New York Mets Starting Lineup: 1986 World Series Game 6
The 1986 New York Mets once caused $7,500 in damages on a chartered flight home after having beaten the Houston Astros in a tense, nerve-wracking 16-inning playoff game.
They snorted lines of cocaine in the plane’s bathroom. They harassed the flight attendants and had a cake fight in various stages of undress. They were a gang of drunks, pill-poppers, barroom brawlers, degenerate gamblers, womanizers, and arrogant blowhards that managed to win the hearts of New Yorkers, but were loathed by the rest of the baseball-loving world. And rightly so. Oh, and did I mention that they also won a World Series title?
The 1986 New York Mets won two of every three games they played (108-54). They averaged almost five runs a game and they beat up on the little guys in the league, going 78-30 against teams under .500, but were only six over against the other teams they played in the regular season.
Unlike the Miracle Mets of 1969, this team was constructed to win and they were expected to win following a 98-64 second place finish the year before.
Their opponent in the World Series turned out to be the Boston Red Sox who had finished the season with a 95-66 record. They had five players who made more than a million dollars that year, with Jim Rice being the highest paid at $1,994,000.
Adding another element of drama to this World Series was the “Curse of the Bambino”, which according to baseball lore was inflicted on the Red Sox when they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for a few thousand dollars. The curse would remain in effect until 2004, when perhaps fittingly the Red Sox would claim their first championship in 86 years, defeating the same Yankees along the way.
The World Series opened at Shea Stadium, one of those cookie-cutters that were cheap and thus popular during the 1970s and 80s. The Red Sox quickly spun off two wins before the series shifted back to Boston where the Mets returned the favor by taking the first two games at Fenway. The Red Sox took a 3-2 lead in the series, beating the Mets 4-2 in the fifth game.
And so the scene was set for a return to New York with the Mets having their backs to the wall and facing elimination in either of the next two games. Game Six was played on October 25, a Saturday night. It would turn out to be one of the most exciting World Series games ever played. And it would break the hearts of the Red Sox, their fans, and most of all one player in particular who will always be remembered for the ground ball that went between his legs as the winning run scored, giving the Mets life and forcing a Game Seven the following night, which the Mets would also win to snare their second World Series championship.
As we’ll see, the lineup that follows contains players who will stimulate your heart with feats on the field and then break it with their behavior off the field. Neither will be ignored.
The Mets began Game Six with a lineup that featured speed at the top, awesome power in the middle, and a couple of gimme outs at the bottom who could surprise once in a while.
So let’s begin with the leadoff hitter on that Saturday night when 55,078 fans would witness one of the most dramatic finishes ever for a World Series game.