Whatever happens over the remainder of the 2024 National League Championship Series, it’s all but guaranteed it won’t be as dramatic, and as crazy, as the Dodgers’ first postseason meeting with the Mets in the 1988 NLCS.
This is the teams’ fourth meeting in October. New York has won two Division Series – a three-game sweep in 2006 and a five-game triumph in 2015 en route to the World Series, and those series had memorable vignettes. Mets (and former Dodgers) catcher Paul Lo Duca tagged two runners out at the plate on the same play during the 2006 series. In 2015, there was Chase Utley’s takeout slide that broke Mets shortstop Miguel Tejada’s leg, and Daniel Murphy going from first to third on a walk with the Dodgers shifted and no one covering third.
But the ’88 series was in a class of its own. It had star quality: Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden for the 100-win Mets, soon-to-be MVP Kirk Gibson and soon-to-be Cy Young Award winner Orel Hershiser for the Dodgers. It had twists and turns, crazy plays, controversy, anger, intensity, and grit. And it was the next to last step to a championship that Vin Scully described, when it was over, as “the impossible dream, revisited.”
It began with relief pitcher Jay Howell in the eye of the storm. Howell, acquired from Oakland the previous winter after he had lost the A’s closer role to Dennis Eckersley and become the home fans’ favorite target, turned things around in L.A. after an early season stint on the disabled list because of elbow issues. He finished the regular season 5-3 with a 2.08 ERA, 21 saves in 27 opportunities, and a 1.000 WHIP compared to a 1.556 the previous year in Oakland.
His first appearance in the NLCS didn’t go well. Hershiser and Gooden had dueled for eight innings. Howell inherited a 2-1 lead, faced four hitters, gave up a one-out walk to Kevin McReynolds and a two-out, two-run double to Gary Carter and left a loser, 3-2.
But any psychological edge the Mets might have had disappeared the next morning when the New York Daily News hit the streets. Mets pitcher David Cone had agreed to do an as-told-to column with Daily News writer Bob Klapisch, and the first column – which also turned out to be his last – savaged the Dodgers in general and Howell in particular. Cone – at least in what was written under his byline – described Hershiser as “lucky for eight innings,” and added:
“As soon as we got Orel out of the game, we knew we’d beat the Dodgers. Knew it even after Jay Howell had struck out HoJo (Howard Johnson). We saw Howell throwing curveball after curveball, and we were thinking, This is the Dodgers’ idea of a stopper? Our idea is Randy (Myers), a guy who can blow you away with his heat. Seeing Howell and his curveball reminded us of a high school pitcher.”
Unfortunately for Cone, even in the pre-Internet era these things had a way of spreading. Dodgers utility infielder Dave Anderson got his hands on the column and made plenty of copies, making sure that each of his teammates got one and Manager Tom Lasorda got a bunch.
You can guess what happened next: Cone was scheduled to pitch Game 2, and he did so to an irate and profane sound track from the Dodgers’ dugout. He left after two innings with a 5-0 deficit in what ultimately was a 6-3 Dodgers win. Not surprisingly, management asked and Cone agreed that he give up his budding journalism career immediately.
“It was the modern equivalent of sending a dozen hasty tweets to your boss and awaiting the repercussions,” he wrote in his 2019 autobiography, “Full Count: Education Of A Pitcher,” confirming that the hubbub was a distraction he didn’t need.
Oh, but the craziness was just starting.
The tabloid headline in the New York Post read: “Sportsmanship Is Out,” with the subhead, “Mets Vow To Avenge LA’s Assault On Cone.” Meanwhile, former major leaguer Tucker Ashford – a teammate of Howell in the minor leagues, later a coach in the Mets’ minor league system and at that time working in a butcher shop in Covington, Tennessee – tipped off one of his former bosses in the Mets organization that he had noticed a dark smudge on the bill of Howell’s cap and suspected he was using pine tar to improve his grip. Word got back to Mets manager Davey Johnson, who decided he would wait for just the right moment to inform the umpires.
It came in the late stages of Game 3, played on a wet, blustery Saturday afternoon after the original Friday date was rained out. Howell replaced Hershiser to start the eighth with a 4-3 lead, but after leadoff hitter McReynolds fouled a 3-and-1 pitch into the box seats – a fastball, as was everything Howell had thrown to that point – Johnson informed plate umpire Joe West of his suspicions. West beckoned crew chief Harry Wendelstedt, working third base, who inspected Howell’s glove, found the sticky stuff and threw Howell out of the game. Then he took the glove to NL president Bart Giamatti, sitting in a box seat.
It was about to get worse. Alejandro Peña replaced Howell and, only allowed eight warmup tosses, gave up an RBI double and a walk. Jesse Orosco and Ricky Horton followed but couldn’t stem a Mets rally that turned a 4-3 Dodger lead into an 8-4 Mets cushion by inning’s end.
And Howell, who acknowledged he was breaking a rule but maintained he was just trying to improve his grip in the wet conditions – and said he figured they would just throw the glove out if he were caught – wound up with a three-game suspension, later trimmed to two games after he appealed. But he would miss both of the remaining games at Shea Stadium.
So cue the drama. The Mets had a 4-2 lead through eight innings of Game 4 and Gooden on the mound, and seemed ready to impose their will on the Dodgers. But after John Shelby opened the ninth with a walk, Mike Scioscia – who had hit 35 home runs in eight-plus major league seasons to that point – hit the biggest one of his life, a drive into the Mets’ bullpen in right field to tie the score.
“The guys in the dugout were kidding me about my home run trot, but I told them I was running as fast as I could,” Scioscia told us afterward. It was 19.8 seconds, to be exact, as timed on YouTube.
The dilemma, though, was that the Dodgers were a man short in the bullpen – a key man, to be sure – and had to keep getting outs to keep the game alive. Horton provided two innings and Peña three, and then future MVP Gibson stepped up with two outs in the top of the 12th. He was 1 for 16 in the series and hadn’t hit a ball out of the infield all night, but he hit one that banged off the Charles Chips advertising sign at the base of the scoreboard behind the right field fence, right where it said “Simply Delicious.” The Dodgers’ 5-4 lead, I suppose, could be described similarly.
But reliever Tim Leary gave up two singles in the bottom half, and Orosco replaced him and gave up a walk before getting a pop-up for the second out. His replacement? Hershiser, who had volunteered to go down to the bullpen at the start of the 12th, to which pitching coach Ron Perranoski replied, “Are you kidding?”
Hershiser needed three pitches to get McReynolds on a fly to center for the final out, and maybe the series shifted right there. The next afternoon, on what was originally scheduled as a travel day but was used to make up the rainout, Gibson hit a three-run homer and added a diving catch in left field, Rick Dempsey doubled twice and drove in two runs, and the Dodgers won, 7-4, to go ahead three games to two.
Journeyman pitcher Brian Holton, normally a middle reliever, was the unsung hero out of the bullpen that day, getting the game’s final five outs and saying later, in the crush of a frenetic postgame clubhouse, “Jay’s back (for Game 6), and I’m back where I was. I don’t mind.”
However … Gibson, stealing second in the ninth inning with a 6-4 lead, felt a pop. He had been playing through knee and hamstring issues for weeks anyway, and received a cortisone injection after the game for what was announced as an aggravated hamstring.
After that day game, everybody flew back to Los Angeles for Game 6 the next night. Cone, defrocked of his byline, got his own revenge with a five-hit complete game in a 5-1 victory to even the series.
Gibson sat out Game 6. He started Game 7, but sprained the medial collateral ligament in his right knee – which to that point had been his “good” leg – when he slid into second base to break up a double play in the second inning.
The Dodgers scored four runs in that second inning to knock out Ron Darling, scored twice more against Gooden in relief, and Hershiser pitched his own five-hitter to vanquish the 100-win Mets and confound the experts.
And, as it turned out, Gibson had one more swing of the bat in him, in Game 1 of the World Series against the A’s. It became arguably the most famous walk-off homer in history and one that would lead to what, as of now, remains the Dodgers’ last full-season championship.
jalexander@scng.com