Twenty years ago today, the Mets won us a World Series. Today, on the heels of the promised year of Fridays in which we commemorated that victory, I want you to win two.

We have another copy of The New York Mets Vintage World Series Films DVD from A&E Home Video to make yours. It is a restored, digital rendering of the official MLB 1969 and 1986 Fall Classic retrospectives. You probably saw them on Channel 9 or SportsChannel a long time ago. And you probably haven't seen anything better since approximately the top of the sixth inning of last Thursday night.

I have prepared yet another 20-question quiz for you to prove your worthiness for this excellent prize. Last time, I asked you to dig deep into the Flashback Friday archives and find me the answers in the essays. This time, in what amounts to our '86 retrospective coda, you need only stop at the top. Every question relates to the headline of an FBF. Below I describe a musical artist. You need to a) identify that artist and b) tell me which Flashback Friday headline/song title that artist had a hit with in 1986.

Of course, loyal reader, you'll remember it was a mere two weeks ago that I explained that every Flashback headline was a song title from that golden year. And because you pay Met-iculous attention to every word we write here, I'm going to sweeten the deal. In addition to the DVD, I am throwing in two souvenirs from the postseason just past. You get a beautiful collector's pin from the National League Championship Series (I find myself with a surfeit; cherish the Mets logo, defile that of the Cardinals) and a true piece of Faith and Fear history: the ACTUAL sheet of paper on which it was calculated how many times the Mets won two games in a row in 2006. That's the genuine source material for our October 18 post urging us all to keep the Faith in Flushing. The content proved half-right but the comment thread was completely inspirational.

You can't find it in stores. You can only win it here.

The piece of paper, I mean. You can actually find the DVD in stores or online. But cut out the middleman, answer some questions and save yourself a few bucks.

As was the case in our first quiz, the first to submit all the correct answers (artist and song title) by e-mail (faithandfear@gmail.com) wins the prize package. If nobody comes up with all 20, the most correct answers received soonest will be declared the winner. A tiebreaker bonus question is included to either break ties or create new ones. If we're deadlocked after all that…ah, I'll think of something.

It's a challenging quiz, but it's not like we have anything better to do with our baseball lives between now and the middle of February.

All headlines are accessible by clicking on the Flashback Friday link at the top of each FBF post (starting with the last one in the series and flashing back to the previous week's and so on). They are also conveniently listed on our sidebar under Greatest Hits of 1986.

All entries must be received by 12:01 AM, Friday November 3 (unless a winner is declared prior, in which case put down your pencils). One set of entries accepted per contestant. Our previous winner, though he seems like a really nice guy, is ineligible to win again. All judge's decisions are final. All contestants really should have been listening to the radio and watching MTV a lot in 1986.

Remember: Artist and corresponding Flashback Friday title are required for each correct answer.

As Billy Ocean said, when the going gets tough, the get going. So get going and go get 'em.

1. This group was featured in the movie Stop Making Sense, a sentiment that's been largely unnecessary in the New York sports conversation since the debut of irrational WFAN in 1987.

2. As long as we're picking on the dopey underbelly of all-sports radio, you could say there are two of these in the 1:00-6:30 PM time slot, Monday through Friday at 660 AM. (In other words, I don't consider them complex thinkers.)

3. One of the most successful duos of the '80s, it was really more like a solo act plus one…not unlike how Ray Knight and Howard Johnson formed a third base platoon that was mostly Knight when it counted.

4. Hey, hey, they were gone for a long time before 1986 but an unforeseen revival culminated in a comeback hit that pretty much described their sudden, 75%-strength reappearance on the pop scene, previously versus presently.

5. One of my favorite lyrics from my sappy, lovelorn phase of two decades ago was “if you would just be sensible, you'd find me indispensable.” The sentiment didn't work for me, but it booked this group its only Top 40 hit in Billboard.

6. Two of the three guys in this band prowled about in another far more successful band before. The guy they left behind went on to swing for the fences. The trio that was formed without him struck out on the charts the way the Mets did against Mike Scott.

7. In '86, this group's name could have been used to identify the Phillies, the Cardinals, the Expos, the Cubs and the Pirates. After all, the Mets were our division's only contenders.

8. This solo artist was once involved with a future Met, but she was done with him by '86 (and the Mets were done with him pretty quickly themselves when they got him on the professional rebound in 1990).

9. These fellows formed the next generation of a long-running family act whose classic party hit is more identified with another team that called Mario Cuomo its governor in the mid-'80s and early-'90s (when said team really had something to shout about).

10. The Mets were National. The Red Sox were American. But all of us, theoretically, belong to this circuit.

11. Mookie left. Lenny left. Roger left. Keith left. Gary left. But this five-man outfit wheeled into Shea in 1989, the year all those '86 legends made their exits.

12. She began to be adopted as a worldwide favorite at almost the same time the K Korner took in Doc Gooden as its own. When it comes to remaining in the public eye, she thanks her lucky stars that she still has her fastball.

13. His 1986 hit didn't do so good (so good) on the charts, but his voice, via a 1969 smash, became a staple at Shea in October 2006. Most sang along with him, but some snorted he didn't sound so good (so good) outside a certain other ballpark. Hint: Don't be headed for his 1969 hit here — it's not the answer we're looking for.

14. Pete Rose and Eric Davis were two who would have easily blended right in with this chart-topping group in 1986.

15. If you watched television enough last summer, you probably saw this Hall of Famer excitedly shill a bit of insurance. Didn't say he was a baseball Hall of Famer, however.

16. One of rock's most elegant solo acts, he became best known for being surrounded by a bevy of backup musicians and singers who didn't appear to have much to say in his videos and, later, cola commercial.

17. He went by a very clever nickname, one that poured beautifully off his first name. Thanks to Jose Canseco, the word he used for his nickname now carries an entirely different meaning in baseball.

18. She could take the Babylon line from where she grew up, change at Woodside and take her best shot at being at Shea in probably an hour-and-a-half. Whether she ever did is another matter.

19. This singer didn't quit his day job so much as take a different one in early 2006. He had a hard act to follow and didn't follow it very well at all, ironic in that in 1986 he was a hard act to follow but was followed successfully. Anyway, in '06 his day job (specifically, a morning shift) quit on him.

20. Many of the artists whose songs graced Flashback Friday were artists who had been absent from the charts for quite a while prior to 1986. This group was one of those, and the video for their big comeback hit reflected the band's 1960s roots with, yup, a flashback.

TIEBREAKER: What song, not necessarily a previous Flashback Friday headline, was No. 1 on Billboard 20 years ago today when the Mets won what is still their most recent world championship? I just wanna have the title that topped the page.

Game Four of the World Series (in St. Louis, not my imagination) was rained out last night. May be rained out tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. Who can keep up?
Who cares to?
Back when we were just some second-rate, second-division afterthought, I probably would have. Baseball fans watch baseball games and I'm a baseball fan. Yet after our having filled the collective role of Icarus from April 3 to October 19, I suspect a lot to most of us wing-melted Mets fans have landed on Pluto where this Tiger-Cardinal matchup is concerned. And we're not alone. Dancing With The Stars outrated Game Three of the freaking World Series and that was with Game Three going off as scheduled. On a Thursday night, which is übercompetitive in network television to begin with (even without new eps of Earl and The Office, dang it), I suspect the numbers will plunge to Bob Gibson 1968 levels.
I'd like to believe it's because America is absolutely mournful that its Mets — how could a team as beautiful as ours belong to merely a single city? — are missing from action. But that's not it. The World Series ain't what it used to be in terms of national glue and it has nothing to do with participant market size. I really miss those days when baseball was everything to everybody even if I never lived in them. In Memories of Summer, the great Roger Kahn described the phenomenon of autumn as it existed when he prepared to cover his first Fall Classic in 1952, New York (A) at Brooklyn:
Six hundred of the best and most popular sportswriters in the country would cover every inning of every game. The ranks included […] Vincent X. Flaherty of San Francisco. The closest major league stadium, Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, stood 2,140 miles east of Flaherty's home base, but the old World Series transcended geography. It was a front page story across the country, especially exotic to people who lived thousands of miles away. Few Americans had seen anything more of a World Series than patchy black-and-white scenes worked into newsreels. Those glimpses left imagination free to roam.
Now the World Series is just something Fox airs so it can plug the BCS and Brad Garrett. The USA doesn't need an excuse to ignore it. Giving it the mostly anonymous Tigers and momentarily overachieving Cardinals certainly helps, though.
A few days ago, stripped of fresh Met nits to pick, my regular e-mail group was trying to realign baseball to buy us a more favorable outcome. I've read everything from four eight-team divisions to eight four-team divisions (we're expanding, apparently). I'm tempted to say let's just go back to two leagues: the Mets in one, everybody else in another, us in the World Series no matter what.
The root of my friends' not altogether unreasonable gripe with the system is how the fudge can a 97-win behemoth like ours sit home while some non-entity that barely finished over .500 gets t-shirts and stuff? Of course we all pay lip service to 1973, but it is frustrating when October Madness places the Red shoe on the other foot, namely ours. I took it as total sour grapes until I read Sports Illustrated and it was noted that “St. Louis had 83 wins, which ranked them 13th among Major League teams this year.”
THIRTEENTH? Really? Geez. How did that happen?
Oh yeah, we stopped hitting.
I doubt the Dancing With The Stars crowd would be moved by statistical niceties, but 13th-winningest team is a little jarring. The Blue Jays were better. The Phillies were better. Nearly half of baseball was better. In 1973, only eight teams had more wins than us (“only,” he says with a straight face). But 1973 was…well, it was 1973. It was a magic fluke. The Cardinals, at least until they reveal themselves transcendent, are just some decent team from a lousy division that got on a roll when somebody else fell into a slump. They're also two wins from a world championship.
Rain. Don’t rain. Whatever.
Programming Notes:
• While the Mets gave away a World Series last week, we will attempt to give away a World Series DVD tomorrow, the one with highlights from 1969 and 1986, two years when baseball's playoff setup was astoundingly perfect. There will be a quiz, for which I offer this advance hint: title & artist.
• Next week, look for a proper Faith and Fear retrospective on that semi-championship season, 2006. I don't know what's going to happen in 2007, but I'm pretty handy with a rearview mirror.

Game Four of the World Series (in St. Louis, not my imagination) was rained out last night. May be rained out tonight. Or maybe tomorrow. Who can keep up?

Who cares to?

Back when we were just some second-rate, second-division afterthought, I probably would have. Baseball fans watch baseball games and I'm a baseball fan. Yet after our having filled the collective role of Icarus from April 3 to October 19, I suspect a lot to most of us wing-melted Mets fans have landed on Pluto where this Tiger-Cardinal matchup is concerned. And we're not alone. Dancing With The Stars outrated Game Three of the freaking World Series and that was with Game Three going off as scheduled. On a Thursday night, which is übercompetitive in network television to begin with (even without new eps of Earl and The Office, dang it), I suspect the numbers will plunge to Bob Gibson 1968 levels.

I'd like to believe it's because America is absolutely mournful that its Mets — how could a team as beautiful as ours belong to merely a single city? — are missing from action. But that's not it. The World Series ain't what it used to be in terms of national glue and it has nothing to do with participant market size. I really miss those days when baseball was everything to everybody even if I never lived in them. In Memories of Summer, the great Roger Kahn described the phenomenon of autumn as it existed when he prepared to cover his first Fall Classic in 1952, New York (A) at Brooklyn:

Six hundred of the best and most popular sportswriters in the country would cover every inning of every game. The ranks included […] Vincent X. Flaherty of San Francisco. The closest major league stadium, Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, stood 2,140 miles east of Flaherty's home base, but the old World Series transcended geography. It was a front page story across the country, especially exotic to people who lived thousands of miles away. Few Americans had seen anything more of a World Series than patchy black-and-white scenes worked into newsreels. Those glimpses left imagination free to roam.

Now the World Series is just something Fox airs so it can plug the BCS and Brad Garrett. The USA doesn't need an excuse to ignore it. Giving it the mostly anonymous Tigers and momentarily overachieving Cardinals certainly helps, though.

A few days ago, stripped of fresh Met nits to pick, my regular e-mail group was trying to realign baseball to buy us a more favorable outcome. I've read everything from four eight-team divisions to eight four-team divisions (we're expanding, apparently). I'm tempted to say let's just go back to two leagues: the Mets in one, everybody else in another, us in the World Series no matter what.

The root of my friends' not altogether unreasonable gripe with the system is how the fudge can a 97-win behemoth like ours sit home while some non-entity that barely finished over .500 gets t-shirts and stuff? Of course we all pay lip service to 1973, but it is frustrating when October Madness places the Red shoe on the other foot, namely ours. I took it as total sour grapes until I read Sports Illustrated and it was noted that “St. Louis had 83 wins, which ranked them 13th among Major League teams this year.”

THIRTEENTH? Really? Geez. How did that happen?

Oh yeah, we stopped hitting.

I doubt the Dancing With The Stars crowd would be moved by statistical niceties, but 13th-winningest team is a little jarring. The Blue Jays were better. The Phillies were better. Nearly half of baseball was better. In 1973, only eight teams had more wins than us (“only,” he says with a straight face). But 1973 was…well, it was 1973. It was a magic fluke. The Cardinals, at least until they reveal themselves transcendent, are just some decent team from a lousy division that got on a roll when somebody else fell into a slump. They're also two wins from a world championship.

Rain. Don’t rain. Whatever.

Programming Notes:

• Next week, look for a proper Faith and Fear retrospective on that semi-championship season, 2006. I don't know what's going to happen in 2007, but I'm pretty handy with a rearview mirror.

Three hundred twenty-three regular-season games. Six National League Division Series games. Seven National League Championship Series games. Two exhibition games. One intrasquad game. Two games rained out after I sat down. One baseball card show.
I've been inside Shea Stadium quite a bit. But never was I as cold as I was Tuesday night. And never did I care less.
It was gloves and ski caps and blankets and every thermal underthing I could steel myself in. It was still freezing. It's taken me this long to thaw my fingers lest they shatter on contact with a computer keyboard.
But you endure a few inconveniences for your first World Series game. Given the choice between the warm and comfy couch and the laughingly labeled “Fall” Classic (correct only in the chronological sense — assuming it's still October), I'll take going out to meet Jack Frost in Flushing every time.
Jack Frost? How about Jack Delgado? Let's call him that from now on for his one, no two jacks that made Jim Leyland presumably the warmest soul in Flushing. Yeah, I'd be lighting up in the runway, too, if I saw my clean-handed lefty starter go down in flames, so to speak, when Delgado went the other way on him not once but twice. Two two-run homers to left for our Roberto Clemente Award winner. Throw in the deuce by his lefty buddy Shawn Green, the stab and throw by Wright on Polanco and six good ones by leading man John Maine with best supporting action from Mota, Feliciano and Hernandez (take the night off, Billy) and you've got the Mets' first home World Series win in exactly six years.
We should really be in these things more often.
I'm 1-0 in World Series play, dammit. That's almost as special as the Mets being 2-1 in this particular set of games. Almost.
We (Laurie and me — nice birthday present, don't you think?) got there early to get our shivering underway ahead of the rush. But when you've been waiting a lifetime to see the Mets in a World Series at Shea Stadium, you don't mind. We got our silly towels and waved them for warmth. OK, so they only contributed to the breeze, but at our altitude, we lost the ability to think clearly.
They say a World Series congregation is calmer than your average, regular-fan crowd. I don't know about that, seeing as how I have only one World Series game under my belt and we were far from the corporate swells of urban field level myth. It was plenty loud in the upper deck, just as it was in the NLDS and NLCS. It was pretty savvy at times, too, not just sticking it to Kenny Rogers when he was introduced — Piiiine Taaaar has replaced Laaaarrrreeee in the Shea arsenal of insults — but resurrecting, of all things, the ol' “everybody say Rey-O!” in spots for Magglio Ordoñez (who quite fortunately hit like our erstwhile Gold Glove shortstop and goodwill ambassador).
Not that there weren't dollops of stupidity. For example, I came upon a gent I noticed during Game Six of the Cardinal series, a fellow with a blue and orange Mohawk, a black Mets jersey (the buttons of which were no use to him) and, apparently, a tab with his local Anheuser-Busch distributor. He was imploring us, the whole of Section 22, to let loose. We didn't really need his help, which irked him when one of his exhortations fell flat. “You sons of bitches,” he grumbled before moving onto UD 24.
I'll miss that guy next week, but enough of him for now. I didn't come to see him. I came to see the World Bleeping Series. I wondered if it would be tangibly different from any other postseason game. It was. Besides being colder, it's longer. The between-innings stuff takes forever. But you put up with it because a) it's the World Series; b) the Mets are in it; c) would you rather this be going on in St. Louis?
Don't know what they showed on TV — I don't dare record these things — but I loved that the Mets brought back everybody who played with them this year for the introductions, at least everybody who isn't with another team. I'm thrilled to report for Laurie's sake that Victor Zambrano got a nice hand. Even Jose Lima was cheered. The coolest was when they stuck a familiar face from behind the home dugout on the DiamondVision. It was Pittsburgh Pirate rightfielder Xavier Nady. He went without official comment (is there a rule against it?) but a big round of applause ensued and swelled.
Bringing back Davey Johnson to throw out the first ball, alongside Joan Hodges, was what brought me to my feet the longest. I was there the night in 1992 when Davey first came back for an Old Timers event (then known as the Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball). The Mets were playing Pittsburgh that night. Leyland was the opposing manager then and trotted out seven pitchers in nine innings to beat us 3-2. Willie Randolph played second for us and went 0-for-5. This was by far the happier homecoming.
I loved when they unfurled the giant American flag (where do they put it when they're not using it — Yosemite?) and really loved it when Simon & Garfunkel came out to do not the national anthem but their own “America,” as in having gone to look for. I guess they were our hometown answer to Bob Seger singing “America The Beautiful” at Comerica the other night (up 2-1 in Series games, up 2-1 in area legends). The mere mention of “Michigan” as “a dream to me now” rated a boo, while the Use Mass Transit pleas must have filtered up to Paul and Artie because I swear I heard them say they were “counting the cars on the Long Island Rail Road”. That, however, could be my commuter's imagination.
How do you top a performance like that? How about Tim McGraw ending the actual “Star Spangled Banner” by shouting “New York, You Gotta Believe!”? Well, that gave me more chills than the wind. Believe we did and rewarded we were from there.
Going to see the Mets in the World Series at Shea Stadium is about exactly the way I pictured it when I dared to imagine it in the middle of the playoffs. We got a win, we took the lead, there was once-in-my-lifetime pageantry, I dropped a pretty penny on programs, pennants and pins and, quite self-absorbedly, I can say I saw the World Series at Shea Stadium. By attending Game Three, my final 2006 record, regular & post, was elevated to a blessed .500 at 14-14.
Yes, that's my final game for this World Series. Next year I'll want to do it again, but for now — at last — I'm no longer out in the cold.

Granted, I'd like to be leading two-oh going into Game Three, but I like our chances with the World Series one-one coming to Shea tonight. I also like John Maine. A lot.
Let's shake off Game Two. Whatever it is Kenny Rogers did or didn't have on his hand, we can assume he was waiting seven years for this chance. Glavine pitched well, Rogers pitched better. Let's just put it behind us. At least we've seen him. Besides, if Kenny Rogers' postseason has been a shock, you have to take El Duque's return in Game One as at least a mild surprise. Guy doesn't pitch for weeks and he gives us seven solid innings before turning it over to Aaron and Billy (a 1-2-3 ninth at last!).
This thing's turning right back in our favor. Wright has begun to hit. Beltran's still hot (fouling off that impossible curve ball from Wainwright, staying alive and stroking that walkoff triple on the next pitch, of course he's still hot). Chavez we know can field. He's bound to poke another one through the infield like he did off Verlander to win Saturday night.
I guess it all comes down to Maine. He pitches very well at Shea as he proved in Game One of the NLDS and Game Six of the NLCS. He's got to avoid mistakes to Monroe and Inge, who are killing us, but he's also got to stay aggressive. He has a little American League experience and that can't hurt (though if it were that impressive, I imagine he'd still be an Oriole; I wonder what Kris and Anna are doing tonight…oh yeah, same as La Russa and Molina: watching us). We wouldn't be here without him and Perez, and I like the both of them in Games Three and Four. But let's just focus on Game Three. That's what at Shea tonight.
Jose will get on and Lo Duca, bad thumb and all, will move him along, and the rest you already know. We play our game, we can win. And all of us, we're the tenth through 56,000th man, as in man, I can't wait to get out there tonight! My first World Series game. The Tigers think they know loud? Forget it. This is the Mets' den. I'm so excited, I'm shaking again.
Gonna be a cold one. Gotta go start layering.
Let's Go Mets!

Both teams look like garbage, Dad. All's I know is Da Bears could be kicking some major butt right now.
—Denise Swerski
I never realized how boring this game is.
—Homer Simpson
I'd hide under the sink except Tommy Lasorda beat me to it.
Endy Chavez himself could not save this matchup from sailing out of Consciousness Park.
Where's that 1988 division-clincher when we need it?
It's not who's not playing in this World Series. It's who is. The Cardinals I completely begrudge and the Tigers, scattered familiar personages notwithstanding, I simply do not know.
No doubt Detroit is populated by deserving fans pulling for swell fellows, but given my weekend-long dwelling upon of the events of last Thursday night (Bunt? Nah. Maybe. Nah. I dunno.), I am not in the mood for introductions at this late date. That's Pudge, and there's Casey, and I think that guy helped lose 119 games, and Leyland as ever appears three Marlboros from a lung transplant…yeah, that's about it.
Good luck Tigers, whoever you are.
Surprisingly, La Russa's only the second-smarmiest bastard I've encountered thus far. Even he takes a back seat to that smug, self-congratulatory SOB CEO who bought his employees ergonomic chairs and a puppy with Mastercard. I hope he and Tony the Genius go into business together and are charged with sexual harassment by Yadier Molina.
And that Molina falls down a hole.
I'm doing my duty, Judy. I'm watching. I'm not saying I'm not dozing off here and there, but I've got it on. Maybe something interesting — like Kenny Rogers washing his mysteriously filthy left hand again — will occur and I'll be compelled to revise my initial impressions. But compelling is the last thing I'd expect from these teams.
(And to think somebody told me he was impressed by my complete lack of bitterness the other day.)

Both teams look like garbage, Dad. All's I know is Da Bears could be kicking some major butt right now.

—Denise Swerski

I never realized how boring this game is.

—Homer Simpson

I'd hide under the sink except Tommy Lasorda beat me to it.

Endy Chavez himself could not save this matchup from sailing out of Consciousness Park.

Where's that 1988 division-clincher when we need it?

It's not who's not playing in this World Series. It's who is. The Cardinals I completely begrudge and the Tigers, scattered familiar personages notwithstanding, I simply do not know.

No doubt Detroit is populated by deserving fans pulling for swell fellows, but given my weekend-long dwelling upon of the events of last Thursday night (Bunt? Nah. Maybe. Nah. I dunno.), I am not in the mood for introductions at this late date. That's Pudge, and there's Casey, and I think that guy helped lose 119 games, and Leyland as ever appears three Marlboros from a lung transplant…yeah, that's about it.

Good luck Tigers, whoever you are.

Surprisingly, La Russa's only the second-smarmiest bastard I've encountered thus far. Even he takes a back seat to that smug, self-congratulatory SOB CEO who bought his employees ergonomic chairs and a puppy with Mastercard. I hope he and Tony the Genius go into business together and are charged with sexual harassment by Yadier Molina.

And that Molina falls down a hole.

I'm doing my duty, Judy. I'm watching. I'm not saying I'm not dozing off here and there, but I've got it on. Maybe something interesting — like Kenny Rogers washing his mysteriously filthy left hand again — will occur and I'll be compelled to revise my initial impressions. But compelling is the last thing I'd expect from these teams.

(And to think somebody told me he was impressed by my complete lack of bitterness the other day.)