This time, it’s personal.
I am the poster boy for the “long suffering Mets fan.” I recall being on vacation with my wife, Faith, at the end of 1991 and hearing about the acquisitions they were pulling off, big stars like Eddie Murray, Bobby Bonilla, and Bret Saberhagen, among others, as well as a new manager in Jeff Torborg. After a dismal campaign in which they had finished 74-88, things were finally looking up.
Wrong.
It was one thing after another and they finished with an even worse record (72-90). Sports scribes Bob Klapisch and John Harper chronicled this clown car in The Worst Team Money Could Buy: The Collapse of the New York Mets.
This also led indirectly to my first attempt at writing a book in 1993 after an even more horrific year in which they went 59-103, bringing them closer to the early years of blundering disappointment than the glory of the mid 80s. I called it The Winter of Our Discontent: A Mets Fan’s Lament. I collected every article I could find during the season and kept a detailed scorecard that would make Keith Hernandez envious (still have them). The only game I missed during the entire campaign was the night my wife gave birth to our daughter, Rachel; we were staying at a friend’s house in Manhattan and I failed to set the VCR correctly. But even then we found a way to fill in that “missing” contest: Faith contacted the producers at WFAN, the radio home of the Mets in those days, and explained the situation. They were kind enough to send audio of the game (on cassettes! Remember those?) so I could complete the set. Alas, nothing ever came of the project. None of the ten or so publishers to whom I wrote were inclined to pick it up. Oh, well.
Which is a very roundabout way of introducing today’s guest, Chris Donnelly, author of Road to Nowhere: The Early 1990s Collapse and Rebuild of New York City Baseball (University of Nebraska Press). His book brought back those memories and kept me glued to the pages, even if it did include the trials and tribulations of the Yankees. Maybe I’m nostalgic for a period when I was younger and relatively carefree.
One thing that stood out in particular was “Generation K,” the new rotation of Mets hot-shot pitchers that included Paul Wilson, Jason Isringhausen, and Bill Pulsioher. Talk about “what might have been.” These guys were supposed to be the next Gooden, Darling, and Fernandez, maybe even Seaver, Koosman, and whoever, destined to return the Mets to a ranking of superlative pitching. Instead, injuries and lost opportunity doomed them before they even got started. In 1996 — the first year they were set to be a unit — Wilson went 5-12, Isringhausen, 3-14, and Pulsipher was out for the entire year.
In fact, this is the third BC with Donnelly: our previous chats focused on Doc, Donnie, The Kid, and Billy Brawl: How the 1985 Mets and Yankees Fought for New York’s Baseball Soul (2019) and How the Yankees Explain New York (2014).
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.