MLB Network Top 20 Games Last 50 Years

[Guest Edgy DC]

[Willets Point]

G-Fafif wrote: BOB KNEPPER ON IF MIKE SCOTT WAS SCUFFING THE BASEBALL IN THE SERIES: �Everybody said everybody knew it. � I think you�d have to ask Mike to get the low-down, but I would say yeah he was.�

Dang, that's the first time I've seen an admission from a teammate.

[G-Fafif]

Bumping because it will be a great way to top off a Sunday when the Mets break a seven-game losing streak.

(Or whatever).

Mets-Astros, Game Six, 1986 NLCS, in the 90-minute spotlight on MLB Network's Greatest Games series, tonight at 7 PM EDT, repeated at midnight and 3:30 AM (technically Monday morning if you're recording). Orosco, Strawberry and Knepper guest.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Darryl's current strategy to keep himself on the straight and narrow seems to be to commit to being everywhere, and therefore too busy to relapse.

[G-Fafif]

Worth watching for Knepper's ongoing regret that the game got away. Astrofreude and all that.

One play I'd forgotten about, if I ever noticed it when it happened, was the 5-6 putout that ended the bottom of the fifth. Doran was on second with two out. Hatcher tapped a tricky bouncer toward third, which Knight had to charge. It was going to be difficult to throw out the runner at first. Meanwhile, behind Knight, Doran was racing toward and around third, but Santana trailed him. Instead of trying to get Hatcher, which almost certainly would have not worked and which just as almost as certainly allowed Doran to score and make it 4-0, Knight turned and threw to Santana. Doran slammed on the brakes past third and tried to dive back in, but Santana tagged him easily. In retrospect, it was a phenomenal play (for which other shortstops would be immortalized had they done it a generation later, but never mind that). Between that heads-up bit of defense (and Astro screwup) and the Ashby squeeze that went awry and caught Bass between third and home in the first, Knepper all but buried his head in his hands.

Strawberry came off in this as Mr. Baseball, which always amuses me since during the entirety of his Met career, he never seemed particularly introspective about the fundamentals of the game nor conscious of its finer points. The Darryl who presents himself in these forums nowadays would make a helluva manager. Or restaurant owner.

Nice to see Jesse, too. He still looks tired from those three innings.

No. 4 on this countdown will be, as Gwreck predicted, Pirates-Braves Game 7 from 1992.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I think the popular image of Darryl was a little overfed to us by the Mets booth, presenting Hernandez as the guy who's always three pitches ahead, and Darryl as the guy who just saw the pitch and swung.

[G-Fafif]

Eight years of following every utterance Darryl Strawberry made and the only time I ever heard him say anything remotely related to baseball, not just himself, was when he dismissed the notion he would hold against newly acquired Jeff Musselman the incident in which the then-Blue Jay hit him in Spring Training and Straw went after him. "You don't do that to a teammate," Straw said, and I thought, "Wow, I never heard Darryl hold forth on baseball etiquette or baseball anything before."

Probably knew more than he was letting on. Probably knows more now than we could possibly imagine.

[Ceetar]

G-Fafif wrote: Eight years of following every utterance Darryl Strawberry made and the only time I ever heard him say anything remotely related to baseball, not just himself, was when he dismissed the notion he would hold against newly acquired Jeff Musselman the incident in which the then-Blue Jay hit him in Spring Training and Straw went after him. "You don't do that to a teammate," Straw said, and I thought, "Wow, I never heard Darryl hold forth on baseball etiquette or baseball anything before." Probably knew more than he was letting on. Probably knows more now than we could possibly imagine.

I'm waiting for his Canseco-level expose on the late 90s Yankees.

[G-Fafif]

Ceetar wrote: G-Fafif wrote: Eight years of following every utterance Darryl Strawberry made and the only time I ever heard him say anything remotely related to baseball, not just himself, was when he dismissed the notion he would hold against newly acquired Jeff Musselman the incident in which the then-Blue Jay hit him in Spring Training and Straw went after him. "You don't do that to a teammate," Straw said, and I thought, "Wow, I never heard Darryl hold forth on baseball etiquette or baseball anything before." Probably knew more than he was letting on. Probably knows more now than we could possibly imagine. I'm waiting for his Canseco-level expose on the late 90s Yankees.

That would make his fleeting MFYness totally worth it.

[Gwreck]

Next week's guests are Ojeda, Wilson and Buckner for game #3 on the countdown.

[G-Fafif]

I figured No. 3 was where Game Six 1986 WS was headed. Too much adoration out there for Game Six 1975 WS for ours to overcome. Its climax continues to rank in the Top Three Moments of My Life.

Anyway, No. 4 provided a fascinating presentation, with Sid Bream and Mark Lemke representing the victorious Braves and Andy Van Slyke sitting in for the losing Bucs. A few thing that struck me:

1. Andy Van Slyke is a deceptively bitter guy. I never did like him as an opponent. I guess I'm not supposed to like Met opponents. Enjoyed learning that when he tried to motion Barry Bonds to play shallow when Francisco Cabrera came up, Bonds flipped him off. Not much to choose from in that outfield in terms of for whom one might root.

2. Mets couldn't stop the Pirates of Bonds, Bonilla and Van Slyke in 1990 and fell helplessly behind them by the second week of August 1991. So we signed one-third of that triumvirate away for 1992 and what happens? Mets suck even more and Pirates are hardly deterred from their third consecutive N.L. East championship. Bonds leaves and the whole thing falls apart like the proverbial house of cards. If one needed a reason to dislike Bobby Bonilla a little more, this served as a good reminder.

3. Van Slyke described the sense of desperation that permeated the Pirates in terms of trying to extend a 2-0 lead to 3-0. It was most apparent when we see the Pirates' third base coach waving Orlando Merced home from first in the eighth with one out on Jeff King's double to right. It wasn't a crazy decision but I was taken aback by the Pittsburgh third base coach who did the waving: Rich Donnelly...same guy who, 14 years later, waved Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew home for the Dodgers against the Mets in Game One of the NLDS when Paul Lo Duca tagged them both almost simultaneously. I'm sure the old boy network in baseball would rally to Donnelly as a great third base coach the way everybody asserted Jim Joyce was an awesome umpire the moment he made one of the worst safe/out calls in baseball history, but man, nice way to show up in all the wrong places.

4. Stan Belinda, who allowed the Braves their three runs, was the Pirate closer but just barely. Even though Leyland could bullpen an opponent to death (I'll never forgive him for drawing out a Saturday night game at Shea that year when he used seven bleeping pitchers to nail down a 3-2 win...in three hours and forty-seven minutes), he never saw fit to keep his closer sharp. Circumstances hadn't called for Belinda to save any of the three Pirate wins in the NLCS, so he only pitched one mop-up inning, in Game Two. Suddenly he's on the mound trying to hold a tenuous lead in the ninth inning of Game Seven. Impossible to imagine today.

5. Bream's journey from second to home on Francisco Cabrera's pinch-hit, given his complete lack of speed and the practically perfect production values of the play at the plate, was lingered on generously in this show, which makes sense, since Bream was there and it was a historic slide (and the not-quite throw from left after Van Slyke received the finger was Bonds's last moment as a Pirate), but it seems Cabrera was almost an afterthought in the retelling. I mean, c'mon...Francisco Cabrera drove in the tying and winning run with two out and a pennant literally on the line. Ten plate appearances the entire season and then he pulls a reasonably effective impersonation of Bobby Thomson. Thomson had a genuinely strong ML career. Cabrera didn't accumulate 400 plate appearances in his whole career, and he won the NLCS for Atlanta. He (and Barry Bonds's agent) pulled the curtain down on a proud franchise's viability for the next two decades, and the denouement of the show was, "You're great, Sid!"

6. I don't know how severely this was edited, but Bob Costas's contempt for Bonds dripped through, per usual, and he couldn't resist taking a shot at Braves OF Deion Sanders for shuttling back and forth between football and baseball that month. I mention editing because neither Bream nor Lemke took the bait on Sanders. I recall every Brave in those days going on about what a fantastic teammate Deion was, and sure enough, Prime Time was on the top of the step as the top of the ninth ended, next to Bobby Cox (he had already pinch-hit), slapping butts and shaking hands and encouraging the hell out of everybody. He's not a sympathetic figure, and the football-baseball thing was probably not ideal, but Costas gets on my nerves with his holier-than-thou act.

7. Tom Verducci shared a stat that Bream had scored from second on an outfield single in the 1992 regular season exactly twice. And there he was doing with a championship in the balance.

8. Verducci (who's big on the innings pitched) pointed out Drabek never went on fewer than four days' rest in the regular season and now he was doing it twice in a row, and Leyland left him in there into the ninth. Van Slyke said, essentially, this was the postseason, it's all about adrenalin, you don't think about that spit. They both seemed like valid points, one from the dispassionate sidelines of hindsight, one from a guy who's been in the middle of it.

9. I remember Jose Lind as a marvelous second baseman, but, to put it unkindly, man did he choke in the ninth when he couldn't pick up Justice's grounder after Pendleton led off with a double. There had been a ground ball earlier where Lind had trouble and it was clear (then and in this presentation) that he was playing back on his heels, not charging, not doing whatever made him marvelous during the regular season. The more I stared at these Pirates (who made the Mets' lives so miserable for three years when the Mets weren't making their own lives miserable), the less likely they seemed to be in the position to go to a World Series. They were Bonds, Van Slyke, Drabek and a bunch of guys.

10. As the game went on, and I stopped nervously flipping between it and L.A. Law, I somehow knew the Braves were going to come back. It was an improbable ninth inning but the Pirates just looked ready to crack on some level. I was a big Braves fan (in that second-team sense) in those pre-realignment days and this was as gratifying a non-Mets win as I ever experienced. On some level, I felt bad for Leyland and Pittsburgh but watching this show reminded me how much I couldn't stand Leyland and Pittsburgh in those days. I wouldn't wish their post-1992 death spiral on anybody who isn't the MFYs, but I didn't really mind Van Slyke sitting in center field at the end, cap askew, nowhere to go but home. OTOH, I find it hard to believe I used to root in any capacity for the Braves.

It was a long time ago, but baseball has a way of transporting you right back to where you were.

[Gwreck]

I too was struck by Van Slyke's bitterness and willingness to blame Bonds. He also recalled a moment where Barry allegedly told the Pirates that he would start hitting better if his teammates could just get him to the World Series.

One thing that I would have liked discussed was what would have happened had Bream been tagged out successfully. Justice had scored the tying run ahead of Bream and the game would have gone to extras. Problem was that Cox had used almost all of his bench and would have had to go with either Francisco Cabrera, Javy Lopez or Brian Hunter playing second base.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

It was a long time ago, but baseball has a way of transporting you right back to where you were.

Yup. I was at the North Street Hotel, in Elkton, Md. (not a hotel anymore, just a bar). I also recall the Lind error looming large. And I've long been sick of Bob Costas.

I know I told the room I once met Mike LaValliere's mother who said the final play was all the more devastating for the Pirates because they didn't have to lose Sid Bream to the Braves for more than a couple of bucks. Bream and LaValliere were very close friends.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Gwreck wrote: I too was struck by Van Slyke's bitterness and willingness to blame Bonds. He also recalled a moment where Barry allegedly told the Pirates that he would start hitting better if his teammates could just get him to the World Series.

Why the bitterness? One would think that whenever moments of darkness would encroach upon his mood, he could look at his '85 World Series Championship ring, and think happy thoughts.

/I still kinda hat Andy Van Slyke

I remember being in Boston; Mom and I were getting an early start on college visits, and since we were staying in a bed-and-breakfast (sans TV), we watched until the end in a bar down the street, with a bunch of very excitable elderly Braves fans (it didn't occur to me until much later how it was that these homegrown Bostonians were Tomahawk-choppers).

[dgwphotography]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: It was a long time ago, but baseball has a way of transporting you right back to where you were. Yup. I was at the North Street Hotel, in Elkton, Md. (not a hotel anymore, just a bar). I also recall the Lind error looming large. And I've long been sick of Bob Costas. I know I told the room I once met Mike LaValliere's mother who said the final play was all the more devastating for the Pirates because they didn't have to lose Sid Bream to the Braves for more than a couple of bucks. Bream and LaValliere were very close friends.

It was October 14, 1992. I was laying in a cot in Griffin Hospital next to my sleeping wife, who had just given birth to our first daughter a few hours before... As Greg as noted to me in the past, the Pirates haven't had a winning season since Ashley was born.

[G-Fafif]

And now that I think about it, I couldn't have been flipping between Game Seven and L.A. Law because this was a Wednesday, and L.A. Law was on Thursdays. Must have been something else distracting me between pitches.

Perhaps CNN was doing a live remote from Griffin Hospital.

[HahnSolo]

The studio portion of this was on in the background at my sister's for Easter afternoon. I get Greg's point about Bream above. What's funny is that Van Slyke and Lemke had pretty long and good careers, but when I looked at the screen, I thought, who are those two guys surrounding Sid Bream?

I didn't re-watch the ninth inning, but I seem to recall two things, and I wonder if they talked about either:
1. Wasn't there a batter or two that either Drabek or Belinda-or both-thought they had struck out on a close pitch? I thought there may have been some bitterness from Leyland and the Pirates about that.
2. Didn't the Braves score their first run on an absolute cannon of a shot by Ron Gant? One of those "that's gone" when it hits off the bat? I think Bonds must have been playing him on the warning track, as he casually caught the hard-hit liner at the wall.

[G-Fafif]

I'd forgotten John McSherry had gone down from dizziness early in the game and had to be replaced as the home plate umpire by Randy Marsh (eerie foreshadowing of McSherry's Opening Day death in Cincinnati less than four years later). Marsh's amazing, movable strike zone was indeed a point of contention. And Gant's ball did momentarily look like it had a chance to render Francisco Cabrera completely unknown.

[Frayed Knot]

- I always liked Van Slyke as a ballplayer - never had much of an opinion on him as a person one way or the other. But if he's going to all but call Bonds a prima donna asshole on TV then that's A-OK with me.
Also (and I think I've told this story before here) I kind of met him once. A guy I went to college with played American Legion ball against AVS back in their mutual hometown outside of Utica and knew him casually (said he was clearly the best player out there but also a HUGE hot-dog). We went to the rail during warmups at Shea one day as Van Slyke's Cards were throwing and my buddy tried engaging him in a conversation. Wasn't too successful and I think Slick was trying to remember where he knew this guy from. "Never was the sharpest knife in the drawer" was my friend's assessment.


- Every report I ever heard either from baseball or from football was that Deion was extremely popular with his teammates. That fact always baffled me given his penchant for constant self-promotion but seemingly sensible guys in both sports claimed it was so. I remember when he did his high-stepping check-me-out dance on his way to a TD in the closing seconds of a game the Falcons were losing by about five touchdowns. I figured that his teammates would want to pummel him at that point but apparently that wasn't the case and it wouldn't be the first time I've failed to understand the NFL mentality.


- SEVERAL pitches were either questionable or just flat-out unexplainable, and they all seemed to come at really crucial times.


- Lind always struck me as one of those artificial turf Gold-Glovers who had problems on the real stuff.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I know plenty of Pirates fans who swear that Bonds never deserved his Gold Gloves because he couldn't throw. They'd tell you that this was their assessment well before the day he failed to throw out Bream. I doubt it, but...

[G-Fafif]

Advance quotes provided by MLBN from this Sunday's No. 3 Game, 1986 World Series, Game Six (airing 7 PM).

Buckner on feeling pressure from Red Sox fans to win the series: I hadn�t been in New England that long or with the Red Sox and I had no clue what was in those people�s minds and what they had been through and what they�re thinking. I was just out trying to have a good time and trying to win a championship but those people had a lot of other things on their mind. Buckner on Clemens: Roger was the best pitcher in baseball and I�d seen some of the things that he�d done that year, they were amazing. He always had a great arm but on top of that, he learned how to pitch. The 20-strikeout game, the whole package � I�d bet my bank account on that game. Ojeda on pitching on three days� rest: Joe Garagiola said as far as [pitching on] three days� rest, �This time of year, it means nothing,� and he was spot-on. It meant nothing to me. And at that time, no one knows, but I had two cortisone shots. Right after I threw the complete game in Houston [1986 NLCS Game 2], we came home � this is pre-9/11 � I went to the ballpark, I got the needles, I got the cortisone, put it in my pocket, went to LaGuardia, flew down to Washington, where [team physician] Dr. Parkes was. He shoots my elbow in the bathroom, I get back on a plane, fly back and I�m at the yard for [1986 NLCS Game 3] that night. So on the short rest, [Garagiola] couldn�t have been more correct. My arm was killing me, but I wasn�t gonna miss it. Everybody who gets to play in a World Series feels that same way. On Calvin Schiraldi replacing Clemens in the 8th inning: Wilson: We�d been very confident so far and, to tell you the truth, Schiraldi was a Met and we all knew Schiraldi very well. And, I�ll tell you what, it was like Christmas. We thought that we could get to Schiraldi. We really did. Ojeda: When Schiraldi came in � because they knew him as well as Boston knew me � they were fighting over the bat rack. No disrespect to Calvin Schiraldi, none meant, none intended, but these guys � getting Roger out and it happened to be Schiraldi � it was like the clouds had parted. They were ready. On the lack of lineup changes in the 8th inning: Wilson: Not watching this game until now, you don�t think about all these things. Normally as players, we�re sitting there trying to figure out what the manager�s going to do but in this game, I don�t think that was the case. Buckner: In McNamara�s defense, I was the best first baseman, defensively, that he had. Dave Stapleton, bless his heart, he wasn�t a great player by any means. He had his own issues. If I thought that Dave Stapleton was gonna do a better job than I was, then I�d have told McNamara. I wanted to win, so did everybody else. � I�d been in positions where my ankles were in better shape, where I could cover more ground but I wasn�t having an issue at this point. I was the best player we had to be out there. Was I Keith Hernandez? No. But I was the best that we had. Wilson on batting in the bottom of the 10th: I don�t even remember feeling anything, I was numb. The crowd was so loud. I mean, it was just so loud. You stand on the ground and you could just feel it generating through your bones, that�s how loud it was. Surprisingly I wasn�t nervous. I only thought one thing, �Just don�t make the last out.� That�s the only thing I was thinking. Buckner on his reaction after losing Game 6: The fans in Boston were great to me. � People ask me how I feel now about it, I feel very blessed. I played 21 years in the Major Leagues, I got to play in two World Series. Would I have liked it for things to change differently in the sixth game? Obviously. But it didn�t. Would I do it again, with the same results? Heck yeah. I lived [in Boston] until 1993 and I moved to Idaho because that was a dream of mine since I was a little kid, since I watched �Bonanza� on TV. I wanted to buy a ranch in Idaho, which I did. People say I left Boston because of [Game 6]. That�s hardly the case.

[HahnSolo]

I call hijinks on Ojeda's story. NLCS game 3 was a 12 noon Saturday start. I know its a short flight, but are we really to believe he did all that in one morning? More likely he flew down and back on the off day.

[Guest Edgy DC]

That double account of the lift if gave the Mets to see Schiraldi in there really says a lot about the culture of the closer, doesn't it?

I'm dubious about Buckner's account that he was the best choice they had, but if he wants to go with that...

I thought Bonanza was set in Nevada. They were always going into Virginia City for supplies.

[HahnSolo]

They didn't kill Schiraldi either. He nearly went three innings, and the hardest hit ball was Carter's SF in the 8th. The Mets benefited from defensive miscues to score in both the 8th and (obviously) the 10th.

As a rebuttal to Buckner regarding Stapleton, I offer games 1, 2, and 5. All Red Sox wins, all finished by Stapleton at 1B.

[G-Fafif]

HahnSolo wrote: I call hijinks on Ojeda's story. NLCS game 3 was a 12 noon Saturday start. I know its a short flight, but are we really to believe he did all that in one morning? More likely he flew down and back on the off day.

At least he wasn't talking about going up Mount Bleeping Kilimanjaro the second the postseason ended.

[G-Fafif]

MLBN reran Angels-Red Sox from '86 and is again showing Marlins-Cubs from '03, two eps I hadn't seen much of on first run. In the interest of burning off my disgust from Mets-Phillies '11, I inadvertently sank into a whole new level of despair for the Angels, whom I nominally favored over the Red Sox but wasn't all that caught up in at the time. If there are postseason series I have few memories of, it's postseason series that were going on at the same time as any Met postseason series, so even though I remember that ALCS Game 5 fairly well (I was hanging a living room curtain or something at my mother's behest and recall climbing off the ladder several times to see what Al Michaels was exulting about), this was the first time I really and truly concentrated on how that game went down.

And it was horrible. I felt awful for the Angels, and that's without a deep allegiance to them or having any idea how the course of history might have changed had they met the Mets one round later. I felt bad for Bobby Grich, the special guest loser. I felt bad for Gene Mauch, for whom I've never had more than the most perfunctory sympathy given his track record (and that I didn't much like him when he managed Montreal). It was weird. Maybe it was just the leftover annoyance from how the Mets lost today, but it really pissed me off 25 years after the fact.

Just now tried to get into a little of the Cubs-Marlins game, a contest I did watch closely when it happened and a game whose outcome I ultimately approved, common human decency notwithstanding. Then I had to turn it off. I couldn't bear to watch the Cubs' Alex Gonzalez describe his pain...and I've always hated the Cubs.

I look forward to Game Six being examined in great detail, and I will revel in Bill Buckner's agony, probably, but man, to a certain degree you have to be a stone sadist to withstand the discussion segments with the panelist whose team lost in agonizing fashion.

[G-Fafif]

No. 2, this Sunday, will be Game Seven, 1991 World Series, Braves at Twins, the 10-inning, 1-0 thriller in which old Jack Morris outlasted young John Smoltz.

No shame in being tabbed the second-greatest game of the last fifty years, but boo on taking (quite obviously) Game Six, 1975 World Series, over this one. Seventh game, for crissake. Extra innings, scoreless, all kinds of short-circuited scoring attempts, beautiful display of baseball at its best and sometimes not so great. I guess it lost points for being in the Metrodome instead of Fenway Park and for not having Carlton Fisk gesturing his ball fair. And if we're picking nits, the Red Sox won to force a Game Seven and lost Game Seven. For Game Six impact, the Mets coming from behind in 1986 WS and going on to win the whole thing resonates more.

Not that Game Six 1975 wasn't stupendous on many levels, but it feels as if they pussed out, taking the older game (oldest game in this entire countdown) in the more charming setting over the true pins-and-needles affair.

[Gwreck]

I finished up watching the '91 game during tonight's rain delay. Guests were Smoltz and Morris which were of course perfect. I was impressed by their insightful commentary, particularly in light of Costas (and Verducci's) open invitations for them to be overly self-congratulatory.

Haven't watched the game Game 6 one yet (saving it).

It was noted at the end of the show that Jack Morris was one of only six players in major league history to be on the world series winning team with 3 different clubs. I could guess two others but the remaining three were total mysteries to me. Then I looked it up and saw that each of those remaining three players were all on the '13 Athletics and '18 Red Sox and that explained why I didn't know the answer...

[Frayed Knot]

Just watched this game for sort of the first time.

The main thing I remember about this game is being stuck at a friend's house and being out-voted by guys who wanted to watch the Sunday Night football game. There weren't even any local teams involved but:
a) they all had bets on the game
and
several in the crowd were ga-ga over the Chris Berman half-time schtick and would rather kill themselves than miss it

I managed to get the channel changed for part of the time to catch pieces of the game here and there (probably less than half in total) and did manage to see the climatic inning. But mostly I spent the night being told by the ignorant bunch that the fact that the game was scoreless meant "you're not missing anything".

I vowed after that night to never put myself in that position again.

[G-Fafif]

Redskins @ Giants -- same Monday Night matchup that was on against Game Seven exactly five years earlier (though a different result...I still hate Ray Handley). I vaguely recall switching back and forth in the early innings, though not because that nothing-nothing baseball game had nothing happening.

I was intensely aware that October 27, 1991 was the fifth anniversary of October 27, 1986 (a point Len Berman drove home on Channel 4, showing Jesse Orosco striking out Marty Barrett). The '91 Mets had gone completely down the toilet, so this was the first postseason since 1986 that I didn't watch with some sense of "that could have been us out there." Probably the fact that it was exactly the fifth anniversary made me admit it was a very long time ago that the Mets had been champs, and definitely why I adopted five years as my rule of thumb for a bitching and moaning grace period.

That is, if your team has won the World Series in the last five years, you can bitch and moan all you want in the short term (as we did in '87, '88, '89, '90) but ultimately, you have to suck it up and say, "At least my team won the World Series within the last five years. I can only complain so much." White Sox fans, for example, are, after not winning in 2010, free to kvetch like the rest of us. Cardinal fans are still on the clock through this fall.

Should the Mets win another World Series, I will test that theory in case it isn't the beginning of a dynasty.