HEARTBREAKING LOSSES: DISHONORABLE MENTION

1. The Jets come back but too little too late, December 27th, 1981, Shea Stadium

In their first playoff game in 12 years, after their first winning season in 12 years, the Jets played one of the worst games imaginable against Buffalo on December 27, 1981. They played one of the greatest games imaginable. Unfortunately for the Shea Stadium faithful, the second-half performance fell eleven yards shy of success.

The Jets had won 7 of 8 to reach the playoffs but came out not just flat but flat-out awful. Bruce Harper fumbled the opening kickoff and 16 seconds into the game the Jets trailed 7-0. Then Wesley Walker dropped a 42-yard touchdown pass and soon the Bills expanded their lead to 14-0. Walker dropped another big pass and the stunned and deflated Jets soon found themselves down 17-0. Mark Gastineau tried to scoop up a fumble and run instead of falling on it and soon the Bills led 24-0.

Then the Jets woke up. Richard Todd threw a 30-yard touchdown pass late in the second quarter and two field goals pulled New York within 24-13 in the third. But then Buffalo’s final touchdown made it 31-13 with 10:16 left.

Todd, however, was on fire. He reeled off an 80-yard touchdown drive, capped with a 30-yard pass to Bobby Jones and on the next drive hit four straight passes en route to another score. Suddenly it was 31-27. With 2:36 to go Todd got one last chance 80 yards from the end zone. 

He completed two passed totaling 42 yards and then after a sack left New York facing third-and-20, he hit Derrick Gaffney for 26 more. Finally Todd found himself at the 11-yard line with 14 seconds to go.

On Todd’s first try he overthrew Mickey Shuler. On his second he spotted Gaffney in the end zone and fired what he thought was the game-winner, finishing one of the most remarkable comebacks in playoff history. But Todd hadn’t seen Buffalo’s Bill Simpson cutting over and Simpson picked the ball off at the one. The miracle finish was not to be.

2. The upstarts from the suburbs knock off the Rangers, April 11, 1975, Madison Square Garden

       This couldn’t be happening. The Rangers—who had made it to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1972 and come within a game of another trip in 1974—could not be on their way out of the playoffs in the first round… to the upstart Islanders…in a shutout no less.

       But there they were on April 11, 1975 down 3-0 in the third period at the Garden after splitting the first two games. Finally, the Rangers responded, Eddie Giacomin took over in goal and shut the Isles down while Billy Fairbairn scored twice in nine minutes and Steve Vickers followed with a game-tying goal. The crowd was going crazy. But the euphoria was short-lived.

Overtime lasted just eleven seconds, which was long enough for Islander Jude Drouin to find J.P. Parise who guided the puck into the net for a 4-3 win.

       The aftermath was even worse: Giacomin, Jean Ratelle and Brad Park were all gone within a matter of months and the team failed to make the playoffs for two straight years. There’d be delicious revenge in 1979 but that too would be undone when the Islanders would follow that with four consecutive titles, taking control of the rivalry.

 3. Tim McCarver sinks the Yankees, October 12, 1964, Yankee Stadium

       When Mickey Mantle won Game 3 of the 1964 World Series with a walk-off homer and the Yankees knocked out St. Louis starter Ray Sadecki with a three-run first in Game 4 it seemed this aging core of Bombers might have one final World Series crown left in them.

But the Cardinals showed plenty of power of their own, coming back to win . Game 4 on Ken Boyer’s fifth-inning grand slam, and with the Series even, winning the critical exchange of clutch homers in Game 5. With the Yankees down two in the ninth inning Tom Tresh hit two-run game-tying homer off Cardinal ace Bob Gibson. Perhaps New York would go back to St. Louis needing just one to win after all.

But the Yankee staff lacked the depth it once had and rookie Pete Mikkelsen was left in to pitch the tenth. When the Cardinals got first and third with one out manager Johnny Keane called for a squeeze play then changed his mind and told Tim McCarver—the Series’ hottest hitter-- to swing away. Swing he did, smashing a full-count pitch for a three-run homer for a 5-2 win.

The Yankees’ last stand crumbled in seven games.

DISHONORABLE MENTION: HEARTBREAKING LOSSES, THE METS WAY

1.  Jim McAndrew gets no support, August 17, 1968, Shea Stadium

1968 was the Year of the Pitcher but even in a low-scoring game someone has to be the loser. And no one suffered from a lack of run support worse than Met rookie Jim McAndrew, who held his own but was left high and dry by his teammates.

Called up July 21, he pitched 6 innings and allowed just one run against St. Louis but lost 2-0. In his next start, McAndrew was lifted in the fifth having allowed two runs against Los Angeles. The Mets lost 2-0.

McAndrew contributed 7 innings of one-run ball in his next outing but the Mets lost to San Francisco 1-0.

August 17th was the nadir. Again McAndrew went 7 and yielded just one tally but again the Mets tallied none and managed just four hits, this time against Houston. So McAndrew ended the day having allowed just four runs in 24-2/3 innings yet he was 0-4 and had yet to see a single run of support.

 The aftermath wasn’t much better. McAndrew bombed in his next start but then finally broke through, beating St. Louis’ Steve Carlton 1-0 on a five-hitter. But after that offensive outburst the Mets managed just one run total over McAndrew’s next three starts as he lost 1-0 to Carlton, 2-1 to Pittsburgh’s Nelson Blass and 1-0 to Chicago’s Ferguson Jenkins. McAndrew finished the year with a stellar 2.28 ERA… but a record of just 4-7

2. Mets take 25 innings to lose, September 11, 1974, Shea Stadium

In 1964 the Mets played and lost a 23-inning game. Four years later they played and lost a 24-inning game. No game had ever gone longer and been completed—the Brooklyn Dodgers 26-inning game in 1920 ended in a tie—but on September 11, 1974, the Mets outdid themselves, putting their players and fans through 25 innings, only to lose in spectacularly incompetent fashion.

The Mets grabbed a 3-1 lead in the fifth and carried it to the ninth when the Cardinals tied it with two outs on a two-run homer off starter Jerry Koosman. From the 14th-21st innings the Mets eked out just two hits but even worse they left two on in the 22nd, the bases loaded in the 23rd and again in the 24th.

Then in the 25th the Mets reliever Hank Webb tried picking off Bake McBride but threw the ball into the outfield. McBride sprinted around the bases while the Mets retrieved the ball and finally got it home only to have catcher Ron Hodges—who had relieved Duffy Dyer after 23 innings—commit a second error on the play by dropping the ball. The Mets lost 4-3.

In the 424-minute contest, which ended at 3:13 a.m, 50 players batted a total of 202 times and went through 180 baseballs.

One woman in Manhattan, taking advantage of the fact that the advance ticket windows stayed open till games ended drove to Queens at 1:30 a.m. and bought two tickets for a future game.

Amazingly, home plate umpire was Ed Sudol—the same man behind the plate in the Mets 23- and 24-inning affairs. More astonishing still was that the Yankees played a doubleheader in Baltimore that day but the first game went 17 innings so the Yankees actually played 26 total, one more than the Mets.

3. The Mets put in the longest day on record, May 31st, 1964, Shea Stadium

The Mets doubleheader on May 31st, 1964 against the Giants seemed like a standard issue sweep as New York dropped the first game 5-3 then fell behind 6-1 in the second. But a five-run rally in the seventh, led by Joe Christopher’s three-run homer that bounced off Willie Mays’ glove and over the fence, gave the Mets hope. False hope.

The game went into extra innings but after collecting 15 hits in the first 13 frames the Mets managed just five in the last ten. Perhaps that’s because the young Giant pitcher in relief, one Gaylord Perry, allegedly debuted a new pitch that night… one with a touch of saliva (or was it Vaseline).

Finally, in the 23rd inning Galen Cisco, who had pitched eight shutout innings, surrendered two runs and the Mets lost thet 7-hour, 22-minute game, 8-6. At least the Mets had helped set a new record, playing 32 innings in one day.

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