Bluff and Bluster

“No way,” I insisted. “The Mets are not beating the Dodgers.”

It was October 1988. I was huddled on a street corner outside our junior high school with a few other friends who enviously watched the braver boys interact with the girls, but at that point I was focused on holding my ground in my argument with Matt.

“The Mets are a better team,” he calmly stated, without the usual smugness in his voice.

“The Mets are not beating the Dodgers,” I repeated, certain for no other reason than wanting it to be that way.

“Want to bet on it?” came the challenge.

“Hell yeah, I’ll bet,” I fired back. “Ten dollars.”

I’m pretty sure I didn’t have $10, but I held out my pinky, and with the childhood signature in place, the bet was on.

I had noted Matt’s self-assurance throughout the argument, a signal that maybe I was walking into a trap, but it didn’t matter. I was sick of the Mets, sick of Darryl and Doc and their intracity superiority over my beloved Yankees, and ready to take a blind stand against their continued success.

In hindsight, Matt had every reason to think he’d suckered me into an easy $10. The Mets were a better team – in addition to the aforementioned Strawberry and Gooden, they had another MVP candidate in Kevin McReynolds, a terrific staff led by a legit Cy Young candidate in David Cone, and most of the rest of the veteran core of the ’86 champs.

I knew the Dodgers had Orel Hershiser, who’d just set a record with a 59-inning scoreless streak, and their own MVP-caliber slugger in Kirk Gibson. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t know that the Mets had beaten the Dodgers 10 times in 11 tries during the regular season.

The Mets certainly delivered a statement game in the opener by taking the Dodgers’ best punch – a gem from Hershiser – before dinging the ace for his first run allowed in more than a month in the ninth. With closer Jay Howell in for the Dodgers, Gary Carter dunked a flare into center just in front of a diving John Shelby, and the Mets pulled away with the 3-2 win.

The following day, Cone delivered his own curious statements in a ghostwritten column for the Daily News in which he called Hershiser “lucky” and derided Howell for lacking the high-octane heater of the Mets’ stopper, Randy Myers. Cone is renowned for his astute analysis nowadays, but this was one time he should have kept his opinions to himself – the riled-up Dodgers came out swinging and Cone, who admitted to being rattled by the backlash, was sent packing after two innings.

Rain forced the postponement of Game 3, and the two sides squared off the following day on a muddy, messy Shea Stadium field that was better suited for a backyard football game. Keith Hernandez was thrown out at third in the sixth on a comical play (for me, anyway) in which he halted, stumbled and tried to crawl to the bag. Another Keystone Cops moment came in the top of the eighth, when Mets reliever Roger McDowell slipped after retrieving a comebacker and ignited a Dodgers rally with his errant throw.

But the big story of the day came in the bottom of the inning, when Mets skipper Davey Johnson had the umps check Howell’s glove. Finding something he didn’t like (it turned out to be pine tar), crew chief Harry Wendelstedt tossed Howell from the game and, in a bizarre scene, brought the glove over to NL President Bart Giamatti near the Mets dugout. A grim-looking Giamatti examined the glove as if it were a gun from a crime scene; you half-expected security to march onto the field to arrest Howell at that point.

There were no arrests, but there was also no halting the domino effect of Howell’s ejection; the Mets battered relievers Alejandro Peña, Jesse Orosco and Ricky Horton for five runs, and Cone earned a bit of redemption with a scoreless ninth to seal the win.

I’m not sure if I realized at the time just how close the Dodgers were to falling into what could have been a daunting 3-1 hole. Gooden cruised through most of Game 4, but he walked Shelby in the top of the ninth before Mike Scioscia – who was built like a Mack Truck but hit like a Yugo – unloaded on a middle-middle fastball to tie the game at 4. Three innings later, Gibson untied it with a high drive to right-center off McDowell.

It should have been Jay Howell time for L.A. But with the closer suspended, the Dodgers burned through Tim Leary and then Orosco for two outs. With no one left in the bullpen, Tommy Lasorda turned to Hershiser, who’d thrown seven innings the day before, to face the righty-hitting McReynolds.

In a moment that was a little too eerily reminiscent of Game 1, McReynolds lifted a pop fly to no-man’s land in shallow center. This time, Shelby reached the ball to strand the tying and winning runs and knot the series.

The Dodgers were in the driver’s seat for most of Game 5 thanks to a three-run blast from Gibson, before Lenny Dykstra cut into the lead with his own three-run shot in the fifth. In the eighth, the Mets made things a little more interesting when hotshot rookie Gregg Jefferies plated Dykstra with a single to make it 6-4 Dodgers. Yet the baseball gods giveth, and the baseball gods taketh away; a few batters after his clutch RBI hit, Jefferies failed to avoid a ground ball on the basepath between second and third, short-circuiting his team’s hopes for a comeback rally.

Fully recovered from his misadventures in journalism, Cone overpowered the Dodgers in a complete-game, 5-1 victory in Game 6. I’m sure the effort fortified Matt’s hopes, but I was still feeling pretty good about my chances too, especially since the Dodgers had their horse ready to ride.

Prior to Game 7, Davey Johnson apparently drew flak for his comments about how the Dodgers had overused Hershiser, but he nearly proved prescient with his take on the matter. Not sharp, the Dodgers ace labored through a 25-pitch first, and the momentum may well have swung in a different direction had McReynolds’ inning-ending line drive to third found a hole.

Instead, the Mets fumbled the ball for a pair of crucial errors in the second, and by the time Gooden took over for an ineffective Ron Darling, it was too late to reel in a game that had already slipped out of reach.

This, after all, was the season of Hershiser; following his uneven first inning, L.A.’s Superman proceeded to burnish his legend by mowing down the Mets, inning after inning, until dropping to his knee after one final strikeout of Howard Johnson sealed the 6-0 clincher.

Matt was gracious in defeat the following day, handing over the $10 without any prompting (no small feat in those days – the pinky wasn’t a particularly binding force). I was gracious as well, in part because I knew the loss stung for him, but also to continue my charade of having been confident in my pick all along.

The lesson learned – sometimes it’s better to be blindly lucky than good. I probably should have taken that bit of recently acquired wisdom to try and talk to the girls, though I doubt they would have cared about my predictions for the World Series.

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.