The Mouth That Roared (36 page)

Worst of all was that my players refused to take responsibility for their actions. For months, Saberhagen denied being the culprit in the bleach incident. And Coleman at first lied about setting off the explosive device.

I had to wonder what these guys saw when they looked in the mirror.

*

We needed someone, anyone, to step up and be a team leader in 1993.

I held out hope that Eddie Murray could at least serve as a role model, if not an outspoken leader. He was a future Hall of Famer, and at 37 years old, still putting up numbers in line with his career averages. With the Mets in 1992, he hit his 400
^th
career home run.

Eddie had a powerful bat but not much of a personality. In his book, Klapisch described interviewing him as “only slightly less painful than a tax audit.”

You don’t have to be on friendly terms with the media to be a team leader, however. You don’t even have to say much at all. A disapproving look or a shake of the head from a veteran is sometimes enough to send a message to a younger teammate. But the best way to lead is by example.

I respected Eddie, but I realized I hadn’t done anything with the Mets to earn his respect back. His actions over the summer let me know he had no interest in a leadership role. Managers don’t have to force leaders to participate in pregame warm-ups, like I had to do with Eddie. He went out and did his job well that season, knocking in 100 RBIs for the first time in eight years. Away from the field, he wasn’t a positive or negative influence. He was just…there.

The few carryovers from the much-celebrated ’86 World Series team also didn’t take charge. Third baseman Howard Johnson’s career was on a downward slide. His All-Star season in 1991, in which he led the National League in home runs and RBIs, seemed like a distant memory. With his low average and lack of power production, I viewed him as a liability. I told reporters his days at Shea Stadium were numbered if he didn’t start playing better. But Howard felt entitled to playing time based on his past contributions to the team. He responded by accusing me of not knowing him as a player or a human being. But I knew what I saw. And what I saw, I didn’t like.

Then there was Doc Gooden, who had become a World Series champion, 100-game winner, and national celebrity before the age of 25. He was still riding the coattails of those accomplishments. But the 28-year-old Doc that I got to know had fallen far from grace. He went 12–15 in 1993 as he battled mounting personal problems that would fully emerge in the coming years.

*

No one was more affected by the Mets’ inability to win ballgames in 1992 and 1993 than pitcher Anthony Young. On July 24, 1993, his loss to the Dodgers dropped his season record to 0–13. Adding the 14 consecutive losses he suffered at the end of the ’92 season, Young extended his major league record losing streak to 27 games.

When Anthony broke the record, the media turned out in such large numbers that we had to stage a postgame press conference in my office. Interest in his losing streak had grown throughout the summer. After one loss, I commented that I hadn’t seen as many media members in a major league clubhouse since I won the World Series with the Phillies. Late-night television hosts even got in on the act, cracking jokes about Anthony, who became a poster child for our team’s poor play.

Anthony was a talented young pitcher. I wouldn’t have kept using him as a starter and reliever if I didn’t think he gave us a chance to win. There were a variety of reasons he struggled to get a victory. Dumb luck played a role. So did the fact that he was pitching for a team that didn’t bail out its pitchers with timely hits in the late innings. Part of it had to do with Anthony himself. Having spent his first full season in the majors in 1992, he was still finding his way in the big leagues, and the pressure to make the right pitch at the right time increased each time he notched another loss. I respected how he went out and battled every time.

When Anthony finally broke the streak with a win against the Marlins on July 28, we cracked open champagne bottles and celebrated. He finished the season with a 1–16 record and a not-so-shabby 3.77 ERA. His difficulties garnered all the attention, but his wasn’t the only lowly won-lost record on the team in 1993. Frank Tanana went 7–15, Eric Hillman went 2–9, Pete Schourek went 5–12, and Mike Maddux went 3–8.

We traded Anthony to the Cubs before the 1994 season. He never finished a season with a winning record and had his career cut short by an arm injury. Before he retired, Young ripped me for being too critical of players. I had heard that a lot during my career, but I didn’t expect it from a guy I tried my best to support during a historically unsuccessful time in his career.

*

I even got caught up in the feeding frenzy of negative attention directed at the Mets.

It stemmed from my attempt at a joke when a reporter asked me how I cope with losses.

“I just beat the hell out of Sylvia and kick the dog and whatever else I’ve got to do to get it out,” I responded.

I was trying to capture the essence of how difficult it was for me to deal with defeat day after day. Sylvia was a great baseball gal. She knew losing made me pouty as hell. The idea that I would actually do any harm to her or my dog was comical. At least I thought it was.

The backlash didn’t come right away. I guess the leaders of the National Organization for Women weren’t avid readers of the sports pages, or maybe it just took them time to figure out they were insulted. But a couple of weeks after my comment, someone in the Mets public relations office reached out to Sylvia.

“You’re going to get a call from
The New York Times
,” he said. “Some groups are planning to protest us for what Dallas said about beating you and kicking the dog.”

Sylvia got contacted by more than one reporter. She tried to calm the storm while at the same time making it clear I didn’t have a future in comedy.

“I had to laugh, because I know Dallas,” she said. “I knew he was trying to be funny, and it wasn’t funny.”

The media jumped all over the story. The
New York Post
ran a cartoon of me walking into a house and kicking a dog. Sylvia was in the background with her arm in a sling.

NOW held its demonstration outside Madison Square Garden. They accused me of sending a message that domestic violence was a laughing matter.

In 1972, when Sylvia and I fought for my daughter Kim’s right to play Little League baseball, NOW and other women’s rights groups stood solidly in our corner. Twenty years later, I was a villain in their eyes. Sylvia got fed up with all the negative attention directed at me.

On the day of the protest, I told reporters, “I can’t have beat her too bad—we’ve been married 36 years now.”

Make that 55 years now.

*

Considering all I had to deal with in 1993, I thought I exercised a lot of self-control—toward my players, of course. It was a difficult group to relate to.

Bonilla may not have read Klapisch’s book, but I did. The 1992 team gave him plenty of material to support his premise. But if he had waited a year, he might have had an even better story about the worst team money could buy.

The only silver lining to the ’93 season was that we won our last six games, giving up a total of just seven runs in the process. The streak included Sid Fernandez’s last win for the Mets. It brought our season record to 59–103, the team’s worst mark since 1965. The expansion Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies won more games than we did in ’93, though we managed to go 15–10 head to head against them. Under my stewardship, the Mets were 46–78.

We finished 38 games behind the Phillies, who reached the World Series before losing to the Blue Jays. I really respected that Philadelphia team. They were a bunch of blue-collar guys who liked to have a good time but put winning baseball games above all else. Their idea of fun was having a few beers, singing some songs, and agitating a lot. Their success on the field earned them the freedom to do what they wanted away from it. In that sense, they were like the ’86 Mets team that won the World Series.

My team, meanwhile, sprayed bleach, set off explosives,
and
played terrible baseball.

We had a leadership void. We had a talent void. And I couldn’t wait for Joe McIlvaine to dismantle the team.

If I had been managing the Yankees in 1993, I probably would have been out of a job, even with two years still left on my contract. But Mets ownership realized it would take time to fix the problems I inherited. Unlike George Steinbrenner, Mets co-owners Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon seemed to value patience.

It was impossible to pretend that the 1993 season was anything but a complete and utter embarrassment for the organization. The team’s stunning lack of discipline on and off the field gnawed at me the entire off-season. I couldn’t believe players would perform—and behave—in such a manner. Going into spring training, I vowed to make my first full season with the Mets a completely different experience. A middle-of-the-pack finish in the National League East was within reach. But more importantly, I wanted to restore pride to an organization whose reputation had taken a severe hit.

I had never been in this type of situation before. When the Phillies hired me for the final month of the 1979 season, I got immediate results. And the team’s high level of play carried over to the following season and postseason. The Mets were playing lousy baseball when I took over the team, and they showed no improvement after my arrival.

No manager could have won with the 1993 Mets. As I told the
Daily News
, “I was supposed to ride in here on a horse like John Wayne and beat the heck out of guys and make them play great baseball. There has to be a realization you can only do so much as manager with the material that you have.”

I didn’t beat my wife, dog,
or
my players, by the way. And I still couldn’t ride a horse.

If we couldn’t win with our veterans, I hoped to look to the future by giving young players like catcher Todd Hundley, outfielder Jeromy Burnitz, and pitcher Bobby Jones a chance to prove themselves. But unlike in Philadelphia, where I knew the farm system like the back of my hand, I didn’t have a lot of firsthand knowledge about these guys.

I had a lot to learn about my team before I could hope for better results.

*

My coaches and I were in this together. My closeness with my staff in Philadelphia helped get us through some rough patches, and I wanted to build similar kinship in New York. Bobby Wine in Philadelphia and Frank Howard in the Bronx were the only coaches on my staff with whom I had worked before.

During an off day in spring training at Port St. Lucie, I got the coaches and their wives together for a little boat ride off Florida’s Treasure Coast. The idea was to build camaraderie. A local doctor offered us his yacht for the excursion. We packed up some picnic baskets and a cooler of beer and headed off to the dock. When we arrived, the doctor was there, but his boat wasn’t. Apparently he had forgotten he promised the yacht to someone else that day.

Determined not to cancel the trip, I rented a pontoon boat that seemed big enough to accommodate all our passengers: Sylvia and I, Greg Pavlick, Bobby and Fran Wine, Mike and Jan Cubbage, Frank Howard, and Tom McCraw. I passed on renting a driver, because Pavlick, my pitching coach, insisted he could captain the vessel.

After pushing the boat out through some mud, we loaded it up with the food and drink and climbed aboard. Most of us huddled around the cooler in the front of the boat. It was a windy spring day, and the water was choppy. When we reached the middle of the channel, another more powerful boat cruised by us. Suddenly the seas got even rougher.

Instead of bringing the boat to a stop, Pavlick chose to accelerate into the wake of the larger boat. We started taking on water—lots of it. Potato chips and sandwiches started floating all around us. Fran Wine yelled, “Holy hell, we’re going down!” She proceeded to toss her camera overboard.

McCraw and Cubbage couldn’t swim—and we neglected to locate the life preservers before setting sail.

Most of the water was collecting in the front of the boat, weighing it down so that Pavlick couldn’t maneuver us out of trouble.

“Throw the cooler overboard!” Jan Cubbage yelled.

Hondo and Wino, who were still in the front of the boat, put their arms around the cooler and held on for dear life. There was no way they were going to make such a sacrifice.

Finally, Pavlick figured out what he needed to do. He backed off, the boat steadied, and we continued our journey. Fran’s camera was the only casualty.

The entire Mets coaching staff almost bit it that day. But I think we grew closer. We had saved our ship. But could we save the 1994 season?

*

Every April offers teams a fresh start. That cliché applied even more in ’94, the first year of Major League Baseball’s latest round of divisional realignment. Instead of two divisions in each league, there were now three. And in addition to each division winner, a wild-card team from each league would qualify for a postseason berth.

With the Braves now in the National League East, that extra playoff spot sounded pretty good to everyone else in the division. The Braves had dominated the NL West in 1993, going 104–58 before getting knocked off by the Phillies in the National League Championship Series. It was Atlanta’s third division title in a row.