series. Maybe some weeks it won’t come out. But it’s free, so no complaining.

It will take on different forms but the primary one will be sharing the notes I took from rewatching games. There are more than 50 Mets games available from 1986 on YouTube, which is really … Amazin'.

I'm going to rewatch some of them and share what I see. Spoiler alert: the strike zones are large, double play break-ups are like football tackles, and Ralph Kiner is in fine form (seriously, pretty good). I'm not rewatching entire games (too time-consuming) but I'm watching significant chunks.

There will be variations on the theme. In some cases, I'll watch a player's highlight reel. In some cases the game won't be available, so I'll recap it from multiple newspaper accounts. In some cases, I'll pontificate about something, like the Mets Hall of Fame or trades that could have been (there’s actually another newsletter for that).

I want to do some interviews too. Fun ones. I’m not seeking interviews with players, though I’ll take one with Bruce Berenyi or Tim Corcoran if it comes to me.

The entertainment industry has some good Mets fans in it. The comedian/actress and fellow Stuyvesant High School '93 grad Jessi Klein says 90% of her personality stems from the 1986 Mets. I want to know more about that. Jessi starred in Big Mouth, whose co-creator, Craig Goldberg, is a Mets fan (he might be a little too young for the 86 Mets).

The creators of How I Met Your Mother (Craig Thomas) and This Is Us (Dan Fogelman) are HUGE Mets fans and they were my age in 1986. I want to know if that season shaped their fandom or lives at all.

If anyone knows those people and can put me in touch with any of them, please do!

But there are some other worthy interviews too. I've got one lined up with a children's book author who just wrote a book about a Mets fan getting bar mitzvahed in 1986! 

Again, if it's fun, I'm going to want to do it. Interviews with people who like the Mets are usually fun interviews.

There's another ground rule here. I'm not going to be writing about the bad stuff.

I know there's a lot of bad stuff. I've read all the books and I know all the sagas. I fully acknowledge their existence. But the bad stuff isn’t fun.

I'm not going to pretend that those things didn't happen. I will try to be careful not to overly celebrate certain people. There are dozens of other places to read about the bad stuff. I'm going to largely focus on games, moments from games, and the fan experience.

That's how I'm differentiating it.

As I once said to the documentarian who put together Once Upon A Time In Queens, I want a 1986 Mets project that treats the regular season game on July 3 against the Astros with the reverence it deserves (to its credit, the film honored the ending of that game quite well).

Anyway, those are the parameters of what this is going to be. Your feedback is welcome.

If you like something, don't like something, have ideas, suggestions, whatever. Send it in. I want this to be interactive. As someone once said, teamwork makes the dream work.

I’m going to try to sync up newsletters with specific dates. I have one that will cover the biggest story of spring training that I’ll release next week before Opening Day. That’s next.

Enjoy.

You can contact me on Bluesky or via e-mail ([email protected]). You can find my other newsletter, which summarizes interviews I do with journalists, here.