Game 7, 1986 by Ron Darling

Author:Ron Darling
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466878105
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

7

PUT ME OUT, PUT ME OUT, PUT ME OUT OF MISERY

There is nothing like the sound of 50,032 boisterous, thrill-happy fans leaking from a rickety old building on a chilly October night. In just about a half hour, Shea Stadium had gone from a rollicking funhouse, a raucous din of furious noise that seemed about to drown out the planes flying overhead, to a kind of tomb. Where there was once joy and abandon and hope and infectious enthusiasm and all those good things there was now gloom and doom, almost like somebody had died—and whoever it was, it felt to me like I’d killed him.

It is difficult to overstate the stunned silence that seemed to wash over the Shea crowd—and into that stunned silence I imagined every invective, every expletive, every snide comment being mumbled under every breath with me in mind. Mets fans were respectful enough—and, I suppose, innocent enough—that I didn’t hear too many boos as I walked off the field after that disastrous second inning, but that didn’t mean 50,032 people weren’t thinking about giving me the biggest raspberry the game had ever seen. That didn’t mean the booing wasn’t implied. I could feel the boos, sense the disappointment all around.

Here again, my teammates gave me a wide berth when I got back to the dugout, and this was just as well with me. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I was like a kid who’d misbehaved and been sent to the corner to think about what he’d done, only here that was precisely what the situation called for. I needed to be by myself, off to the side, alone with my thoughts in a raspberry-free vacuum, to work the situation over in my mind, find a way to get my head right and start solving those Red Sox hitters before they were done solving me. The moment had gotten away from me—the biggest moment of my career!—and I wanted desperately to take it back, but the only way to do that was to hang in there until my teammates could reclaim the three runs I’d just donated to the other side. And the hang in there part was crucial, because it felt to me like I still had something to prove.

Oh, you better believe I had something to prove, but I had no idea if I could stick around long enough to do so. As a pitcher, the manager gives you the ball, but it’s never really out of his hands. I hadn’t exactly given Davey Johnson a whole lot of reasons to keep me in the game. Already, Sid Fernandez had been up and down in the bullpen. Already, Mel Stottlemyre had been out to the mound to take my pulse. Already, I could see the wheels turning in Davey’s head as he tried to calculate the precise point of diminishing returns on my lackluster start, to survey the depths of the hole I’d just dug for him.

Gary Carter led off the bottom

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