When it comes to retrospection in the moment, the 1986 Mets have become their own version of the 1969 Mets. That is to say, it’s damn good to see them after all these years. It may not produce the electrical charge it used to, but damn good is plenty good.
I attended, in the delightful and generous company of my dear friend Jeff Hysen, Saturday’s 40th-anniversary reunion of the 1986 world champions, the last Mets team (you might have noticed) to have won a World Series. I also attended Saturday reunions on the occasions of the 20th and 30th anniversaries, when 1986 was, respectively, a while ago, and a long while ago. Maybe because 2006 and 2016 were 20 and 10 years closer to 1986 than 2026 is — as well as far more contemporarily competitive — I could feel the Flushing air bristle with excitement at the sight of the not-so-old champs. We certainly wished in ’16 and ’06 that we hadn’t been left waiting for an encore, but until we got one, we had the ’86 Mets right here in front of us. The 1986 Mets were our beau ideal of baseball like it oughta be. They still are, I suppose, but their massive accomplishments are too distant to feel remotely present. Kind of like the 1969 Mets by the time we got to their 25th and 30th anniversaries.
The people who ran the Mets in the 1970s, even while running the 1970s Mets into the ground, never shied from the 1969 legacy. There was a 10th-anniversary Old Timers Day in their honor in 1979, as bottom of the barrel a season as the Mets have ever known. It was more than damn good to see the 1969 Mets 10 years later. As many of them who weren’t playing anymore showed up at Shea to remind us miracles were possible. In 1979, it was gonna take a miracle to get us thinking anything good could ever happen to this franchise. Little would have we guessed the greatest of all things was going to happen seven years hence.
The 1969 Mets came back as a unit in 1989, in 1994, in 1999, all after 1986, all after they were no longer the most recent world champion Mets. Just about every member of the team who had been let go unceremoniously (which was just about every member of the team) had returned to the organization’s good graces, and vice-versa. The business of baseball engenders understandable grudges. The romance of baseball erases them. When the ’69 Mets came back to be celebrated, they didn’t need to go through an emotional car wash to rid themselves of the grime of having been traded or released. They returned as the Mets they always were, the Mets they’d always be. And by doing so as blessedly frequently as they did, they became just familiar enough to not be exotic. The thrill of ohmigod, the 1969 Mets are here! in 1979 evolved by the 1990s to something more like oh, the 1969 Mets are here. It was damn good to see them. The electricity might have flickered.
Changes in stadia helped replug the ’69 Mets back into our central nervous system. It meant something that so many of them were on the field for the last day at Shea. It meant something more that so many of them gathered to be feted the next August at Citi. Citi Field felt barren and soulless for its four-plus months of existence. The 1969 Mets’ 40th-anniversary reunion consecrated the grounds. The facility was now a ballpark. When as many who could came back for the 50th anniversary in 2019, I daresay the atmosphere for their reunion bordered on electric. Those are the 1969 Mets! Right here! Ohmigod!
Perhaps it’s an adjustment for nostalgic inflation to glean that the 1986 Mets at 40 are approximately where the 1969 Mets were when they were 25 or 30. We who were coming of age as something approximating adults when the 1986 Mets were storming through the National League may have been reluctant to let go of our youth as readily as our predecessors. The 1986 Mets never didn’t seem at least sort of recent when they got together again. They weren’t invited to get together again for a 10th anniversary, either because too many were still busy playing or the people who were then running the Mets didn’t wish to acknowledge a team like the 1986 Mets once roamed our earth, so when the 20th anniversary came around, and the 1986 Mets came around to get properly toasted, our response in the stands veered between cathartic and orgasmic. Between 2006 and 2016, YouTube exploded, and we kept clicking on 1986 highlights. The recency barely budged when their 30th anniversary was celebrated, which was also the “ass in the jackpot” night Noah Syndergaard sought to send a delayed message to Chase Utley. The best message would have been “get the ’86 guys down from whatever luxury suite they’re congregating in, they’ll know what to do.” It had been only 30 years. Surely our champs were still in fighting trim.
On Saturday afternoon, the edge the arrival of the 1986 Mets brought to the event they headlined was limited to memory. Helluva memory, no doubt, but c’mon. It’s 40 years. They’re entitled to recede in relevancy. We know they were rascals and rapscallions in their day. We still love the seminal clips that compose the Proustian montages. We see them as avatars of another time. It wasn’t an Old Timers Day in name, but I feel qualified to say, as someone who is roughly the same age as quite a few of the 1986 Mets, a touch of gray kind of suits us, anyway.
Did I mention it was damn good to see them as they strode out two by two, leading off with the second base platoon of Teufel and Backman, and finishing big with main men Mex and Mookie? All but one of the surviving World Series teammates were on hand. They all got a nice hand. They all deserved 116 nice hands, one for every game won from Opening Night in Pittsburgh to the final out versus Boston. They did something only one Mets team did before them, something no Mets team has done since them. The latter reality may have had something to do with the diminished edge attached to the sight of them. The 1986 Mets are golden now. They don’t gotta fight for their right to party. They won the fight and still hold the title. It’s damn good to know that. And it’s damn good to imagine a 50th-anniversary reunion when we will remember they won practically every game they played but have lost the title of most recent Mets champions.
The 2026 Mets aren’t going to do anything about that part. They were considerate enough to wear the racing stripe uniforms of 1986, a beautiful complement to the ceremonial aspects of Saturday, but they had a hard time fitting into them, and I don’t mean because of tapering issues. To say the 2026 Mets are not the 1986 Mets is not a knock, for no Mets team is the 1986 Mets. After 112 games, the 1986 Mets held a record of 75-37 and led the NL East by 18 games; with 50 games to go, their magic number was down to 33. But the 2026 Mets are not a whole lot of other Met teams when measured by record. After 112 games, the 2026 Mets are 47-65, leaving them in last place, 19½ games out of first, nowhere near any Wild Card. The only magic number the Mets were counting down Saturday, as they quietly went about losing to the Miami Marlins, was how many hours remained until the trade deadline. The 2026 Mets have the same record after 112 games as the 1977, 1978, 1979, and 2018 Mets. Fifty different Mets team posted better records after 112 games than the 2026 Mets have.
Think about the 2026 Mets too long, and you’ll find yourself unable to generate any warmth toward humankind. Think about the 1986 Mets instead. Try not to think about how long it’s been. Just remember what it was like if you can. If it doesn’t get you hot and bothered like it once did, I truly believe you’ll still feel warm all over.
My friend Jeff has had a couple of members of the 1986 Mets on his podcast, National League Town. Listen in on his conversations with Roger McDowell here, and Darryl Strawberry here.
I was thrilled by the 1986 Mets, never more so than when they proved themselves all too human when they had to struggle in the playoffs and Series; and than proved themselves all too Metsian when they relied on magic and miracles to win their title. Thrilled as I was, I never loved them like the 1969 Mets, as first loves at age 11 are not the same as complicated relationships at age 28. (Keith, Mookie and Ron were my favorites from that team; Ray Knight and Lenny Dykstra less so. Nonetheless, I was glad to see Dykstra under Darryl’s shepherding, and I hope he continues on his path toward wellness.)
And yet, being of a certain age, and hardly believing that I am, I found myself tearing up a bit yesterday, and I could hear it in Gary and Howie, too. I was in attendance in 2019, and I was at once shocked yet not surprised at how many of those 1969 Mets were either no longer with us or too frail or ill to attend. The next time we see these 1986 Mets as a team, likely 10 years from now, there will be many fewer chairs set up in the infield. And that will probably be the last time we do see them as a team.
On a much more practical note, I was shocked at the empty seats all over the ballpark, and this was a failure by the Mets marketing and PR teams. Certainly they must have known a couple of months ago that sales were lagging, and they had a terrible product to put on the field. I cannot believe they did not attempt to fill the ballpark by comping free tickets, not only to commercial sponsors but to the many charitable nonprofits they support, who all have staffs and clients they serve who would have been more than thrilled with free tix to a Mets game, especially one with this kind of celebration as a bonus. (They also could have created a free giveaway for all attendees). You simply can’t leave a stadium celebration for an iconic team almost a third empty. What a terrible look. Then it dawned on me that the team might have done all these things and the attendance was the best they could have done. And that’s just sad.
What’s that you say? There was a game played after the ceremonies? The less said about that, the better.
I was surprised and disappointed at the size of the crowd. But Y’know what? 40 years is a long time. Nobody under age 45 has meaningful memories of this team. That age group is a significant portion of ticket-buyers, and they probably weren’t interested in seeing a bunch of guys sit in folding chairs, at a premium ticket price on a beautiful summer Saturday. My 30-year-old daughter, who has recently come back to fandom with a fervor she never exhibited before, went to a pool party instead. Her generation doesn’t feel the reverence for history that I did when I revered the 69 team I was too young to remember.
I was a little disappointed in the rushed nature of things. Did they really need to march the players out in pairs? Couldn’t they have just started earlier?
Logging in to say that I got the distinct impression they were stalling in the hopes of getting some walk-up business. And also to add that it seemed quite hot, and some of those folks were sitting on those bleachers or in those chairs for a while with no protection from the sun. Did they not have a canopy of sorts for shade? At least the players were wearing caps. The whole thing just seemed sort of thrown together at the last minute.
It was good to see them, and be reminded what a real baseball team is. The 2026 Mets do not deserve to wear the same uniform. I begrudge them every racing stripe.
From what I can detect, the only living member not there was Rick Aguilera. If anyone knows why, please let us know. Of course, people like George Foster do not count. Remember when he called the Mets a racist organization after his release, even though he was replaced by Kevin Mitchell.
And from the In Memoriam segment, the only player who passed is Gary Carter.
[…] attending and kvelling from Saturday’s 1986 reunion, I caught up on the in-game interviews our most glorious alumni granted […]