History of the World Series – 1986

History of the World Series – 1986

An unbelievable half-inning capped by a hard-to-fathom at-bat, the last of the 10th forever will be a source of exhilaration for New York Mets fans and devastation for Boston Red Sox followers. The Red Sox, ahead three games to two in the Series after lefthander Bruce Hurst’s 4-2 triumph in Game 5, had broken a 3-3 tie in the sixth game when Dave Henderson led off the top of the 10th with a home run against Rick Aguilera. Boston then increased its lead to 5-3 later in the inning as Wade Boggs doubled and Marty Barrett singled him home.

Red Sox reliever Calvin Schiraldi, who had entered the game in the eighth and promptly yielded the run that tied the contest at 3-3, retired the Mets’ first two batters in the 10th, Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez, on fly balls. Boston was within one out of its first Series crown since 1918, when Babe Ruth pitched the Beantowners to two victories over the Chicago Cubs.

Gary Carter then kept the Mets’ faint hopes alive by rapping a single on a 2-1 pitch and Kevin Mitchell, batting for Aguilera, followed with a one-strike base hit.

Schiraldi proceeded to get a no-ball, two-strike count on New York’s Ray Knight. One more strike and the Boston Red Sox would be World Series champions. Knight managed to make contact, though, and looped a single to center field. Carter scored from second, reducing the Mets’ deficit to 5-4, and Mitchell moved on to third. Bob Stanley took over for Schiraldi at this point. Then came the at-bat.

Stanley and Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson waged a l0-pitch battle as a frenzied Shea Stadium crowd looked on. Wilson fouled off a 2-1 pitch, bringing Boston within one strike of the Series title for the second time. Mookie then fouled off the next delivery. And the next as well. The Red Sox were oh-so-close.

Stanley’s seventh pitch to Wilson was wild, with Mitchell racing home with the game-tying run and Knight advancing to second base. With the count 3-2, Wilson fouled a pitch back. Then he hit a foul ball past third.

Wilson, having hit four fouls off Stanley when the Red Sox’s big righthander was one strike from wrapping up this Series, slapped a full-count offering to first baseman Bill Buckner. The grounder somehow got through Buckner’s legs, and Knight bolted home on the error. New York, time and again getting extended life, had won, 6-5, and deadlocked the 1986 fall classic.

No one could quite believe what had just unfolded. One thing seemed certain: It would be extremely difficult for Manager John McNamara’s Red Sox to rebound from such a crushing setback. While they had shown their mettle in the American League Championship Series — one strike from elimination in the fifth game, the Red Sox roared back to win the playoffs in seven games — the Sox had to come to grips with a stunningly painful situation.

The Red Sox needed time to get themselves back together mentally. And they received an unexpected boost in this regard when Game 7 was postponed 24 hours because of rain.

With Hurst seeking his third victory of the Series (besides winning Game 5, he was a 1-0 victor in Game 1), the Red Sox clipped Ron Darling for three second-inning runs in the climactic game when Dwight Evans and Rich Gedman belted back-to-back homers and Boggs delivered an RBI single. Hurst protected the 3O lead until the sixth when New York tied the game on Hernandez’s bases-loaded single that scored Lee Mazzilli and Wilson and Carter’s looper to right that brought Backman around.

Schiraldi came in to pitch the seventh, and Knight greeted him with a tie-breaking homer. Before the inning was over, Rafael Santana had stroked a run-scoring single and Hernandez had hit a sacrifice fly. The Mets were on top, 6-3.

Boston, shut down in the middle innings by Sid Fernandez, threatened to tie the contest in the eighth as Evans ripped a two-run, no-out double off Roger McDowell. But Jesse Orosco came on and got Gedman to line out, Henderson to strike out and pinch-hitter Don Baylor to bounce out to shortstop Santana.

New York, winner of 108 games, expanded its lead from 6-5 to 8-5 in the last of the eighth when Darryl Strawberry cracked a long homer and Orosco slapped a single up the middle through a drawn-in infield. Orosco then went out and disposed of the Red Sox 1-2-3 in the ninth, and the New York Mets — 21 1/2-game winners in the 1986 National League East race and heavy World Series favorites — were the champions everyone expected them to be.

Considering the way the Series began and New York’s status with Carter approaching the plate in the 10th inning of Game 6, what everyone expected to happen took considerable time in unfolding. Hurst, with last-inning help from Schiraldi, had set down Manager Dave Johnson’s club in Game 1 at New York and Boston belted Mets ace Dwight Gooden en route to a 9-3 second-game victory that featured homers by Henderson and Evans.

New York lefthander Bob Ojeda, acquired from the Red Sox after the 1985 season in an eight-player trade that sent Schiraldi from the Mets to Boston, pitched five-hit ball over seven innings in Game 3 at Fenway Park and the National Leaguers broke through with a 7-1 victory. Lenny Dykstra led off the game with a homer off Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, and the Mets collected three more runs in the first inning, two scoring on designated hitter Danny Heep’s single. (The ’86 fall classic was the first under which revised designated-hitter rules were implemented for the Series; now, instead of the designated hitter being used throughout the Series in alternating years, the DH would be employed yearly in games played at the American League participant’s park.)

Carter, who had driven home three runs in the third game, collected three more RBIs in the Mets’ Series-squaring 6-2 victory in Game 4. He broke a scoreless tie with a two-run homer in the fourth off Al Nipper and smacked a bases-empty shot in the eighth off Steve Crawford. Dykstra connected with a man aboard in the seventh, also off Crawford, as his drive to right field deflected off Evans’ glove and sailed over the wall. Winning pitcher Darling walked six batters in a seven-inning effort, but he allowed only four hits and no runs.

Hurst’s fifth-game victory, against Gooden, thrust Boston back into the Series lead and set up a Roger Clemens-vs.-Ojeda pitching matchup in Game 6. Clemens was coming off a spectacular season, one in which he had compiled a 24-4 record and set a major-league mark with 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game. In Game 2 against the Mets, he had gone against Gooden in a ballyhooed duel but lasted only 4 1/3 innings in a Red Sox romp that Crawford wound up winning.

The hard-throwing Clemens left with a 3-2 lead in Game 6 but, of course, did not get the decision in one of the most talked-about games in Series history. As it turned out, neither he nor fireballer Gooden (0-2 against the Sox) won a game in this classic.

The failure of Clemens and Gooden to excel in the Series drew considerable attention. So did Barrett’s record-tying 13 hits. And then there was the fact that the Mets became only the second team in World Series history to lose the first two games at home and rally for the championship.

But when it comes to drawing attention, it would be difficult to match what transpired in the last half of the 10th inning in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

Rod Serling couldn’t have written a better script.