Second Best Is No Longer Good Enough for the Mets

The New York Mets’ elimination from the 1985 National League East race barely was history in October when players began to deal with it in gallows humor. The Mets had finished second for the second straight season. The Chicago Cubs had performed well beyond expectations in 1984 to deprive the Mets of a championship. And the Cardinals had done likewise in 1985.

It was Ron Darling who noted the Mets’ runner-up status and offered this facetious and outlandish prediction: “And next year the Pirates probably’ll win 105 games and we’ll come in second to them.”

“We laughed about it then,” Darling said recently, “but sometimes you wonder what it will take.”

The Mets do not necessarily feel they have been stung by misfortune. They admit that their greatest failure has been their timing. Had they won 98 games--as they did last season--in any other season this decade, they would have won a division championship.

At the same time, however, they recognize the 1986 season for what it is: a time to overcome the Cubs, Cardinals, even the Pirates, the other clubs in the division and any misfortune that may befall them.

Many of them are reluctant to call 1986 the season in which they must win. “That’s putting too much pressure on ourselves,” Keith Hernandez said. “What happens then if we come in second again? What do we do, disband?”

But there is an understanding among the Mets as they assemble for spring training and begin to prepare for the 25th season in the history of the franchise. “It’s not desperation. I don’t want to be that negative about it,” Manager Dave Johnson said Wednesday. “I’d rather say this is the year we expect to win. And we have to expect to win to win.”

In some cases, that expectation is touched with a dash of “we better do it this year.” Players suspect Johnson and the organization will be less tolerant of subpar performances and more prone to shifting personnel to find the proper mix.

Players have wondered about the No. 2 catcher assignment. They assume it will go to John Gibbons, that the gradual introduction to the major leagues the club has afforded Gibbons will be abandoned.

“He’s the best catching prospect we have,” one player said. “And this is the year we have to have the best player available. We have to stop looking ahead and weighing what’s good for the minor leagues against what’s good for the big league team. If we have to rush a guy to the big leagues, rush him.”

Even Hernandez, ever the voice of reason in the clubhouse, concedes that there are some demands on this collection of players. “(George) Foster is getting older and (Gary) Carter and myself,” Hernandez said. “The nucleus is getting older. We can still have good seasons. But the moves that were made to bring us here were designed so we would win. We should win soon . . . within three years. If we don’t, then we’re going to have to say, ‘It didn’t work.’ The people who put this team together don’t want to have to say that. And neither do I.”

Perhaps, if the Mets hadn’t prospered so in 1984, expectations wouldn’t be so great. “Coming in second then made us look to first place last year. That was natural,” Darling said. “And then, when we didn’t win it all last year, it made it a little more urgent for us this year. Second place is getting a little old. What we’ve done the last two years was like pitching nine innings of shutout ball and leaving with a nothing-nothing score. Something’s missing. The last two years have been great. They’ve been very satisfying for the players and the fans. Exciting. Great. People are patting you on the back. But at the same time they’re saying, ‘Of course you’re going to win it all next year. Right?’

“And I say ‘right’ because that’s what I expect, too.”

In a way, there is a need for the Mets to finish somewhere other than in second place--even third. “I don’t know that I’d want to finish out of it after being so close for two years,” Wally Backman said. “But I’d hate to come in second again. I don’t want to come close and not win it. It’d drive us nuts if we came real close and came up empty again.”

The Expos experienced such a fate, placing second to the Pirates in 1979 and second to the Phillies in 1980. They won the division championship in 1981 mostly because of the split-season format, introduced to repair the strike season, although the Cardinals had the best overall record in the division that season. But in 1982, when baseball returned to normalcy, the Expos became a collection of talented but frustrated, bickering athletes.

“Those (Expos) teams had internal problems,” Hernandez said. “I grew up reading about the Giants of the ‘60s. They had three Hall of Fame players (Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal) and they couldn’t finish first (1962 notwithstanding, when they beat the Dodgers in a three-game playoff for first). They were a great team that had trouble getting out of second place (the Giants placed second in the league 1965-68 and second in the West Division in 1969). I think that might have gotten to them after a while, but I’m not comparing their situation to ours.”

The Mets’ situation is that they don’t want to be classified with the Giants or Expos, or the Royals of the late ‘70s, who made an annual practice of ushering the Yankees into the World Series.

“We want to be champions,” Darling said. “That’s the only way to be remembered.