if i could give this two and a half, i would. even for a fan, it can be a little inside baseball at times. and twenty years gives some perspective about changing cultural norms; the writing - not the bad behavior, that's a given - the writing seems sexist af in 2022. i was thinking about how The Dirt didn't make me feel that way, and i think it's because that's an oral history - those are the band member's own words. here, the author is calling players' wives bimbos, and that kind of takes some of the fun out of watching the players act out.

if this were an oral history, i think it would be a much better book.

There are few more iconic teams and few more iconic World Series than the legendary 1986 Mets, loaded with lightning rod personalities that still resonate to this day, and capped with one of the best Fall Classics ever. In charting the path, antics and and characters of this immortal squad, Jeff Pearlman brings the reader into the world of baseball in the 1980s, and displays the bright lights, chaos and hard living of a team that defined an era and featured figures that continue to tower over the game to this day, even as only one member of the ‘86 Mets (as of this writing) sits enshrined in the hall of fame. Pearlman often revels in the dirty laundry and attitude of the figures he profiles in his books, and while that can be off putting at times, especially when it pushes the athletics to the back seat, it fits in this book because of the reputation these players cultivated in their time and have carried with them since.
tTracking the rise and brief reign of these Kings of Queens, Pearlman expertly examines what made this team so good, what made them so different, and the dynamics that led this team to becoming one of the absolute best squads of all time. With even more time passed since the publication of the book, allowing more time for reflection, this book only improves as the fortunes and misfortunes and the players in their day continue to play out. For any baseball fan, this is an excellent, fun, and engaging ride down memory lane and through the grit and grime of a truly classic clubhouse.

i fear the obsession has led to me reading baseball books and listening to college football podcasts like a middle aged dad. but i mean, what else is there to say? my favorite sports team of all time! reflecting on the crazy 2024 season and what's happened since...we've come a longggggg way :)

Very enlightening book!

Sometimes funny and sometimes sad! Spoiled brats with no class! Carter must have been a real jerk to his team mates.

Great read for a team that played a big part of my high school years. I love how Pearlman was able to blend all the stories of the players into a coherent story and yet kept the focus on the '86 World Series team. Though I followed the team everyday in the papers growing up, I had no idea about all the back stories that were taking place - and Pearlman is spot on that it will be a long time if ever when we see a team like this again. Definitely worth the read about a crazy team that focused on winning and found a way to believe in themselves on the field while operating as crazy fanatics off the field.

The team of my youth & enthusiasm! Great to revisit this memorable season, tho the author finds he needs to constantly stress his chosen title/premise with all the sordid stories he can dig up. It wears thin after a while; there were plenty of other crazy characters on other teams. Lots of great stories about these characters, their differences & their chemistry together, & it is also chock full of fascinating history & information alongside the madness, like the "origin" of GM Frank Cashen & a review of the lengthy, remarkable career of Bill Buckner. Also notable is the (radical?) notion that both Doc & Daryl were innocent, albeit very different, kids when drafted, and the recognition of the cruel & capricious forces that changed them with such terrible results. The writing when describing actual baseball games is first rate, and there were some great ones that year, & particularly that postseason, for sure. I wish there were more of that, because I really loved this team & these characters. With the obligatory "where are they now?" section sadly more than ten years out of date, the deflating feeling that accompanies the book's end - which covers the Mets' failure to achieve dynasty status & the quick dismantling of this team - is now amplified.

SO entertaining, by the end I was addicted. I’m also sad it’s over. My only drawback as someone who isn’t overly familiar with baseball history, I both listened to this on audiobook and read it, so it took me about halfway through to get all the characters straight, and some of the references I didn’t get. It didn’t matter as much as I thought— the anecdotes in here are so vivid and outlandish, that it almost seems fiction in today’s era. Jeff’s writing is fast-paced, easy to follow and his metaphors are creative. Definitely worth the read for any baseball or just sports fan for a historic, fun read.

Three years ago, I discovered a list called "The Best Baseball Books Ever" on the Major League Baseball (MLB) website. I vowed to read every book on it that I hadn't yet read. I've now read most of them. I wish I had read this one earlier, when the New York Mets were a relatively harmless division rival of the Phillies instead of the team that embarrassed them in the 2024 postseason.

In 1986, the Mets won the World Series. Jeff Pearlman, a sportswriter and lifelong Mets fan who grew up near New York City, was excited to be given the opportunity to write a book about the 1986 Mets in the early 2000s. He interviewed many of the players, front office personnel, and other employees to get their takes on what happened, as well as researching news accounts of that time.

Most of the 1986 Mets players figure in the book, including four in particular: pitcher Dwight Gooden, outfielder Darryl Strawberry, catcher Gary Carter, and first baseman Keith Hernandez. Gooden and Strawberry were young players with star potential who had already experienced success in previous years, but something seemed "off" about them in 1986. It was eventually revealed that they had drug habits and were prone to off-field violence, especially domestic assault.

Carter and Hernandez had arrived via trades from other teams over the previous few years. Both of them assumed team leadership positions and were proficient in both hitting and fielding. (Hernandez is considered by some to be one of the best fielding first baseman in major league history, and Carter was eventually elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.)

The regular season section of the book does not roll out sequentially, instead focusing on highlights that tie together different parts of the season. One chapter tells the story of four Mets players who went to a bar in Houston that was known for being a hangout for well-known athletes after a game one night. One of the players was second baseman Tim Teufel, a devout Christian who normally didn't frequent bars but was convinced to go with the others to celebrate his baby son's recent birth. After the others got Teufel to drink more alcohol than he had probably drunk at one time before, the players got into a scuffle bad enough to get them arrested. It was, of course, an embarrassment to the team, and it did not endear them to the citizens of Houston.

At the time, the Houston Astros were still in the National League, and after the Mets won the NL East championship, their opponent in the National League Championship Series was none other than the Astros. Houston boasted a star pitcher, Mike Scott, who was considered to be unbeatable. But the Mets got past the Astros when other pitchers were on the mound.

Their opponent in the World Series was the Boston Red Sox, who were looking to overcome the curse of having traded Babe Ruth to that other New York team and had not won a World Series since 1918. The Red Sox had two pitchers that the Mets had to overcome. One was their ace, Roger Clemens. The other was lefthander Bruce Hurst. The Mets' batting order fared better against righthanded pitchers than they did against lefthanders. By the time of Game 6, held in the Mets' home ballpark, Shea Stadium, the Red Sox held a 3-2 lead and could win the championship that night.

Most baseball fans and even some who are not baseball fans know how that one ended. The Mets were one strike away from losing the World Series. Champagne had been moved into Boston's locker room for a celebration. The scoreboard operator had already composed a congratulatory message for the vising Red Sox (and in fact, it accidentally displayed for about five seconds).

But then a ground ball went through the legs of Boston first baseman Bill Buckner, and the Mets scored the winning run to tie the World Series. They then won a Game 7, which featured some lead changes along the way, to claim the World Series Championship.

The final chapter examines why the team did not become the dynasty that was expected of them. Two major reasons were the problems experienced by Strawberry and Gooden; the latter didn't even show up at the team's ticker tape parade, and the reason was suspected to be too much substance abuse the night before. There were also some ill-advised trades, including one that sent centerfielder Lenny Dykstra and prankster relief pitcher Roger McDowell to the Phillies. Dykstra immediately became a major contributor to the Phillies, especially in their 1993 NL Championship year.

Despite my prejudice against the Mets, the book itself is well-written, and I enjoyed following the team's exploits through that year.

I used this book to fulfill the activity to read a book that's been on my To Be Read list for a long time (if you consider three years to be a long time) for the William Jeanes Library's Adult Winter Reading Program.
-Patron R.L.

Another Entertaining Read!

Typical Pearlman writing! Great insights, a fine personal opinion tastefully, yet directly infused! No qualifiers; no "...yeah, but..." comments. Just simply a good book!

Growing up I detested the New York Mets for an event that happened before I was born. Many people refer to 1969 as the year of the Miracle Mets, and I refer to it as the year of the black cat that perpetuated the Cubs ever present curse. The year 2015 brought a new era of detesting the Mets in the form of a post season playoff sweep, bringing my level of abhorring the Mets to a new high. When we moderators of the baseball book group agreed to read The Bad Guys Won by Jeff Pearlman this month, featuring the 1986 edition of the Mets baseball team, I begrudgingly agreed to read along. Surprisingly, I found myself ahem enjoying this narrative, not because the Mets won, but because of the hair raising stories that the team got into along the way.

The 1980s were a time of transition for baseball in New York. The Yankees, the preferred New York baseball team in our home, had not won the world series since 1978 and would not do so again until 1996. The Mets had not been to the world series since 1973 and fought the Cubs each year for the right to finish last. The team was even in need of a 5th Avenue advertising agency to promote the woeful product on the field because the team itself was downright awful. The new millionaire owners of the Mets desired to win but had no idea how to run a baseball team. Recommended to them was Frank Cashen, the architect of the Baltimore Orioles teams of the early 1970s that challenged for and won two world series crowns. Slowly but surely, Cashen was entrusted with the job of putting together a winning team in Manhattan, a team that would surpass the Yankees in wins, attendance, and capture the pathos of the city.

The book is aptly titled The Bad Guys Won because to me the Mets are the bad guys, the villains. Here, however, the 1986 Mets who went on to win 108 games, really were a bunch of bad guys. Nicknamed the Scum Bunch, the team pulled some downright awful pranks and left the rest of baseball in its wake. Before major league baseball cleaned up its act, players would be snorting cocaine in the locker room on game day. There were massive amounts of booze, drugs, and women on every road trip. Drugs ruined the career of one Dwight Gooden, also known as Dr K, who looked like he would be the most dominant pitcher of the decade. Instead, cocaine got to him and he was in and out of rehab for the rest of his career. The moniker of best hurler of the decade instead went to Boston's Roger Clemens, who ended up being associated with drugs and drug usage during the latter part of his career. Beside the drugs, players pranked one another left and right whether it was replacing golf balls with hard boiled eggs or setting shoes on fire. The Mets did it all, and the few wholesome characters were either alienated or forced to play along with the stunts. Most chose to do the latter as they wanted to be along for the ride that was the 1986 season.

The Mets, as most championship teams do, featured household names as Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, and Gary Carter, along with role players as Tim Teufel and Mookie Wilson. Before baseball split into three division, the Mets played in the same national league east as the Cubs so I remember these players well, mainly because they always trounced the Cubs on the field. The 1986 team trounced the entire national league en route to their championship. Besides the pranks and stunts, the team was loaded at every position and featured a pitching staff that enjoyed collectively the best year of their careers. Position players enjoyed career years as well, and the team went on to win 108 games. While Pearlman's writing will not win any literary awards, his language captured the essence of this team well- bad if not downright vulgar. As a result, I actually found myself grinning while reading about the team I love to hate the most.

I doubt that I will ever change my allegiance and find myself rooting for the Mets to win a game much less a playoff series unless they are playing against the equally detestable Cardinals. Besides bleeding Cubbie blue, I am married to a Yankee fanatic, so wanting the Mets to win is a double whammy. Yet, The Bad Guys Won showed the Mets at their best which was also their worst so it became an enjoyable weekend read. I just hope that the bad guys never win again.

3.5 stars

I've been a Mets fan since 1964, when I was 6. The 1986 season was, of course, Amazin'. While this book provides accurate descriptions of key moments in that championship season, and a literally gut-churning, pee-in-your-pants funny recounting of the various puerile shenanigans surrounding the '86 ballclub, the writing is geared towards your average 14-year-old male too young to identify with Jim Bouton's "Ball Four." There are more cheesy metaphors and similes on each page than maggots stuck to a rotting trout. The number of adolescent metaphors in the book is equal to the number of Rice Krispies it would take to fill up Shea Stadium to the brim. If you removed all of the similes that cause a severe case of groaning and eye-rolling, the book would sag like a post-coital condom. I think you see what I mean.

Pearlman pulls back the curtain on the '86 Mets and gives a warts and all picture. They won in spite of their many (many) flaws. But that's teamwork for you.

As an aside, everyone should stop demonizing Bill Buckner. That was Game 6. The Sox had the chance to win Game 7 and didn't. As a team.