Great behind-the-scenes look at the shenanigans of the Mets en route to winning the World Series in 1986. Fun, easy read, full of stories that were not readily available back in the day. Read it if you're a Mets fan to get a peek behind the curtain on this great team. Read it if you hate the '86 Mets to really get angry at them all over again and wonder how such a collection of terrible people beat your favorite team.

A tale of success and also what could have been, the 1986 New York Mets.
Jeff Pearlman has a knack for writing these biographies of championship teams, this one is no different. A lot of research and interviews with members of the team, and a trip down memory lane with one of the most memorable World Series championship teams in history.

There has never been a team like the 1986 New York Mets - before or since. Maybe never a team more talented. Certainly never a team more notorious.

At the end of this book, skillfully told by Jeff Pearlman (who may be the "bard of complicated athletes"), there isn't a story you could tell me (even fictional) about the members of that team that I wouldn't believe. Portions of this story I knew very well (Doc and Straw's coke problems, Kevin Mitchell's problems with violence, Lenny Dykstra's...Dykstraness). So many I didn't. If you told me Dykstra claimed to be abducted by aliens that season, I'd believe it. A wild and over talented bunch playing in a time before baseball and players became incredibly commercial and sanitized. Nothing they did would be tolerated now. Back then? They were folk heroes. It almost doesn't matter how much of it was true or not. But here we get the truth. My only flaw I can find is that this is a book that was written 20 years ago. In the years since, much has happened to the former 86 Mets (Dykstra in particular) and Mike Scott (of the Astros) has since admitted that the Mets were right all along.

I thank God every day that I never became a Mets fan. I'm a little sad every day that I never became a Mets fan.

This is an account of the 1986 Mets, they beat the Red Sox in the World Series. The Red Sox almost won it in game six, an error that created the word "Bucknered" allowed the Mets to win and go to game seven.

Jeff Pearlman is a Mets fan, you find this out in the beginning of the book, and grows up to be a sports writer. Then he goes on to Cashen, GM of the Mets when he started with the organization and his efforts to build a championship team.

The '86 Mets were not nice guys, they drank, did drugs and chased women (even some of the married players). Most of their games they came into the clubhouse to find coolers of ice cold Budweiser. The drugs of choice were cocaine and amphetamines (speed, pep pills, uppers and greenies), and getting drunk in the back of the plane was common.

While Pearlman is definitely biased towards the Mets, this is a very candid look at the team, through interviews with former players, batboys, managers and many associated with the Mets organization, it is a very well rounded look at a championship team filled with 'bad guys'. His writing is easy to follow, he makes generous use of similes, Darryl Strawberry is described as "wholesome as a Nevada brothel", "as charming as a starved pit bull" and "as lovable as a cobra". He talks about a pitcher who's pitches made him "as threatening as a doe at a rifle club".

This is a very interesting book that I would recommend to baseball fans in general and Mets fans in particular.

Baseball, beer, attitude and some coke

Baseball takes a backseat to the Mets party. The Mets were fueled by testosterone and beer. There whole team would not take shit from anyone. It’s like the grown up bad news bears. Too bad about Gooden and Strawberry. They are true enigmas who should have carried the team for many years. They seemed be stuck in a bubble that rarely ventured outside their team. The author’s style is so easy to read. He goes from story to story with no dead time. I flew through this.

Let’s go Mets baby love da Mets

This book was written in 2004, well before social media existed. Which means that by now, nearly all the escapades of the '86 Mets have been circulated ad nauseum across Facebook, Twitter, and so forth. (The most famous being the food fight and vomitorium plane ride after the NLCS, which Lenny Dykstra and many others have been eager to explain, accompanied by line drawings on YouTube.)

As a 14 year old living in Upstate - and no, Jeff Pearlman, you do NOT live in Upstate, you live barely north of Westchester which is only Upstate to obnoxious New York City folk who have think the world ceases to exist outside Manhattan - I had no clue that any of my favorite players were the complete and utter pricks they turned out to be. Imagine how they would have fared had Twitter existed.

The writing style does seem like an extended Rolling Stone column, but then again, what do you expect from an SI contributor? Smarmy metaphors and cliches are part and parcel of the business. The blow by blow account of the NLCS and WS are fluff; most of the players were already quoted time and time again by various newspapers and magazines of the time. No doubt the play by play was added to justify making this a book and not an SI special issue article.

But despite the interesting stories of hard drinking, fornicating, pranking disgusting excuses for human beings, I can't say I agree with the author who claims that sports would be more interesting with "characters." Sports players are role models whether they like it or not, and it's a good thing I had little notion of how these players actually behaved when I was a kid. I had my fair share of high school and college experiences with similar student athlete "characters" who thought the world revolved around them and I always infinitely preferred the more down to earth, respectful and humble players who didn't feel the need to shove everything in your face.

As a Mets fan the stories in this book came as a revelation; the Mets front office situation the past few years has been less than inspiring (thank you, Wilpons, who obviously have no clue what they're doing). But at least the Mets have managed to avoid having such a group of arrogant bastards for a while.

Do the bad guys always win? Let's hope not.

There's a gritty team, then there's the hard-nose, badass, party animals of the '86 Mets. You certainly won't find a team like this again.

The Immortalized 86 Mets.

As an avid Mets fan since their creation this was a great ride down memory lane. It was fun reading about Keith and the boys. The 69 Mets were phenomenal and exciting, but these boys broke a mold. The sad part was seeing the beginning of the end for 2 potential Hall of Famers-Gooden and Strawberry. Sits up there with "Boys of Summer, " and "Ball Four." Great time to read baseball books since season delayed.

Jeff Pearlman + the 80's + a sport I like = a great read. I'm not into baseball as much as wrestling, football or basketball so there was a lot I didn't know in this book. Certainly 1 for fans of the spot more than anything.

Plenty has been written about the 1986 New York Mets, one of the most colorful teams to win a World Series in the past few decades. Just HOW colorful they were is captured in this terrific book by award winning author Jeff Pearlman.

Because that particular team had so much talent, the belief was that they were going to win many championships. Why they failed to do so as been discussed in many of the aforementioned books, but instead, Pearlman writes about the character (and characters) of the team instead of analyzing them. This is what sets this book apart from other books about this team.

It didn’t matter whether a player was a tough guy from a rough place (Kevin Mitchell) or a nice guy (Mookie Wilson), a superstar (Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden) or a bench player (Ed Hearn, Tim Teufel), no Mets player goes unnoticed by Pearlman. While the title may seem to imply that there will be a lot of critical stories about the players and the team, the material is presented in a fair manner to all mentioned. This material is also very entertaining and that makes the book a joy to read.

Whether the topic is the “Scum Bunch” of Jessie Orosco, Doug Sisk and Danny Heep having drinking contests, manager Davey Johnson running the team as he sees fit no matter what General Manager Frank Cashen and the press think, or George Foster becoming an outcast (something that wasn’t easy to do on that team, according to the author), the reader will either learn something new about this team or be thoroughly entertained by the story.

The baseball sections are written just as well. The National League Championship Series against the Houston Astros is covered in great depth, with a lot of space devoted to the Mets’ fear of facing Astros ace Mike Scott. Many times, teams will psych themselves out of a win when doing that, but the Mets were able to avoid facing Scott for a game 7 in that series. Then the writing about the World Series against the Boston Red Sox is just as good. Everything from Jim Rice NOT scoring on a double in the first inning of the fateful game 6 to the elation when Orosco threw his glove in the air after the final out of game 7, the Series is covered in great detail. The culmination of all those drunken parties and incidents is reached with a championship for the Mets and the reader feels like he or she is there in person.

Mets fans will especially enjoy this account of that magical season, but readers who are interested in learning about that team and its place in history will also want to add this book to their reading collection.

http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...

Not quite as cleanly told as some of Pearlman's later books like "Showtime" and "Three-Ring Circus" yet "The Bad Guys Won!" is still an enjoyable read about one of the most interesting teams in baseball history. Having read some of his more recent books, it is kind of cool to see where he started and how he developed and refined his style of storytelling. I think one of the things "The Bad Guys Won!" actually does really well is balance the mythos and reality of the '86 Mets, a team whose legendary status on and off the field can cloud some of their factual, statistical greatness. Not the first Pearlman book I'd recommend someone, but certainly enjoyable for baseball fans or anyone who remembers Doc, Darryl, Nails, The Kid, and the rest of the '86 Amazin's.