The 1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter is a newsletter for Mets fans who prefer strawberries to blueberries.
I'm not now and haven't ever really been into the MLB All-Star Game. There have been some neat moments. I remember watching Fred Lynn's grand slam as an eight-year-old kid and Torii Hunter's home run robbery against Barry Bonds was cool too but they didn't do much for me emotionally.
The 1986 Mets didn't do much for me either when it came to the All-Star Game in Houston. Dwight Gooden started and gave up two runs in three innings. Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, and Darryl Strawberry went a combined 1-for-5. Sid Fernandez walked two and then struck out three (including Don Mattingly). Future Met Don Aase got the save. NL 5, AL 3. Yawn.
That’s a cool stat, but All-Star Games don’t excite me.
But what happened the day before, I find that a little more interesting.
The NL and AL held the second annual Home Run Derby in the Astrodome, one of the least hitter-friendly stadiums in modern baseball history. The rules of the Derby were much different then. Batters competed on teams rather than individually. Fan interest was different too. It appears the Astrodome's upper level was empty and there were many vacant seats in fair territory in the outfield. That's a shame considering the cost to get in was a $4 donation to charity. A computer simulation of the All-Star Game got much more coverage in the Hartford Courant. The homer-hitting exhibition got three paragraphs in the New York Daily News … despite what happened.
What happened was that the Mets arrived in Houston at 5:30 a.m. and the Derby was an afternoon event. Strawberry was not scheduled to be on the NL squad but accepted after Kevin Bass of the Astros turned down an invite for fear of embarrassing himself as he had in a previous homer-hitting competition.
The NL team was Carter and Strawberry, Dave Parker, and Hubie Brooks. The AL team was Jose Canseco, Jesse Barfield, Lance Parrish, and Wally Joyner.
Two of the competitors, Carter and Parrish, both had no homers at the time of making their fifth and final out (no word on whether they were embarrassed). But Strawberry's turn was different. He hit four home runs before making an out.
These were loud HOME RUNS. Two in particular. One hit a speaker hanging from the roof in right center field. We didn't have Statcast back then, so it seems we were relying on human estimates of just how far the ball went. That homer was estimated by one reporter at 500 feet. Another said 480. The next one was estimated at 550 feet. Do we hear 600? 700?
Video doesn't exist of either of those balls landing. In the All-Star Game broadcast they attempted to show the speaker that Strawberry hit, but I can't make it out on the video that's on YouTube. But I think I found it in a still picture of the inside of the stadium.
Mike Schmidt hit a similar such ball to straightaway center field in 1974 that was ruled a single because of the Astrodome’s dumb ground rules. Strawberry’s was to the right of this one and was ruled a home run for the purpose of the competition
"He took a bow in the batter's box and got a standing ovation," said ESPN's Chris Berman, who was there, and did the highlights for the event (I’m not sure if it was shown live). Strawberry was mobbed by his NL teammates when he returned to the dugout. His homers led the way in an 8-7 NL win.
A brief sidebar on Berman, whom I worked with and had a good relationship with at ESPN. He left a handwritten welcome note in my mailbox a couple of weeks into my time at ESPN that I really appreciated.
Berman had some fun with the highlights as he always does.
"That ball is outta here." – Channeling Gary Cohen before Gary was a Mets announcer
"It might be, it could be, it is." – Harry Caray
"Back, back, back, back…" – Of course.
"That dog go hunting, deep, deep into the cheaps." – I have no idea what this was. I'm glad it didn't last.
Back, back, back …
OK, back to Strawberry. He seemed to be of two minds about the Derby based on the print interviews I read and TV clips I saw.
On the one hand
"When I do put my mind on hitting the ball, good things can happen. It may help me find my home run stroke for the second half of the season."
The swing that launched a 500-foot home run.
On the other:
"It was one of those uppercut swings. A bad habit swing. I hate to swing like that. I didn't even want to get involved in a home run hitting contest because it makes you uppercut on your swing. I wouldn't try to do it in a game. I would have gotten a single because I wouldn't have been running."
The home run competition the year before drew 45,000 fans in Minnesota and it seemed clear to Berman that even though there may not have been a lot of people there, they were riveted. The home run derby was part of baseball's future.
"Fans are already wide-eyed over the whole affair," he said
Of course they were trying to match the NBA!
One postscript. This wasn't the last monumental fly ball that Strawberry hit in the Astrodome in 1986. In the 9th inning of Game 6 of the NLCS, Strawberry hit a foul ball eight rows up into the Dome's upper deck. Quite a poke (I couldn’t come up with a still shot that does it justice). Not surprisingly, Dave Smith's next pitch wasn't close, giving Strawberry a walk and setting up Ray Knight for his game-tying sacrifice fly.
Strawberry hit plenty of other long home runs that counted, including one off the clock in Busch Stadium to win a late-season game in 1985 and a home run off the Olympic Stadium roof in 1988. You can find those and 210(!!) others here.
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.