The 1986 Mets newsletter is a newsletter for Mets fans who like pitching phenoms
Before Dwight Gooden was Dwight Gooden, Vida Blue was Vida Blue.
In 1971 as a 21 and 22-year-old, Blue went 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA and 301 strikeouts, winning the Cy Young and AL MVP for the Athletics. He would have great seasons and good seasons after that but not quite reach that level again. Similar to Gooden, his career was altered by drug addiction and a lot of wear on his pitching arm, as well as a holdout in 1972 to protest Charlie Finley's low-ball salary offer at a time when Blue didn't have a choice (or the benefits of the current system that pays bonuses to the top early-career players).
Gooden and Blue met for the only time in their careers in this edition of our rewatch, August 22, 1986, a 5-3 Mets win. Gooden was 21 years old and in his third season. Blue was in his 17th and final major league season. The YouTube version of this game is missing a few innings. The actual game went more than three hours. I watched the most important innings from the two-hour excerpt.
The highlight of this game was not the pitching but rather a massive collision between Giants left fielder Dan Gladden and Mets catcher Ed Hearn. Gladden was trying to score on a single by Chili Davis. I'll get to Davis' dominance against Gooden in a minute, but first, here are five images from a collision that would never take place in a 2026 game.
Huge props to Hearn, who was catching because Gary Carter was injured. Hearn somehow survived that collision AND hung on to the baseball. Also, kudos to Kevin Mitchell for a terrific throw to Hearn.
The other highlight from the available video for this game was a laser-beam bolt of a home run by Darryl Strawberry against Blue that rattled around vacant seats like a pinball (broadcaster Fran Healy's analogy). With the game being in San Francisco, talk went to the king of the 30-30 seasons, Bobby Bonds and Mets broadcasters Ralph Kiner and Healy raised the question of whether Strawberry could have a 40-40 season someday. The closest Strawberry got was 39 homers and 36 steals the next season.
Healy noted that Bonds doesn't get enough credit for his excellence and the Hall of Fame voting from 1987 to 1997 reflects that. Looking back, Bonds averaged 28 home runs, 39 stolen bases, and 5.2 WAR over a 10-year period from 1969 to 1978 but never got more than 11% of the vote in Hall of Fame elections. He's oft-lamented more for what could have been (if not for alcoholism) than celebrated for what was. We don't mind giving him his due here.
The home run came in the middle of Strawberry's 0-for-47 stretch at Shea Stadium (yep, 0-for-47). He had no trouble hitting on the road during that time. During this California road trip, Strawberry went 12-for-33 with 3 home runs and 11 RBI in 8 games.
There is a highlight missing from the video. In the second inning Keith Hernandez threw a runner out on a third base on a Blue bunt. This came a month after Hernandez's more famous bunt throw-out against the Reds, which we wrote about in a past newsletter.
Blue sputtered in this game, allowing 4 runs and 8 hits in 4 2/3 innings while mostly throwing a low-90s fastball that Mets hitters had no trouble with. Gooden was good, maybe not great, though Healy and Gooden were impressed with how he bounced back after a rough third inning.
Gooden allowed a run and stranded the bases loaded in the third, and maybe I should give him a little more credit because he settled down after that. Gooden got through a career-high 40 batters on the way to pitching 8 2/3 innings, allowing 3 runs and 10 hits.
No pitcher has faced 40 batters in a regular season game since CC Sabathia for the Brewers in 2008. The last to do it before CC actually did it against the Mets, Bartolo Colon with a 13-hit complete game in 2002. The only Mets pitcher since Gooden to do it was David Cone in 1992. The club record is 57 batters faced, Al Jackson in a 15-inning loss to the Phillies in 1962. The nine-inning club record is also Jackson, 44 against the Braves in 1962.
Gooden was able to reach back for some of his vintage best to strike out Gladden for a key out in the ninth inning after falling behind 3-0. You can see Gladden was miffed.
The batter Gooden had the most trouble with in this game was future Mets hitting coach Davis who went 3-for-5 against him, which upped his career totals vs Gooden to 12-for-21. Davis is quoted as saying "He isn't God, man" about Gooden at the time. Davis went 0-for-6 against Gooden for the remainder of his career.
Highest Career Batting Average vs Dwight Gooden- Minimum 20 At-Bats
Batter | BA (H-AB) |
Tom Pagnozzi | .464 (13-for-28) |
Chili Davis | .444 (12-for-27) |
Ray Lankford | .440 (11-for-25) |
Luis Gonzalez | .435 (10-for-23) |
Hubie Brooks | .392 (20-for-51) |
How did the Mets score their other runs? Two came in on a Mookie Wilson single. Wilson entered hitting .366 in his previous 20 games. Another came in when Ray Knight singled under the glove of Giants first baseman Will Clark. We had the 1986 version of bad fundies with Mets broadcaster Tim McCarver criticizing Clark for not getting his glove or his butt down in attempting to make the play.
The last Mets run came on a throwing error by shortstop Jose Uribe, the result of Rafael Santana getting in his line of vision and causing a poor throw.
The Mets led 5-3 with two outs in the 9th inning when Davey Johnson pulled Gooden. for Roger McDowell. A pitch-count estimator guesses Gooden had thrown 152 pitches to that point (we don't have enough video to confirm). The Giants had runners on the corners, so the tying runs were on base.
Brown took a mammoth swing against McDowell but hit a foul ball straight back that whizzed by umpire Bruce Froemming's head.
Brown then flied out to Wilson to end the game. The Mets were now 81-41, assured of not having a losing season (LOL).
Today's game brought to you by
No commercials in this broadcast but we did get a good trivia question from Healy, who asked "Who was the last switch-hitter to win an MVP?" The answer at the time was a pitcher, Vida Blue.
Four have done so since then – Terry Pendleton (1991 Braves), Ken Caminiti (1996 Padres), Chipper Jones (1999 Braves), and Jimmy Rollins (2007 Phillies). Blue is still the last to do it in the American League.
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.