That happened to be my first full year living in the Pittsburgh area, and no matter how lousy the Pirates happened to be, I tried to attend as many games as I could. Plenty of those were losses to the Mets, right from the season opener, with Dwight Gooden (then baseball's top pitcher) beating Rick Reuschel, 4-2. My most lasting memory of that game was that a "ball girl" fielded a ball while it was in play, then realizing the mistake she'd made, kind of rolled it back onto the field. I think she lost her job slightly afterward.
I also was on hand for the Pirates' only victory over New York that season. Rick Rhoden beat Ron Darling, 7-1, in the first game of a twi-night doubleheader. (Remember those?) For the second game, Leyland trotted Jose DeLeon out to the mound, which left us kind of scratching our heads. DeLeon was sensation when he broke into the league in '83, pitched decently but was victimized by tough luck in '84, and managed a 2-19 record in '85, missing 20 losses when Chuck Tanner took him out of the rotation toward the end of the year. Why was Leyland giving DeLeon a shot?
Jose promptly coughed up a 2-0 lead to the Mets in the first, then managed a couple of scoreless inning before the roof caved in. With two outs and a man on, opposing pitcher Rick Aguilera cracked a home run. Further carnage staked the Mets out to a 7-0 lead after Danny Heep's double, and Leyland walked out to the mound to relieve DeLeon. That was his final appearance as a Pirate (although he did go on to lead the National League in strikeouts three years later, as a Cardinal.)
The biggest Pirates-Mets disappointment of 1986 came in Pittsburgh's final home game, "Fan Appreciation Day." As added bonuses, fans were to be treated to a chicken dinner after the game (courtesy of Lou Pappan) and an "oldies" concert featuring the Four Tops and Chuck Berry.
Wow! I'd never seen Chuck Berry live, but I sure loved his music. Still do. So I made sure to be at Three Rivers Stadium that day.
With the Mets winning 1-0 in the ninth, everyone was ready to get the game over with and let the festivities begin. Then, with two outs, Jim Morrison cracked a home run to tie the game and send it into extra innings.
Pirate play-by-play man Greg Brown was a stadium announcer back then, and as I've heard him tell it, Berry took one look at Morrison's ball sailing over the wall and announced something along the lines of, "I'm outta here." The Pirates lost, of course, and we did eat chicken, but we got a double dose of the Four Tops instead of a set by one of rock music's most influential figures.
Greg Brown, who had to make the announcement to 30,000 fans, says he's no fan of Chuck Berry.
Trivia question 24: Who was the losing pitcher for the Pirates in the non-Chuck Berry game?
2 comments:
Don't have any clue about the trivia question but Danny Heep -- wow, there's a blast from my past! Darling's a Mets announcer, Gooden's a part of Mets history, but Danny Heep's a name I haven't heard or thought about in years!
And growing up I was fortunate that my dad's company had season tix to both the Mets and Yanks. Before each season, when the schedule came out, I took the time to analyze it and pick out all the games for my Wish List for tickets. Back then I pretty much didn't care about who was playing, I wanted the good Give-away days -- hats, t-shirts, misc whatever (plus one season I picked Tom Seaver Day when they retired his number... good day!) ... and I almost always listed any twi-night doubleheaders. Always wanted to go see those. Man, they actually used to schedule them! Do they even schedule them anymore? If so, it's gotta be like 1 or 2 a year throughout the whole entire league... but I'm guessin' it's not even done anymore. What a shame. What fun those were as a kid! And it sure was a great time (1986) being a Mets fan. The past decade (or two) more frustrating than enjoyable but I guess Mets fans aren't alone in that department. I guess I should feel fortunate that I grew up near NYC and became a Mets fan and I'm not today a fan of a few other teams in the league... baseball might not have the same meaning for me growing up near Tampa, Dallas, or Milwaukee or dare I say in this Pirates blog, Pittsburgh. (Sorry.)
They stopped scheduling doubleheaders at the behest of the players association. They still have "day-night doubleheaders," with two separate admissions, but that doesn't count.
Watching the Mets in 1986 was not a good experience in Pittsburgh!!!
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