The 1986 Mets Rewatch Newsletter is a newsletter for Mets fans who like a good “fake and run.”
There was much anticipation for April 8 1986 with the Mets having had near-misses in their bid for the NL East title in each of the past two seasons. This team was built to win now and to dominate, which manager Davey Johnson told them they’d do in spring training.
The regular season began with this game in Pittsburgh, which I rewatched most of this past winter. Here are some of my observations
Game summary: The Mets won 4-2 as Dwight Gooden pitched a complete game six-hitter. Rick Reuschel was the losing pitcher. Keith Hernandez went 2-for-4 with 2 RBI. Gary Carter and George Foster drove in the other runs. Each team had only 6 hits but the Mets drew 7 walks.
Why do parrots need parachutes? There was some great postseason foreshadowing even before the first pitch of the season was thrown. The Pittsburgh Pirates mascot, a parrot, parachuted into the stadium with the first ball.
This marked a fresh start for the Parrot, as you may recall that the guy wearing the costume prior to 1986 had served as a go-between for drug dealers and players.
Mets broadcaster Ralph Kiner made a good point:
“If parrots can fly, why do they need parachutes?”
This guy definitely needed a parachute. When he landed on the pitcher’s mound, the mascot’s head came off!
It also has me wondering: Did 1986 World Series Game 6 parachuter Michael Sergio draw any inspiration from this?
Whoever got paid to do this by the Pirates didn’t get paid enough.
The 1st inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series was interrupted by Michael Sergio’s grand entrance.
Happy birthday Lupa! - As the Pirates take the field, producer/director Bill Webb cuts to a shot of a banner "Bring it home, Mets, Hofstra U. N.Y. Happy birthday Lupa." According to PokeMyName.com there are roughly 500 Lupas in the United States right now. So if you know one and wish them a happy birthday, you’ve got a reasonable chance of picking the right timeframe.
The Fake and Run- The Mets scored their first run of the season three batters into the game on what Ralph Kiner described as "a fake-and-run."
Len Dykstra, who walked to start the game, broke for second base but stopped. He took off when Keith Hernandez's fly ball landed near the wall. Dykstra came all the way around to score and Hernandez went to third base on the throw home. He'd score on Gary Carter's sacrifice fly.
The Mets’ other runs came on an RBI double by George Foster in the 6th inning and an RBI single by Hernandez in the 7th inning.
1986 wasn’t 1985 - Dwight Gooden went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA in 1985, but 1986 was not 1985 and that was established immediately. R.J. Reynolds homered against him to lead off the bottom of the first. It snapped a streak of 75 straight homerless innings for Gooden, which he threw to close 1985.
But I don't want to focus on the home run. Instead, check this out. These are two pitches that were called strikes against Reynolds in this game.
Who needs pitch framing when you're getting calls like these from Bob Engel?
Poor R.J. Reynolds couldn’t tap his helmet to appeal these back then.
The stats indicate that Engel was indeed a pitcher-friendly umpire that year, with one of the higher K-BB ratios and K per 9 among NL umps.
A slow hook or no hook at all - Gooden took a 4-2 lead into the 9th inning and had thrown only 85 pitches, but Davey Johnson got Roger McDowell and Jesse Orosco up just in case.
If this was 2026, Gooden would have probably been done after six innings but this was 1986 and Johnson stuck with him Gooden after he walked the first hitter, future Met Joe Orsulak, on nine pitches to start the inning, and again after Johnnie Ray singled to put runners on first and second.
Cleanup and bunt The Pirates hit Sid Bream cleanup. Barry Bonds was still in the minor leagues. Andy Van Slyke and Bobby Bonilla were still on other teams. The Mets didn't expect the opposing cleanup hitter to bunt but Bream did and it was a successful sacrifice to put runners on second and third with one out.
Bream wasn’t the only cleanup hitter to record a sacrifice against the Mets in 1986. A rookie named Will Clark did it too. The most recent starting cleanup hitter to sacrifice against the Mets was Brian McCann for the Braves in 2009.
Raring Back For A Little Extra - Steve Kemp was a pretty good player from 1979 to 1982 but by 1986 he'd ran out of steam. It showed in this game. He went 0-for-4 with 3 strikeouts, including one on a Gooden fastball for the second out in the 9th inning. The crew noted that fastball had to be up around 93-94 miles per hour. That wouldn't have been worth noting 40 years later.
Game Over - The game ended one pitch later when Gooden retired Pena on a comebacker. The Mets were 1-0. The Pirates were 0-1.
This was the first of 12 complete games for Gooden in 1986. The Mets as a team have thrown 11 complete games in the last eight seasons.
And In 2026 …
Two Mets have started 1-for-14 (or worse) in their first 3 games with the team:
Bo Bichette and former 1986 Astros outfielder Kevin Bass (1992)
Gary Cohen basically foreshadowing Juan Soto’s home run in St. Louis reminded me of Tim McCarver doing the same with Howard Johnson in 1986.
The Red Sox honored their 1986 AL championship team, with nearly the entire roster attending. The team gave an honest accouting and referred to Game 6 of the World Series as “the most infamous game in Red Sox history” noting “the heartbreak was real.” They also pointed out that the team got its own parade for which 750,000 fans showed up.
Resurgent? In the open of the broadcast, Mets announcer Steve Zabriskie referred to the Pirates as "resurgent." They had new ownership, a first-year manager, Jim Leyland, and a rookie outfielder Barry Bonds not far away in the minor leagues.
Any sort of surge would have to wait. This was their first of an MLB-high 98 losses. They went 1-17 vs the Mets.
Worst Win Pct In Season vs Mets - Minimum 10 Games
Team | Win Pct |
1986 Pirates | .056 (1-17) |
1969 Padres | .083 (1-11) |
1988 Dodgers (sigh) | .091 (1-10) |
Look Ma, No Knees - One other visual to check out. We talk now about different catching styles, with so many catchers going to the one-knee setup. Pirates catcher Tony Peña, a four-time Gold Glove winner, used no knees when there was no one on base.
Tony Peña was ahead of his time
The sitting position isn’t used often these days, but here’s one catcher who used it: Willson Contreras in the 2016 World Series.
Today’s Game brought to you by - Check out the Casio LCD pocket tv with "clear black and white reception" available at True Hardware. We didn’t have one of these. We had a much bigger one that I remember lugging to a baseball card show so that we could watch the Jets lose to the Browns in double-overtime in an NFL playoff game.
This was pretty advanced technology at the time!
Did you know? There was a player who was on the 1986 Mets for one day, Opening Day. Shortstop Ron Gardenhire was on the roster because of a roster management snafu. He needed one more day to clear waivers. I couldn’t find a shot of Gardenhire on the bench, but I found an article referencing that he was there. Gardenhire never played in the major leagues again.
However, two years later he became a minor league manager, which led him on the path to what was a highly successful (regular season anyways) managerial career.
Next: I don’t normally do 2 newsletters in the same week, but there’s a 40th anniversary of a notable game later this week. On Thursday we'll look at the Mets first loss of the season. It's a game that you’re probably familiar with, but because of how the game is referenced and not because of the game itself (how’s that for a clue?)