Later this summer, the Mets will welcome back members of the 1986 World Series championship team for a special ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the franchise’s most recent title.
Mets Hall of Famer Darryl Strawberry is among that group of New York icons. Strawberry was a special guest on the latest episode of The 6-1-1 Podcast with Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard, during which he reminisced on what made the ‘86 Mets so special.
“We realized coming into Spring Training that we were not going to let anyone step on our neck anymore,” Strawberry said. “I remember our manager, Davey Johnson, the first meeting, he said, ‘We’re going to win it all.’ We looked around at each other. He said, ‘We’re going to dominate.’ We thought to ourselves, ‘Yeah, this is our year to dominate.’”
And that is exactly what the ‘86 Mets did. New York won 108 regular-season games, winning the East Division by 21 1/2 games over the second-place Phillies.
The postseason brought about a new set of challenges. The Mets eked out the pennant in a contentious six-game NLCS with the Astros, taking Game 6 in a 16-inning thriller in Houston. Then, in the World Series, New York staged one of the most improbable comebacks in baseball history. Facing a two-run deficit with two outs and nobody on in the 10th inning of Game 6, the Mets fought their way back, with Mookie Wilson’s iconic roller dancing through the legs of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner to bring in the winning run.
The Mets won the World Series two nights later, in Game 7, with Strawberry launching a majestic home run in the eighth inning to pad the lead.
“The thing that made us really good, we knew how to come back,” Strawberry said. “We never gave up in a game. We never quit. We never said it was over. … That’s the kind of group of guys that we had. We believed in ourselves.”
Strawberry shares a number of special bonds with his ‘86 teammates, including flame-thrower Doc Gooden and first baseman Keith Hernandez.
“He taught me how to hit left-handed pitching really well,” Strawberry said of Hernandez. “He taught me when a guy is throwing hard, you move back in the batter’s box and let the ball get deeper. When a guy is throwing offspeed, you move up, so that you can catch the slow stuff. That’s when I started to learn the game in so many different ways.”
Of Strawberry’s 335 career home runs, 252 came with the Mets – second most in franchise history, behind Pete Alonso. In 1988, thanks in part to advice from Hernandez, Strawberry launched 20 home runs against left-handed pitching. He’s one of six players to have 20+ home runs in left-on-left matchups in a single season in MLB history.
The 6-1-1 Podcast is available on MLB.com, MLB.TV, all podcast platforms and YouTube.