In the beginning: Sweeping beauties

BY ANTHONY RIEBER | Newsday Staff Writer

August 17, 2006

The Mets were anything but quiet in the first month of 1986. After manager Davey Johnson's brash spring training declaration that the team was going to "dominate" the National League East, the Mets had bull's-eyes on their backs. They also had chips on their shoulders.

"We were good," second baseman Wally Backman said recently in a telephone interview. "We were cocky."

And they started poorly. After splitting the season's first four games, the Mets lost their home opener April 14 before a sellout crowd of 47,752 at Shea Stadium, 6-2 in 13 innings to the Cardinals. That 2-3 record was the only time all season they were below .500.

When they went into St. Louis 10 days later for a four-game series against the defending NL champion Cardinals - the team that had beaten the Mets by three games in the NL East in 1985 - the Mets were looking to make a statement. They did more than that. They practically wrapped up the division crown with a four-game sweep.

You have to remember how fierce the rivalry was at the time.

The Mets were derided as "Pond Scum" by the usually pleasant St. Louis fans. They had a manager, Whitey Herzog, who sarcastically called the Mets the best team in the NL because he thought they were getting too much attention.

The Mets were talkers. For the first time in 1986, they backed it up.

"When we could go ahead in there and sweep them, I felt very confident," Johnson said recently in a telephone interview. "And Whitey did, too. In fact, Herzog came out and said, 'We're not catching them.'"

Howard Johnson, whose two-run error in the 13th inning led to the home-opener loss, hit a tying two-run home run off Cardinals closer Todd Worrell in the ninth inning of the first game and the Mets went on to win, 5-4, on George Foster's RBI single in the 10th inning.

Dwight Gooden, 22, pitched a five-hitter in the second game as the Mets pummeled the Cards, 9-0. The third game, a 4-3 Mets victory, ended on a spectacular double play started by Backman, who dived to his right and flipped the ball from his belly to second. The fourth game, a 5-3 win, was newcomer Bob Ojeda's first NL complete game.

Ojeda, who joined the Mets the previous November in a trade with the Red Sox for, among others, hard-throwing young righthander Calvin Schiraldi, was one of two major additions by general manager Frank Cashen to a team that had won 98 games in 1985.

The other was second baseman Tim Teufel, who was acquired from Minnesota to be the righthanded part of a platoon with Backman.

The Mets ended the month with an 11-game winning streak and a five-game lead in the division. The Cardinals never would be a factor. St. Louis finished an injury-wracked season in third place at 79-82, a mere 28½ games back.