11. Mookie Wilson hits a ground ball to first in Game 6 of the World Series, October 25, 1986, Shea Stadium

Disbelief rapidly gave way to despair. You knew in your heart you shouldn’t feel so despondent—this was a baseball game, there were far graver problems, much larger injustices. Still, as the Boston Red Sox scored one run in the top of the 10th inning of and then a second, your body slumped. As your New York Mets made one out, then a second, in the bottom of the 10th, your soul shrank. It was Game 6 of the World Series, and the Red Sox led three games to two. No team had ever come back to win a Series from two down with two outs while facing elimination.

            The Mets’ scoreboard congratulated Boston on breaking their curse. How could it have come to this? After enduring the Tom Seaver trade, the Mike Vail hype, the disappointment of George Foster, after excusing 1984’s close call and 1985’s heartbreak as learning experiences, how could it have come to this for one of the best, most dominating baseball teams ever?

            A single. It meant nothing, merely delaying the inevitable.

            A second hit started a stirring. Ah, if only there weren’t already two outs .º.º. and then an 0–2 count. No team had ever come back to win a Series when down to its final strike.

            Then something happened. Call it ghosts, call it history, call it the irresistible force of greatness. Whatever. It happened in slow motion and all at once—an avalanche that you rode atop, full-throated in your cheering. A weak looping single cut the lead to one. An eternal at-bat, forever fending off strike three, elicited a wild pitch. The game was tied, but its fate, indeed the entire Series, was tilting in New York’s favor. Then the clincher: a slow roller, just a trickler, but the batter’s blazing speed and the first baseman’s fragility and the most beautifully ugly play of all. And there you were in midair, hovering in the sky, flying, delirious. Someone bring back Red Smith: on October 25, 1986, fiction took another deadly beating.

            Those heartbreaking-to-heart-stopping bombshells make Game 6’s 10th inning perhaps the most riveting, thrilling inning in World Series history, particularly in the 51 World Series featuring New York City teams.

            The 1986 Mets—a ferocious combination of talent and ego, pitching and hitting, youth and experience, All-Stars and bench depth—were built for history. After an ugly, despairing stretch that began when management devastated fans by trading Seaver in 1977, the Mets started rebounding in 1983 when general manager Frank Cashen promoted Darryl Strawberry from the minors and swiped Keith Hernandez from the St. Louis Cardinals. They finished a strong second in 1984 and nearly won the National League East in 1985. Each year brought more talent from within and without—from Dwight Gooden to Bobby Ojeda, Lenny Dykstra to Gary Carter. By 1986 the pieces were in place. They were great, and they knew it.

            In spring training they left T-shirts declaring, New York Mets—1986 NL East Champions, in the locker room of St. Louis, the defending NL champs. Manager Davey Johnson boasted, “We don’t want to just win. We want to dominate.” They did, reeling off streaks of eleven, seven, and six straight .º.º. in just the first two months. After one-third of the season, Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog conceded.

            Their endless curtain calls, rally caps, endorsements, and “Let’s Go, Mets” irked opponents, who provoked four bench-clearing brawls with New York, but no one could stop those damn Mets—their 108 wins tied the 1975 Cincinnati Reds for the NL record. They clinched the East on September 17, the earliest date in divisional history, and won by 211/2 games, the largest margin since 1920.

            The Mets weren’t typical bullies, collapsing when someone stood up to them. They were tough as Nails—as in the sparkplug Dykstra, of the perpetually dirty uniform—and proved their resilience in a scintillating playoff against Houston, winning Game 3 on Dykstra’s bottom-of-the-ninth, two-run home run; Game 5 on catcher Gary Carter’s slump-breaking 12th-inning single; and Game 6 when they rallied from being down 3–0 in the ninth and prevailed in the 16th inning of a raucous affair.

            Standing between the Mets and the crowning honor they knew that they and the city so richly deserved was Boston. The Mets had traveled there back on September 4, an off-day, for a charity exhibition game at Fenway Park. It was a possible World Series preview, but no one knew what it meant when Rick Aguilera foreshadowed his Game 6 role by giving Boston a two-run lead (albeit in the third inning), when Bill Buckner booted a ball to set up a Mets rally (albeit in the fourth), or when the Mets came back from two down with two outs to win thanks to a Boston error (albeit by third baseman Ed Romero in the eighth inning).

            The Red Sox had not won the Series since 1918, allegedly cursed after selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The Mets were a stronger, more dynamic club, but Boston was armed—Roger Clemens was 24–4, and “Oil Can” Boyd and Bruce Hurst had combined for another 29 wins—and they had their mojo working too, having made a dramatic comeback to beat California in the ALCS. The Series offered Boston a chance to end its awful spell in the city responsible for its most anguished memories, a city that had given many Bostonians an inferiority complex. Of course, the Mets, with their arrogance and the unseemly success that backed it up, symbolized New York’s reputation to the nth degree and thus inspired animosity coast to coast.

            The early going provided Met-bashers with a delightful schadenfreude. Boston won the opener 1–0 when Jim Rice scored on a terrible gaffe: Rich Gedman’s grounder rolled through second baseman Tim Teufel’s legs. Game 2 featured the best pitching matchup in a generation: Clemens versus Gooden. Clemens was shaky, but Gooden was far worse as the Mets tumbled to a 9–3 loss.

            The previous year Kansas City had become the first team to win the Series after losing the first two at home. But these Mets were uninterested in precedent. They won 7–1 in Game 3 as Ojeda, a former Red Sox, became the first lefty victor at Fenway Park in the postseason since 1918, and 6–2 in Game 4 behind Carter’s two homers. But Gooden faltered again in Game 5, and the Mets came home facing elimination.

            In this perilous situation, Ojeda started shaky, yielding a leadoff single to Wade Boggs and allowing one run in each of the first two innings. But in that first inning the Mets received a sign from above .º.º. literally. With Buckner coming up, unknown soap opera actor Mike Sergio earned instant fame and 21 days in jail by parachuting onto the field, displaying a banner cheering Go Mets. Buckner applauded, Dwight Evans grinned, and Ron Darling high-fived Sergio as he was led away through New York’s dugout. Still, the Mets needed more than a brave and ardent fan as Clemens fired a no-hitter through four.

            In the fifth, the Mets tied it by scraping together two runs on a walk and a steal, two singles, an error, and a double play. Boston regained the lead in the seventh thanks to a throwing error by Ray Knight, although the Mets caught a break when Mookie Wilson played the hero nailing Rice at home. Going two runs down would have been disheartening so late in the game.

            In the eighth, the season again almost slipped away, but Boston manager John McNamara outbungled Davey Johnson and delivered the Mets the raw material for victory. With a man on second and one out, McNamara pinch-hit for Clemens, who had popped a blister on his index finger and then torn a fingernail on his middle finger (both times while facing Wilson) and had thrown 135 pitches. Still, Clemens was baseball’s best pitcher, and McNamara ditched him in search of an insurance run and despite his shaky and weary relief corp. Pinch-hitter Mike Greenwell whiffed.

            Then Roger McDowell loaded the bases with two walks, so Johnson called on southpaw Jesse Orosco to face lefty Bill Buckner.

            The perpetually aching Buckner had endured nine cortisone shots in 1986 and strained his Achilles tendon in the playoffs. An inspiration but also a liability, he was seeking support from hideous hightop sneakers that served as a visual reminder of his decrepitude. In all seven postseason wins, McNamara had removed Buckner at game’s end for defensive purposes. Dave Stapleton was ready to once again play the final six outs. Buckner wasn’t contributing offensively anyway, with just a .216 OBP in the postseason, and McNamara wanted to send up righty Don Baylor, who’d smashed 31 homers that year and had a .381 OBP in the postseason. (He wasn’t playing because a designated hitter could not be used at Shea Stadium.) But as Jeff Pearlman reveals in The Bad Guys Won, his account of the Mets’ 1986 season, Buckner, just 3-for-19 lifetime against Orosco, persuaded McNamara that he could hit him. Then he flew out on the very first pitch.

            Johnson, meanwhile, had failed to make a double switch at the pitching change, so Orosco was due up first in the Mets’ eighth and had to be pulled for a pinch-hitter.

            Running short on time, the Mets reached back to their ignoble past for Lee Mazzilli. The Brooklyn-born Maz had been hailed as a hunky savior in 1977 but eventually traded after failing to live up to the hype. He had been brought back in 1986 to replace another old favorite, Rusty Staub, the retired pinch-hitter extraordinaire.

            Fortunately for the Mets, Boston also reached back to the Mets’ ignoble past, for closer Calvin Schiraldi. Way back when, the Mets had drafted Clemens out of high school, but Clemens had chosen instead to go to college at the University of Texas, where his teammate was Schiraldi. The next time around Boston got Clemens and the Mets got Schiraldi, who had equally impressive stuff. But the Mets soon decided that Schiraldi lacked mental toughness and gladly dumped him to pry Ojeda loose.

            Schiraldi buckled immediately, allowing a single to Mazzilli, then rushing a throw into the dirt at second on a bunt. Soon he’d loaded the bases with one out, then pumped three straight balls to Carter. Given the green light, Carter smacked a long fly, scoring Mazzilli with the tying run.

            The Mets threatened in the ninth, but with two men on, Johnson inexplicably sent slugger Howard Johnson up as a pinch-hitter, then asked him to bunt; after one feeble attempt, he was allowed to swing away, but he whiffed. Mazzilli’s subsequent outfield out was the sacrifice fly that wasn’t. Still, despite being out-hit 10–5, the Mets were alive after nine innings.

            Or so it seemed. On the second pitch of the 10th, Rick Aguilera, the less experienced reliever brought in after the Mets had pinch-hit for Orosco, yielded a home run to ALCS hero Dave Henderson, who rubbed it in New York’s collective face with an annoying hop and infuriating backwards jog down the line as he watched his death blow sail on. “It’s so quiet in New York you can almost hear Boston,” Scully said.

            It would get darker before it got any lighter. With two outs, Boggs doubled and Marty Barrett singled him home, making it 5–3. An extra run is often called a cushion, and this one seemed capable of suffocating the Mets, down to three last breaths.

            “It is tough enough to lose, but when you make a decision that will stick in your craw, the long winter is interminable,” Scully intoned. He was talking at that point about Johnson, not McNamara.

            Despite Schiraldi’s tentative performance and creeping fatigue, McNamara left him in.

            Wally Backman flied out to left. Hernandez flied out to deep center. History dictated that the Mets could not revive themselves this time. The scoreboard, ready for the inevitable, inadvertently flashed: Congratulations Boston Red Sox. Clemens, showered and freshly shaved, sat in Boston’s dugout, while most players were on the top step or edging onto the field, ready to burst into celebration. In the clubhouse, bottles of bubbly waited along with Bob Costas, who would provide historical perspective on a team that had waited forever but finally won in the town where it counted most. As the game wound down, NBC announced Barrett as Player of the Game and Hurst as World Series MVP.

            But Gary Carter had caught Schiraldi. He believed he could hit him: “I knew that he was gutless.” He lined a single.

            Kevin Mitchell, who was undressed and on the clubhouse phone making plane reservations for the flight home, dashed out to pinch-hit for Aguilera. Schiraldi, his roomie in the minors, once claimed he’d get Mitchell out with a fastball in, then a slider away. Remembering that conversation, Mitchell fouled off the fastball, then hit the slider for a single. No one wanted to make that final out. In the clubhouse all the dejected and downcast souls—Hernandez, Orosco, Darling, Ojeda, McDowell—either froze, afraid to change what they were doing, or donned rally caps. They felt something now.

            Knight, seeking redemption for his error, fell in the hole, 0–2. One more strike and Schiraldi could escape into the loving embrace of a grateful Red Sox Nation. But he was too eager and forgot to waste a pitch; Knight looped a soft single, scoring Carter. Throughout the postseason the Mets had scored more than half their runs after the sixth inning. Could they get one more big hit?

            McNamara brought on veteran Bob Stanley, who had lost his closing job to Schiraldi that season but had not allowed a run in the Series. Stanley faced Mookie Wilson. Neither scrub nor superstar, Wilson was a solid but flawed player and a fan favorite, beloved for his work ethic, team spirit (he had accepted Dykstra’s arrival without much grumbling), and exhilarating speed. He was the longest-tenured Met (he’d been around since the 95-loss year of 1980) and a low-key voice of sanity in this rowdy crew.

            The first pitch was high and away, but Mookie’s hitting philosophy was, “Thou shalt not pass at thy offering.” He fouled it off. He took two pitches well out of the strike zone before fouling off another. Again the Mets were down to their final strike.

            Wilson stayed alive with another foul ball. And another. Stanley was desperate to finish things. Knowing Stanley was working him away, Wilson crept closer to the plate. Perhaps Stanley saw that and changed his location at the last minute, but whatever the reason, the next potentially final pitch of 1986 burst inside, dusting Gedman’s glove as Wilson jackknifed away. The ball rolled to the backstop, and Mitchell tore home with the tying run. Red Sox fans have debated ever since whether Stanley or Gedman deserved more blame. Met fans don’t care. They credit Wilson for keeping the at-bat going.

            With the game 5–5, the momentum was all New York. Wilson fouled off two more pitches. On the 10th pitch, Wilson hit a grounder to first. The day before Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell had wondered whether Buckner was selfish rather than inspiring in his “willingness to endure any amount of pain and any potential for embarrassment or failure just so he can say he played the game.”

            McNamara had blithely left Buckner in to be on the field for the celebration. A healthy first baseman, like Stapleton, would have charged in to make the play, but the mangled Buckner now stayed back, letting the ball play him.

            Wilson knew he hadn’t hit the ball well, but he tore down the line nonetheless. He had played every moment hard since 1981 when he hadn’t hustled in the outfield on a single dumped in front of him—the Chicago Cub veteran who poked that hit was someone who never loafed, and he took advantage of Wilson’s laxness to snatch the extra base, embarrassing the Met youngster. The Cub who inadvertently taught Wilson the lesson that his speed was inextricably linked to his effort was Bill Buckner.

            Wilson’s grounder headed toward Buckner, who knew how fast Wilson was, who must have suspected Wilson would probably win a race to the bag unless he hurried. In a Boston television interview before the Series, Buckner had said he hoped to be a hero but knew a dark side lurked out there. He didn’t fret about striking out or hitting into a double play: “The nightmares are you’re gonna let the winning run score on a ground ball through your legs.”

            As the ball skipped through Buckner’s legs and his personal nightmare began, Knight bounded home with the winning run. After steamrolling baseball for the entire season, the 1986 Mets had saved themselves by returning to their Mets roots, to the defining character of the 1969 and 1973 clubs, which won the games no one expected them to win, in ways nobody imagined.

            But you gotta believe that this Met miracle was the most “amazin’ amazin’ amazin’” of them all.