House of Nails

by Lenny Dykstra

  Al Nipper, the Game 4 starter and loser, came on in the bottom of the eighth for the Sox. Straw went yard to lead off, giving us a 7–5 lead. Knight followed with a single and advanced to second on my groundout. Nipper walked Santana intentionally, knowing Davey was not going to pull Orosco. The strategy backfired when Jesse got a base hit and drove in Ray Knight.

  Jesse was facing the top of the order in the ninth. Unlike virtually every other aspect of the postseason, the ninth was completely uneventful. Foul popout. Routine groundout to second, and we were one out away. Marty Barrett was the batter; Jesse worked the count to 2-2. Jesse delivers. Barrett swings and misses. Strike three. Jesse throws his glove high into the air and drops to his knees as Gary Carter races to the mound to hug our closer, with the rest of the team in hot pursuit. Cue Queen: We Are the Champions! The New York Mets, 1986 World Series champions.

  After the series was over, the city threw a parade for us. The celebration was insane even by New York standards. It felt like every single person in the city, including Yankees fans, came out to cheer our achievement. It’s an awesome feeling when you have an entire city—and not just any city, but the greatest city in the world—behind you. Being so young, I felt tremendously privileged to be part of this team and this victory. I know this will come as a shock to most, but I was not into wild celebrations at this point in my life. Other than a little drinking here and there, I didn’t even know what drugs looked like then. Steroids were not on the radar yet. I know it’s hard to believe, but I would more than make up for my innocence when I played for the Phillies.

  Although I would experience the World Series stage again in 1993, 1986 was the only time in my career that I was part of a team that won it. I am truly blessed to have experienced that, as many players are deprived of that incredible feeling. In the 1986 World Series, I batted .296 with 8 hits, 4 runs scored, 2 homers, and 3 RBI. Undeniably, I would have liked to have played more, but I feel as though I made a valuable contribution that had a direct impact on helping the Mets win the 1986 World Series.

  Most important, I was a contributing member of the World Series championship team. That was the best feeling in the world, and undoubtedly the high point of my playing career.

  7

  REDNECKS & RIFLES

  A conversation with Dykstra, especially one that stretches for more than two hours, is a rare and peculiar experience. He is foul-mouthed and funny, juvenile and intelligent, intense and prone to mumbling.

  —RICHARD SANDOMIR, NEW YORK TIMES

  I feel like I have spent half my life—shit, all my life—hunting for something. Hunting to succeed as a professional ballplayer, hunting for pussy, hunting for a new kind of high, you name it. But the one thing I never found myself hunting for was animals. The kind of hunting one does with a gun, running around in the woods and shooting bullets at things with an actual heartbeat.

  That all changed in 1987, when the Mets obtained outfielder Kevin McReynolds in a deal with the San Diego Padres. Kevin and I quickly became very tight. Kevin was an honest-to-God redneck from Arkansas—and also happened to be one of the most talented players I’d ever seen on the field. The only problem with Kevin was that he hated baseball. Fucking hated it. All he wanted to do was be on his duck farm and in that hunting lodge of his in Arkansas. So, during the off-season, he talked me into going down to the Deep South to experience what he considered real living.

  I met him and some other guys there, and the second I arrived, I realized that Kevin had big plans for us to go deer hunting together. Remember, I grew up in Southern California, and I’d never shot a gun before in my entire life, let alone shot a living, breathing animal.

  But Kevin wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  The morning of the hunt, Kevin and his hillbilly buddies woke me when it was still dark outside and the sun was nowhere to be seen. I’m talking about four fucking A.M. The redneck crew were all wearing camouflage costumes to blend into the trees and leaves and shit. Against my better judgment—yeah, I do have better judgment on occasion—I found myself walking into the pitch-black woods, clutching a rifle and freezing my balls off. I felt like I was in a scene from Deliverance, but everyone else seemed to be loving every second of it.

  “How exactly does this work?” I asked.

  “You see a deer, you shoot it,” Kevin said, like it was as easy as buttering a slice of toast.

  “Let me ask you something, Kevin,” I said. “There are five other gun-carrying motherfuckers with us. I’m not too smart, but I know that bullets travel and they travel fast. So how do I know one of those other motherfuckers isn’t going to shoot and miss, and kill me instead?”

  McReynolds ignored my question and stopped under a tall tree that had a wooden ladder going up the side of it.

  “Climb up the ladder and stay good and quiet,” he said.

  “Why do you want me to climb a goddamn tree?” I asked.

  “Because that’s where you wait for the deer to come along. It’s a deer stand.”

  “You want me to sit in a fucking tree by myself with a gun that I have no idea how to use? And then what? How long do I wait there? Do we set our clocks? Is there a time limit? I’m not going to sit in this fucking tree freezing my ass off for very long, I’m telling you that.”

  The joke was on me because I sat up in that stupid tree for hours, and when my patience finally ran out, I decided to climb down and find my way back to the hunting lodge. As soon as I got back to the ground, I heard a rustling sound coming from the woods, and I turned to fucking rail into Kevin, but it wasn’t Kevin. Not even close. It was a goddamn black bear. That fucker could have weighed eight hundred pounds for all I knew, but I didn’t waste any time hauling my ass right back up that ladder, where I stayed put for a few more hours.

  In the end, McReynolds and his redneck friends had to come and get me back down out of that tree. A couple of them had shot a few deer, and they dragged those poor dead animals back to the lodge. You should have seen all the work it took to gut them out. It was goddamn disgusting.

  I thought, This is backwards as shit. Maybe it’s me, but I like to work smarter instead of harder. See, in civilization, we have a fucking place called a grocery store. And it has a section called the meat department. Choose what type of meat, and what cut of meat, you like. Buy it. Cook it. Eat it. Simple.

  That was the beginning and end of my hunting career—for animals. Of course, the true hunt never ends. It’s always been about the thrill of the kill. Different kind of market. Same selection process.

  8

  1988 NLCS: NEW YORK METS VS. LOS ANGELES DODGERS

  There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happened.

  —TOMMY LASORDA

  In 1988 we steamrolled over the rest of the National League East, finishing with a 100-60 record and beating the second-place Pirates by fifteen games. We should have won our second World Series in three years.

  On the contrary, 1988 would mark the beginning of what turned out to be a long, miserable eleven-year drought, before the great fans of the New York Metropolitans would watch their team play in October again.

  In the end, one could make a strong argument that Davey Johnson was an overrated and underachieving manager. He built his reputation by winning only one World Series, which in reality ought to have been two or three.

  Just in case any of you don’t remember, because I sure as fuck do, let me take you back in time. We were three outs away from winning Game 4 of the National League Championship Series and taking a commanding 3-1 lead over the Dodgers, which would have all but eliminated them, as we were too good of a team in 1988. The reality of the situation is that a 3-1 lead would have simply been too much for the Dodgers to overcome.

  Doc battled his ass off in Game 4; he was solid but not masterful. Still, it was good enough to give us a 4–2 lead heading into the ninth. He had already thrown 117 pitches after 8 innings of work. For
the season, Doc had 255⅓ innings of wear and tear on his arm. It was obvious that Doc was tired. After all, he is human.

  Instead of having our closer, Randy Myers, who was fucking lights out that year, not to mention available, fresh, and cock-strong, close out the ninth, Davey, for whatever reason, decided to let Doc start the ninth. That was fuckup number one. Fuckup number two was too much for the baseball gods to take, so they made us all pay, and pay we did, in a big fucking way.

  After Doc walked John Shelby, a player who owned a career .281 on-base percentage, to lead off the ninth, with the left-hand-hitting catcher Mike Scioscia up next, we were all looking in the dugout, waiting for Davey to make the change. It was Baseball 101. Instead, Davey failed us as players; he failed you, the fans; he failed the people who put their faith in him—the New York Mets organization—and ultimately, he failed himself.

  We aren’t talking about just another baseball game. Far from it. The stakes were extremely high. The company paid Davey a lot of money to make the right decisions when it mattered most. Millions of fans lived and died with the team. The players worked their asses off for months—years, really—to get to this stage. Unfortunately, on Sunday, October 9, 1988, in front of 54,014 fans, Davey failed miserably at his job.

  Here are the four basic steps that Davey should have followed if he was doing his job in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS:

  Step 1: Davey walks to the mound, tells Doc, “great job.” Doc hands Davey the ball. Doc walks back to the dugout and the fans greet him with a standing ovation.

  Step 2: Davey signals to the umpire that he wants the lefty, our closer, Randy Myers.

  Step 3: Davey hands Randy the ball, then Randy performs his job like he did all season long, closing out the ninth to preserve the win. The Dodgers would never have experienced their Hollywood fairy-tale ending.

  Step 4: We win, shake each other’s hands, and head back into the clubhouse to enjoy cold ones, knowing we are now one game away from returning to the World Series.

  Back to reality. We were all wondering what the fuck Davey was doing. Our closer, Randy Myers, one of the most dominant closers in baseball at that time, was waiting by the bullpen door to come in and close out the ninth, which would have all but buried the Dodgers and left them for dead. But that door never opened—until it was too late.

  We ended up losing in the twelfth, when Kirk Gibson hit a home run off Roger McDowell. Instead of going up 3-1, the series was now at 2-2.

  It would come down to Game 7 to determine which team would represent the National League in the 1988 World Series. Unfortunately, our skipper made another monumental mistake in Game 7 at Dodger Stadium.

  Davey’s decision to not start Doc Gooden—clearly our best pitcher that year—was another clusterfuck move. To make matters worse, Davey announced that Doc would be available out of the bullpen. WTF? If he was available out of the bullpen, he should have gotten the ball to start Game 7. For the record, Doc pitched three innings in Game 7, and gave up one hit.

  Davey wasn’t done yet. To add more fuel to the fire, he gave some good pregame locker room bulletin board material to the Dodgers, when he actually went on the record and suggested to the media that starting Orel Hershiser on short rest was a mistake: “There’s no telling what kind of condition The Bionic Man will be in. I was amazed he was throwing [in the bullpen in Game 5]. He’s going to have to be Superman. I don’t expect him to have much stuff.”

  Davey must have been “oiled up” to tell the press something that stupid; but that wouldn’t have been anything new; he and Jack (as in Daniel’s) had become close personal friends.

  Hershiser was told of these comments and responded, “Tell him to grab a bat.”

  Darling would start Game 7 and got knocked out early after giving up six runs in the first two innings. After the game was out of reach, Davey brought in Doc Gooden, who should have started the game. It didn’t matter, though; the damage had already been done. We were down 6–0 after two innings, and that’s how it would end up. Hershiser was lights out, and would go on to lead the Dodgers to the World Series title, while we were sent home dazed and confused. You have to remember, we dominated the Dodgers during the regular season, winning ten out of eleven times and outscoring them 49–18. But there were just too many wrong buttons pushed by the manager in the short series, which we were unable to overcome this time around. The National League pennant should have been ours, but the man in charge, Davey Johnson, failed us again.

  It’s hard for the public to grasp the long-term effect that Davey’s failure to do his job on October 9, 1988, would have on millions of people in years to come.

  It turns out the baseball gods weren’t going to let Davey off the hook so easy.

  This wasn’t just another game, far from it. This was one of the most important games in Mets history. Think about it. Since our inception in 1962, we, the New York Mets, had made it to the World Series just three times. This was a game that could have made that four times.

  Davey lost the game before it started. When the Dodgers learned that Doc wasn’t going to start Game 7, it was like a shot of adrenaline for them. This is nothing against Ron Darling. Ron had a great year for us, but Doc Gooden was one of the best pitchers in baseball. There was no logical reason for Davey’s decision, especially in a business where confidence plays such a huge role. Anyone who understands baseball knows Davey made another disastrous decision that ultimately led to the Dodgers winning the National League pennant. Moreover, Davey single-handedly set off a time bomb that would dismantle the organization for years to come.

  Unfortunately for the great fans of New York, and for the Mets organization, Davey continued to make one bad decision after another. It was almost like he was trying to sabotage the team.

  For some odd reason, at that time Davey Johnson was enamored with Gregg Jefferies, a rookie who had come up late in 1988. It didn’t take the players long to figure out Gregg Jefferies was a losing player, not to mention a whiny little bitch. I am quite certain he set a record for being the most disliked player in the clubhouse—after two days! I’m serious. This guy had no concept of what being a “team player” meant. He was so clueless that he didn’t even try to hide it. The only person who didn’t figure him out from jump street was Davey. He had to be “deep in the sauce” to miss it. It was so bad you would have thought that Jefferies had naked pictures of Davey in a compromising act.

  Jefferies didn’t bring a whole lot to the party. Yes, Jefferies was a switch-hitter, but he didn’t have any real home-run power and was only an average runner, not to mention he was definitely allergic to leather. He even made a key error in the ’88 playoffs against the Dodgers. But for some reason, Davey kept trying to accommodate this little crybaby. Jefferies failed miserably at second; then they moved him to third base, with the same results, all bad.

  Gregg Jefferies was a real bizarre guy. He would spend hours rubbing his bats with some special concoction and specifically requested that they be stored separately from the rest of the team’s bats so they didn’t chip. When things went bad for the Mets in ’91, some of the players sounded off to the media about Jefferies, and he responded by writing a letter to WFAN, the New York local sports radio station. He actually wrote an open letter to the public, asking that it be read on the air, whining like a little pussy about his teammates. He asked them to stop complaining about him to the media and pleaded with the fans for love and support as well. The savvy Mets fans saw right through this fucking guy. Essentially, Jefferies was the poster child for those disastrous years, when the Mets began sliding downhill. After establishing himself as a joke on and off the field, he ensured that 1991 would be his last season with the Mets. Ownership couldn’t take it anymore and traded him to Kansas City along with Kevin McReynolds, in a deal that brought back the aging Bret Saberhagen, whose most memorable moment as a Met might have been when he sprayed bleach on members of the media in the locker room when they were interviewing Gooden after a ga
me.

  After 1989, the Mets fans saw what was happening, and they were pissed. The Mets had just two position players in their starting lineup in 1990 (Straw and HoJo) who had been there in ’86. The bad personnel decisions, spearheaded by Davey, piled up, and unfortunately the team would continue to spiral downward into irrelevance, where they would remain until they traded for Mike Piazza late in 1998.

  The bottom line: if you take the time to evaluate Davey Johnson’s career as a manager, the only conclusion one can come to is that he was an overrated and underachieving manager. That’s just the cold hard truth.

  9

  PLAY ME OR TRADE ME

  Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

  —JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

  When the 1989 season began, it was obvious that Davey was going to continue to platoon Mookie and me, so I decided it was time to move on. In order to get paid real money, you have to be an everyday player. Platoon players, utility players, and bench players, while essential components of a winning team, don’t get paid the real money. I realized that the window of opportunity for me to make some serious cash would not stay open much longer.

  I had no doubt that I was an everyday player; however, I was never given the opportunity to prove it with the Mets. In fact, I told anyone who would listen to me that I could hit lefties better than righties. My base knock that saved us from losing the World Series to the Red Sox in Game 6 was against a lefty. Unfortunately for me, Davey was committed to platooning, and he was not about to change.