The Bad Guys Won!

Jeff Pearlman not only takes us inside the clubhouse of this gang of jokers, ball-busters, excessive drinkers, and wildly talented ball players, he takes us onto the plane where the team celebrated their NLCS victory with such a wild party that they destroyed the jet's interior.

We learn about all the different personalities, and get inside the sad deconstruction of two of the most talented players to ever play the game. Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry simply threw their talents away. On the other end of the spectrum was Gary "the Kid" Carter. His squeaky clean image, big smile, and exuberence in front of the camera rubbed practically everyone the wrong way. Opposing players hated him and his own teammates couldn't stand him, mostly because he wasn't like them. He wasn't a drinker, a carouser, a brawler... mostly, he wasn't cool. He was a big geek and like bullies in a schoolyard, thugs can't stand a geek.

The last few pages take us to the present day, and how each of these guys are faring almost twenty years later. Undisputably, the title for most successful career from that team goes to The Kid. The only Hall Of Famer on the club, Gary Carter gives hope to all nerds getting wedgies in high schools around the country.

Someone gave me this book at the same time as the Buster Olney "Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty" book. Olney's writing was better, and even though he was chronicling the downfall of the Yankees--which is always fun--I'm a Mets fan so my vote goes to the guy writing about the Mets winning a World Series, even if they were arrogant coked up jerks.
Advantage: Pearlman.

The 1986 Mets were the "dynasty" that wasn't. In Jeff Pearlman's book about the Mets 1986 season the emphasis is on the "nasty". This account of the Mets second championship season recounts the carousing that highlighted this hated team. That the Mets were, for a brief time, more hated than the Yankees seems like an abberation.

Pearlman follows the Jimmy Breslin rule of reporting. He talks to the guys on the scene getting paid the least. Never have I seen more a baseball book related by the equipment and clubhouse personnel. These provide insights that have not been related elsewhere.

This journalistic approach serves as both the books strength and it's undoing. Jeff Pearlman is searching for a baseball Rosebud. He wasn't there, but he is trying to cover these events as if he were. The unreliability of this technique is exposed by two things. First, the opening chapter describes the Mets Roman orgy airplane flight after defeating the Astros in the National League playoffs (disclaimer:I hate the term "league championship series or "LCS"-as far as I'm concerned, post season games leading up to the World Series are Playoffs.). Trying and purporting to give an accurate account when none of the individuals could ever be expected to remember many specifics gets the book off on a titillating, but false, note.

This would not be so bad if Pearlman could earn our trust by at least getting his facts straight, but every so often he throws in a factoid that makes a close Met follower like myself react with the "huh" word. Ed Lynch did not pitch the most games for the Mets between 1982-1985 (he did have the most "Games Started"). Mike Scott is "credited with having the National Leagues highest earned run average in 1982, when it was in fact none other than Tom Seaver. Granted, these are small details, but that is the point. If we can't trust Pearlman with what can be verified, has he earned our trust with what can't be verified? This is the second thing that undermines Pearlman's "You Are There " approach.

The book is worthwhile for the coverage of the lesser lights, and the competent recap of the Met's postseason. This book would be better served by someone with Pearlman's ambition who was there.

Jeff Pearlman wasn't much older than me in 1986... deep into his junior high school years and watching the baseball playoffs on TV. While many books have been written about the 1986 Mets, most of those were from participants and first-hand observers. Jerry Izenberg and Dan Shaughnessy wrote quickly-forgotten journalistic accounts the following year, as did ghost-writers for Gary Carter and Lenny Dykstra. Of course, to say that Dykstra's book was quickly forgotten would be unjust... his book is well-remembered, but not for any of the right reasons.

Pearlman's achievement is to insert himself into the story nearly 20 years later and write an extended "Sports Illustrated"-style look at the seamy underbelly of "baseball like it oughtta be". He does this through 187 interviews, but no bibliography. Therefore, if you're keeping track of that kind of thing, it's not easy to determine which player quotes derive from fresh interviews, and which are recycled from old sources. However, his recreations of the infamous Cooter's nightclub arrests, and the trashing of the charter plane flying home from Houston after Game 6 of the NLCS, benefit from an I-was-there sardonic third-person reporting style.

John Rocker now plays baseball on Long Island, for an independent team -- for Bud Harrelson, in point of fact. The intersection is amusing for readers of "The Bad Guys Won!", as Harrelson features in the book, and as Pearlman is the guy who in some respects helped Rocker travel the terrifying downward spiral from World Series to Central Islip. As you might expect from the author who allowed Rocker to marinate in his own oratory, "The Bad Guys Won!" also features more finger-pointing than other books. Shaughnessy's "One Strike Away" tells us that Wally Backman went bowling when Game 7 of the World Series was rained out; Pearlman is more interested in following Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, and in reopening the Kevin Mitchell vs. the kitten tale, and in pointing out that some oblivious Met did some lines of coke on the way back from Houston.

Pearlman is at his best talking about the role players, whom he clearly admires: the two unnecessary Eds, Hearn and Lynch, do well here. On the other hand, George Foster, who was bounced out of baseball before the playoffs began, doesn't merit the author's sympathy; I would have expected Pearlman to defend him, simply because no-one else ever did. The playoff game accounts are authentic. Pearlman has clearly spent a lot of time with the game tapes and ESPN Classic rebroadcasts, as he takes time to describe the flight path of the toilet paper roll spiraling behind Mookie Wilson just before Bob Stanley wild pitched the tying run home.

"Bad Guys" is a short, meaty read, providing a new look at often-told tales about a bunch of players who won it all and then promptly raced into early obscurity. A few days after I finished the book, new allegations about Lenny Dykstra popped up in the media. Clearly Pearlman may have been on to something.

When I first read an excerpt of this book I was floored. Just the excerpt made me remember that group of ballplayers. The only one I liked was Mookie. I grew up as a Cub fan and that stretch of Mets was so hated.
The first time I ever swore in front of my father and didn't get smacked was when I was swearing at Gary Carter. After this book I wanna swear at him some more.
Dykstra, Hernandez, Knight, I hated them all. Now I'm glad they didn't stick together to kick the Cubs around for another 5 years.
Pearlman's personal investment in his subjects seems to detract a little from a complete madhouse story about a bunch of madhouse escapees, but he gets the job done with an obviously sympathetic style. So many "what ifs" and so few answers. Jesse Orosco's presence will be felt forever.