The 1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter is a newsletter for Mets fans who like an easy two.
I feel that it’s necessary to do a second newsletter this week because the Mets played two ridiculous games in a three-day span. They lost the one to Houston on July 20 that i wrote about in-depth on Monday. Then, two days later, they beat the Reds in a game that had a similar level of craziness.
It included Dave Parker making an error with two outs in the ninth inning that allowed the tying run to score, a fight between Ray Knight and Eric Davis that turned into a bench-clearing brawl, the result of which left the Mets short players and they thus had to play Jesse Orosco or Roger McDowell in the outfield depending on who was batting (Tony Perez flew out to Orosco). The Mets finally won it on Howard Johnson's home run in the 14th, after 11-year-old me had gone to sleep (I do remember seeing Parker drop the ball and the fight).
The other thing that happened in this game is what I'm going to write about here. Some of baseball's greatest defensive players are identified with one play that best demonstrates their defensive excellence.
For example, Willie Mays has The Catch against Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series. Ozzie Smith has The Play against Jeff Burroughs. Keith Hernandez has The Bunt.
If you follow the Mets with any regularity, you've probably seen the time in 1986 that Keith Hernandez and the Mets turned a 3-5-4 double play on a lousy bunt by Reds pitcher Carl Willis. It happened 40 years ago to the day that I'm sending this newsletter out.
Ask anyone who knows anything about how Hernandez plays defense and they'll say "You couldn't bunt on him."
Heck, “you couldn’t bunt on him” was at the heart of my "Why Keith Hernandez should be in the Hall of Fame" monologue during my ESPN Stats & Info job interview in 2002. I got the job and worked there for almost 16 years, thanks Keith!
Plays like this tend to get romanticized. You start thinking that they happened a lot more often than it actually did. I couldn't find another first-to-third-to-first double play on Keith Hernandez's Mets ledger, but I found some other things I'd like to talk about.
Bunt defense throughout baseball history
Earlier in the month, on July 4, 1986, Hernandez started a 3-6-4 double play against none other than Astros pitcher Nolan Ryan. Mets broadcaster Ralph Kiner, while marveling about Hernandez's play, made reference to two first basemen who were good at defending bunts and capable of that kind of play, Ferris Fain and Hall-of-Famer George Sisler.
I had a hard time finding much on Sisler’s bunt defense beyond references on Google Gemini that went nowhere. Fain is more interesting because I knew nothing about him. On Fain's Baseball-Reference biography page, it says "Fain was an extremely aggressive first baseman, charging on bunts and throwing to advanced bases even if the outcome was uncertain. He even fielded bunts on the third base line. In 1950, he broke the record for double plays by a first baseman. He often led the league in assists, and Joe Gordon called him the best defensive first baseman he had seen."
In February 2014, a person posting on the Baseball Fever message board said of Fain
"The description of his defense sounds like Keith Hernandez before Keith Hernandez on bunt defense."
That’s Ferris Fain.
Other Instances in Mets History
MLB record keeping on bunts isn’t perfect, but by Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet's accounting, this play from 1986 was the first "Bunt: 3-5-4 double play" in Mets history. But there have been at least two others.
On the final day of the 2010 season, Livan Hernandez bunted into a 3-5-4 double play, Ike Davis-to-David Wright-to Ruben Tejada. But because it was the last game of a miserable end to the season (which ended with a 14-inning loss in which Oliver Perez walked in the winning run), no one wrote about it in any of the recaps I went through. Sigh!
The other happened on July 4, 2016. Martin Prado bunted in the eighth inning of a tie game and James Loney initiated the double play, Loney to Wilmer Flores to Neil Walker. The Mets won the game in the bottom of the eighth inning thanks to a two-run double by Yoenis Cespedes.
This one is available on video! I've got it queued up here. How did Ron Darling react? "That was Hernandez-esque. Keith Hernandez used to make that play all the time!”
Out at third, safe at first
The first-to-third-to-first thing is really hard because you need a quick throw to third, a slow batter, and a clean, unchallenged throw across the diamond. In this video from 1988, Hernandez charged this Scott Terry bunt similar to how he charged the one by Willis. There was no chance of a double play on this one even with a good throw.
Keith came to the defense of his teammates
Keith did throw a runner out at third base on a bunt by Braves pitcher Craig McMurtry a little more than a month after joining the Mets on July 27, 1983. But I found something else notable that happened the day before. The Mets and Braves played a game, which the Mets eventually won on a Mookie Wilson walk-off home run.
But earlier in the game, Braves pitcher Rick Camp hit Wilson with a pitch in the fifth inning and Mike Torrez subsequently plunked Camp in the sixth. Camp charged the mound only to be intercepted by Hernandez. Torrez then punched Camp in the nose. In true 1983 fashion, no one was ejected from the game.
“Hey Rick in 2 years you’re gonna be remembered for hitting a home run in the 18th inning of a game in which I hit for the cycle.”
Other Mets tried their best to match Keith
Tim Teufel threw a runner out at third the first time he played first base as a Met in the chaotic home opener in 1986. And Dave Magadan started a very nice bunt double play in the 13th inning of an eventual Mets win in 1989, though it wasn’t a 3-5-4.
“You’ll never see a finer double play than that one,” said Tim McCarver, who apparently forgot that he did see a finer one three years ago!
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.