At last! Time to celebrate OPENING DAY!!!
(Not this season, obviously.)
This is the 40th Anniversary of the 1985 Mets, the first team to truly be a contender since 1969. (1973 was fun, but it required the entire division to freeze in place in September so we could move past them, which was hardly replicable, moving forward.) But with Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry, and Ron Darling hopefully not being undercut by the lack of support that dropped him from 10-3 to 12-9 over the 2nd half of 1984 and Dwight Gooden possibly looking more like the 8-1 pitcher who closed the season that the kid who struggled to 9-8 before that, New York could dream!
And, more importantly, get book deals. This was the year that spawned diaries by both Keith (
If at First, with Mike Bryan) and manager Davey Johnson (
Bats, because Peter Golenbock had already used "Balls" for Graig Nettles's book two years before)
So here we go, April 9th. I'd forgotten the Mets start the season without Ray Knight, who had surgery to deal with bone chips in his elbow. (Davey was pissed this wasn't taken care of when Ray had his shoulder cleaned out over the winter.) For games where we have the video, I won't spoil it over much, except to say that Keith agrees with the fans that Davey was silly to try and get through the game using only two pitchers. And everybody was happy for the players who got to be heroes, for similar reasons.
Mets v St. Louis, WOR broadcast