The Worst Team That Money Could Buy

The Worst Team Money Could Buy by Bob Klapisch and John Harper

I was a huge New York Met fan back in the 1980s.  This was the era when if you loved baseball, you either loved or hated this team.  Since I started cheering for them back in 1984, two years before most outside the tri-state area knew much about them, I feel I was justified as not being one that “jumped on the bandwagon” as many did when they won it all in 1986, when it seemed as though a dynasty had been born.

Well, unfortunately for the Metropolitans, history had other ideas.  Although the Mets had some strong years following the ’86 triumph, they never captured their original magic of that one season.  By the time the early 1990s arrived, the team was embarrassingly awful.  That’s not to suggest that the owners didn’t try to revamp the team.  The executives figured that since their coffers were larger than most, they could simply go out and “buy” a team of superstars to wear the blue and orange and bring back the magic, which is exactly what they did before the 1992 season began.  The Mets of 1992 may have been the best team in baseball on paper.  The problem was, on the baseball diamond, they stunk.

This book mainly chronicles the 1992 season, yet slowly sutures the teams fall from their championship season six short years ago.  The authors, Bob Klapisch and John Harper were actually beat writers from two of the major New York papers, so no one really had better access to the goings ons both on and off the field.  

Oh, the drama!  There are rape investigations, drugs, press boycotts, sex, drugs, team mates fighting during team pictures, assault charges, and more drugs.  Add a lot of injuries to some star players, along with a bunch of guys who simply don’t have the chemistry, and you have one miserable season.

Klapisch and Harper detail a lot of events from the prior years leading up to the downfall, and many players that were long gone from the team by 1992, such as Darryl Strawberry and Gregg Jeffries, get as much page space as the current lineup.  The authors state in the Forward that this book was a way to get revenge against a bunch of spoiled cry babies, but what this book really is, is a lesson in mismanagement.  Sure, everything gelled in 1986, but whenever you have high priced ball players with a knack for trouble and hyperactive libidos, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it won’t take long before the kingdom comes crashing down, which is precisely what happens.  

Their “renegade” manager that takes them to the 86 championship, Davey Johnson, is hailed as a hero that year because he “treats his players like men” and doesn’t enforce many rules on the club.  Trouble is, treating your players like men won’t work when they act like spoiled brats.  A few years later, Johnson can’t handle this out-of-control bunch, and is eventually fired.  By the time 1992 arrives, the new skipper, Jeff Torborg arrives, and he has the opposite problem of being too controlling, so the team is basically in trouble.

There’s a lot of dirt within these pages, and it’s actually quite funny to see how the spoiled mighty fall.  It should be noted, however, that one really has to read this book with a large grain of salt.  The authors, remember, were beat writers, and in New York City, these guys could be brutal between the lines when reporting.  Unlike most cities, New York had seven major newspapers at the time, so in order to make your publication sell over your competitors, you had to seriously juice up your headlines and stories.  It’s no surprise that there is so much animosity between the authors and the players they cover.  Sure, the authors admit this, but they present themselves as a bit too innocent.  

Example: We read about the authors’ perception that the Mike Sciocia home run of Doc Gooden in the 1988 Championship series was the “turning point” against the Mets that caused their downfall during the playoffs, yet what really killed them was when Bob Klapisch co-authored a newspaper article with Mets pitcher David Cone after game one of the NLCS where Cone belittled the Dodgers and compared them to a “high school team”.  Once the Dodgers got wind of this newspaper story, their tempers were flared, and they turned the heat up about 1000 degrees and basically killed the Mets chances from that point forward.  Was Klapisch obliged not to print the story?  Absolutely not.  But David Cone comes across as one of the “heroes” of this book, when it actually was an act of pure stupidity for him to do such a thing.  You won’t read much about that incident here since one of the authors played such a large role in this boner.

What you will read (that is also incorrect) is how the Mets made the biggest mistake of the decade by not resigning Darryl Strawberry after the 1989 season.  The authors seem to think that, despite the troubled right-fielder’s problems (which you would need a mainframe computer to keep track of), his arrogance and dominance on the field were sadly missing during 1992.  Anyone that follows the game knows how wrong this was in hindsight, as Strawberry continued to spiral downwards even after he left the Mets.

Then we hear about all of those awful trades that the Mets made after the 1986 season that dismantled the championship caliber that made these guys clique so well.  I’m sorry, but I never bought into that.  Kevin McReynolds was just as good as Kevin Mitchell, Ray Knight wasn’t getting any younger, and even the “fiasco” of trading Len Dykstra and Roger McDowell for Juan Samuel deserves closer examination.   Fact: The 1989 Mets played better after this trade was made in midseason (check out their Won-Loss record for that season, before and after the trade).

So the authors are highly skilled in writing, as this book shows, yet a tad biased.  It’s also a remarkable study on what happens when you give a bunch of guys in their mid twenties more money, more women, and more “potentials” that most can handle.  It’s a true test of character to run a successful franchise with personalities such as this, and sadly, the New York Mets of the late eighties-early nineties blew it in a bad way.