Combining the Mets and the League Championship Series has proven to be an explosive mixture.
Each of the Met trips to the NLCS have provided New York with legendary, epic and sometimes heartbreaking experiences.
And all have been simply Amazin’.
“Nobody can stop us,” outfielder Cleon Jones said as his Mets prepared to face the Orioles in the 1969 World Series for their first-ever title. “We’re the greatest team in the world. We’re gonna win it all.”
In Game 2 of a three-game sweep, an 11-6 Met win, Tommie Agee, Ken Boswell and Jones hit a pair of home runs each.
Game 3, a 7-4 Met win that sealed the sweep, came off the finger tips of Nolan Ryan. The Hall of Fame pitcher threw 7 innings and allowed only 3 hits, while striking out 7.
Gil Hodges was asked after the win how the Mets, in only their eighth year in the league, managed to win an NL pennant.
“Teamsmanship,” he said.
1973
Mets 3, Reds 2
That same unified approach to the game was never more apparent than on the 1973 roster. The defining moment of this series was the brawl at Shea that marred Game 3 when Pete Rose got in Bud Harrelson’s way as the Met infielder tried at a double play.
Both bullpens and dugouts emptied under a shower of debris thrown on the field from the bleachers. Several fights sprinkled the field and the game was halted for 10 minutes as players were pried from each other.
After the crowd was calmed by several Mets, including Yogi Berra, Seaver and Rusty Staub, the Reds returned to the field only to be whipped 9-2.
Staub hit two homers in the win that both marred the Series and gave the Mets an identity as being a team that refused to back down to anyone.
Tug McGraw, standing on a wooden platform in the team’s dugout after the Series win repeated the phrase “Ya gotta believe. Ya gotta believe.”
And they did.
1986
Mets 4, Astros 2
“Watching this game was unbelievable,” Wally Backman said after winning the 1986 pennant. “Maybe I had a heart attack, I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
The mother of all NLCS epics, the Mets struggled to get past a pitching machine in the form of the Houston Astros in 1986, concluding with an unforgettable Game 6.
After being dominated by Mike Scott throughout the regular season and in Games 1 and 4 of the series, the Mets dragged into Game 6 in Houston with Scott on the horizon for a possible Game 7.
Instead, the heavily-favored Mets, who had won a club-record 108 games in the regular season, overcame a 3-0 ninth inning margin to tie the game and tango with the Astros for 16 innings.
In the top of the 16th, the Mets scored three runs, highlighted by a Darryl Strawberry double and a Ray Knight single. The three runs in the 16th were exactly what they needed as the Astros reeled off two last runs, finally succumbing to Jesse Orosco, who became the first pitcher to win three games in one LCS.
“I think I aged 10 years in the last two days,” Backman would later say. “I’m so numb . . . I don’t even know what I’m thinking anymore. Say it this way: this was the greatest game I ever played and ever saw.”
1988
Dodgers 4, Mets 3
The wheels fell off this series in the ninth inning of Game 4 in front of the home crowd at Shea when Doc Gooden served up a two-out home run to Mike Scioscia that tied the game, 4-4. Up a run with one out standing between the Mets and taking a commanding 3-1 lead in the series, Gooden let the game, and as it turns out, the NLCS, slip away.
Kirk Gibson went deep in the 12th inning, reversing the tide of the series with one swing of the bat.
The Mets, who had owned the Dodgers in the regular season, went on to lose two of the remaining three games in the series, relinquishing the stranglehold that they briefly had on the series and the Dodgers.
1999
Braves 4, Mets 2
“It was getting crazy,” Darryl Hamilton would later say. “It was getting to the point where your stomach is coming out of your guts.”
Under a steady downpour, Robin Ventura, hitless in 16 at-bats in the NLCS, came to the plate. With a Met tide surging and the bases loaded by Atlanta relief pitcher Kevin McGlinchy, Ventura needed only a single to stay alive.
Under the mightiest roar to come out of Shea since that ball trickled through Bill Buckner’s legs in 1986, Ventura lofted a 2-1 pitch high over the centerfield wall.
However, before he could step on second, Ventura was mobbed by his teammates, Roger Cedeno having already scored the winning run. The game was over, and Ventura would never touch second, his Grand Single more than enough to win the game.
“That was surreal,” Met pitcher Orel Hershiser said after the improbable Grand Single. “That will go down as one of the most famous games in Mets history. It will be right up there with Kirk Gibson’s home run, Carlton Fisk, Bucky Dent. This one will be on that tape with them.”