Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47953 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

The story behind the team that won the extraordinary 1986 World Series
This is the story about how the New York Mets went from the laughing stock of baseball with average crowds of 9700 to a team of stars, crowds of 35,000 and victory in the 1986 World Series - and then how it all fell apart.

Although you will need a basic understanding of the rules of baseball to follow the on-field action, this is not just for the baseball fans. Jeff Pearlman has a clear, journalistic style that captures the energy and drama of the 1986 Mets baseball team - the triumphs and the disasters, the fighting, gambling, beer drinking, drug-taking, womanising and the baseball.

By the time it gets to chapter 19, the scene is set for "the greatest managerial screwup in baseball history", and, in the most unlikely of circumstances, the crushing of the Boston Red Sox' dream of breaking the Curse of the Bambino.

Overall this book fizzes along at great pace and captures the human stories behind one of baseball's most remembered World Series. A great read.

The drama of '86 and The Mets!
Pearlman's roundup of the '86 season feels like a dusted-off high school yearbook, packed with distant memories of old friends. The Mets were the cool kids, the jocks, the guys you wanted to hang with. Turns out they were also the coke addicts, the jailbirds, and the boors who trashed airplanes. (One of them may've even decapitated a cat!) Yet all the while, through the madness and mayhem and brawls and squabbles (and Roger McDowell's endless hot-foots), they did what general manager Frank Cashen assembled them to do -- win games. With the incredible Game 6 of the World Series, which began with a descent to the infield by a Met-crazed parachutist and ended with the most famous grounder in the history of baseball, they even managed to win games they'd already lost.

Yearbook browsing, though fun and filled with laughs, inevitably causes sadness. Lost youth, wasted opportunities, and so on. The Bad Guys Won is less a celebration of a season of destiny and more a gossipy, behind-the-scenes exposure of shortcomings, immaturity, and human frailty. For a sports fan, any recounting of the details of '86 are worth reading, and Pearlman's evenhanded coverage is certainly just that -- equal parts sensational and poignant. Was Darryl Strawberry "selfish and vicious," or a good guy possessed of "a warm heart?" Was Davey Johnson a managerial genius, or a lucky guy with the right team at the right time? To his credit, Pearlman simply relays his sources' stories and lets you decide for yourself.