Scioscia Keyed Mets’ Troubles

It ranks up there with Bill Buckner’s blunder and Ron Swoboda’s catch, except they were high-water marks in the history of the New York Mets. Mike Scioscia’s home run pulled the plug on their water of life, and there’s a good argument that it plunged the Mets into the funk they still haven’t escaped.

By the way, Scioscia ignited a sequence of events that make compelling history.

Go back to the middle and late 1980s, the most successful time in the Mets’ history.

“They were on a great run,” Scioscia recalled, as manager of the defending-champion Angels, no less. “Managing a World Series champion is very rewarding, but it’s not what you think about in your backyard growing up.

“When you live something, when you do something personally, it burns itself into your mind.”

The Mets were stirring passions in those years. They were the team America loved to hate. They developed the curtain call into an art. They were New York, they were arrogant and they were good.

They were a close second in 1985, when Dwight Gooden was going to be everything. They won the World Series in 1986. They survived the shock of Gooden’s drug problem and just fell short of the division title in 1987.

In 1988, they were filling in all the blanks. They had won 10 of 11 from the Dodgers in the regular season and won two of the first three games against them in the National League Championship Series. They were about to go ahead three games to one.

“They had an incredible offensive team,” Scioscia recalled.

Gooden took a string of hitless innings and a 4-2 lead into the top of the ninth.

“He was throwing as good as I’ve ever seen a pitcher throw,” Scioscia said. “But even if we were down three to one, it didn’t mean we were out of it. Who knows what we could have done?”

We know only what did happen. The outcome seemed sealed. With one out in the ninth and a man on, Scioscia tied the score and turned the world upside down.

“The ball scraped the back of the wall on the way down,” Gary Carter, who was catching, grumbled the other day in New York. It was a stunning blow.

Kirk Gibson homered in the 12th inning and, in one of those folk tales, Orel Hershiser, who was coming off a fabulous 23-8 season and had pitched seven innings the day before, volunteered to get one man out. He got Kevin McReynolds to lift a gentle fly ball.

That tied the series, gave the Dodgers momentum and they won the seventh game on a shutout by Hershiser.

The magic ride was on. Oakland was a strong favorite to win the World Series when Gibson limped to the plate with two out and one on base in the ninth inning of the first game, and with two strikes against nonpareil Dennis Eckersley, he hit a pinch home run that won the game. The Dodgers were not to be stopped.

So you could make the connection that says Scioscia hit the home run that enabled the Dodgers to overcome Gooden, that enabled the Dodgers to go to the World Series, which enabled Gibson to make legend.

“I’ve heard that, but I don’t go that far,” Scioscia said.

It was the highlight of his career. He was a pretty good catcher for 13 seasons.

“It was satisfying to win the championship managing,” he said. “When we started bad [last year], I didn’t say we couldn’t do it. But it doesn’t compare to the feeling you get as a player.”

The Angels got the first championship in their history. And what did the Mets get? They went to the World Series in 2000, which was a Subway Series and all, but they got there as a wild-card fluke, and the last two seasons made them look so blah.

Losing in 1988 was a shock. Their arrogance was gone. If good teams build on the experiences that always tell them they can overcome, as Carter reflected, “Something that occurs like that, it has got to be demoralizing. Some things can be affected.”

Gooden won nine games the next season, was never the devastating pitcher again and then needed rehab again.

The veteran Mets became the old Mets. Carter needed knee surgery the next season and was essentially finished. Keith Hernandez broke down. The Mets moved them both out. Ron Darling was never better than .500 again for them. Davey Johnson survived 1989 but was fired in the midst of 1990. If the Mets had gone to the World Series that one more time, it would have been difficult to dump him, which set in motion the whole chain of unhappy managerial succession.

What does it all mean today? These are all new players, aren’t they? Doesn’t history pass from generation to generation? Aren’t the Cubs painfully aware that they haven’t been to the World Series since 1945? Don’t the Red Sox know they haven’t won the World Series since 1918, when Babe Ruth played with them?

Well, maybe Scioscia’s home run affected only the next few years. But the Mets were building on themselves then. They thought they had talent in the pipeline. The Yankees demonstrate how nothing succeeds like success. Then it all stopped.

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Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service.