* - Brag: yes, this was just about exactly when I acquired Crawford for one of my Roto teams in exchange for John Lackey and Corey Patterson.

1. THE RAW NUMBERS

Did Gibson leave behind a clearly superior record? Let’s look at the numbers as they appear in the books:

Well, Gibson did strike more people out; in fact, he retired as the second man to strike out 3000. But to match Alexander’s record, Gibson would have had to pitch five more seasons and go 24-7 with a 1.52 ERA each of those five years.

What about their prime years? Surely Gibson, remembered today as an overpowering force, was the greater pitcher in his prime? Let’s look at Gibson’s best five-year run, from age 30 (1966) to 34 (1970):

Brilliant, by any standard. But compare to Alexander from age 28 (1915) to age 33 (1920); I’m combining his 1918 and 1919 totals because Alexander, right at the zenith of his powers, was drafted and went off to fight World War I in 1918, after appearing in only 3 games:

Wow. Alexander’s numbers read like Sandy Koufax on andro. And in between, unlike some baseball players who went to war, Alexander saw real combat on the front lines as an artillery soldier.

2. THE LEADERBOARDS

Who was more dominant? Gibson won two Cy Young awards; Alexander pitched against Cy Young, but had there been an award then he would have easily won at least four (1915-17 and 1920), and possibly a fifth at age 40 in 1927 (or maybe not; Alexander finished behind six other starting pitchers in the MVP voting). Look at the top five pitching categories, Wins, Winning Percentage, ERA, Innings, and Strikeouts. In his 5-year peak, Gibson racked up just 3 league leads in those categories, the sum total for his career; Alexander, between 1915 and 1920, notched 18. In his career? 25, second only to Walter Johnson. And those weren’t close races; Alexander led the league in Wins by margins of 8, 8 and 6 in consecutive years, and in innings by margins of 35, 61, and 46. Five pitchers on the 1915 Phillies threw over 170 innings; the second-lowest ERA was 2.36, but Alexander alone lowered the team ERA to 2.17. Gibson’s calling card, his 1.12 ERA in 1968, doesn’t exactly dwarf Alexander’s 1.22 mark in 72 more innings in his best year, and while Alexander had four other full years in the ones, Gibson only once had an ERA less than double the 1968 mark.

Alexander, of course, was the dominant force in major league baseball in 1915-17, topping even Walter Johnson, and easily the best pitcher in the game in 1920. Had it not been for the war, he would likely have matched teammate Hippo Vaughn as the NL’s best hurler the two years in between. In the National League between 1962 and 1966, there was Koufax and there was everyone else; from 1971 on, it was Seaver and everyone else. And Seaver was probably better than Gibson in 1969-70. And Gibson was hurt in 1967. That really leaves only the one year when Gibson was the undisputed best pitcher in the National League.

3. THE TRANSLATED RECORDS

There being really no way to twist the numbers themselves to make Gibson look better, it becomes necessary to evaluate those numbers in the context each man pitched in. I’ve run translated records before, and I’ll run them here. (I explain the details here). It’s not the most sophisticated measurement, but in short, the method tells us one thing: when external factors are removed, what was a pitcher’s performance relative to others in his league?

Here’s the career numbers I got, after running the translations one season at a time:

As you can see, adjusting for the surroundings hurts both pitchers, Alexander more than Gibson; both men pitched in pitcher’s eras, and both alternated between good and bad run support. Both were probably hurt by their parks overall, although Gibson was helped a great deal in his best years. Here, let’s run the same peak-seasons comparison as before:

Gibson

Alexander

What you see here is that Alexander was a better pitcher, but not by a huge margin in quality; the real difference, even adjusted for the difference in eras, was in their workloads. And he was more consistent. As I discuss in more detail in the link on the method, I used the 1986 NL as the baseline, so these are good approximations of what their performance was equivalent to on an average team in a neutral park in the mid-80s. The fact that Alexander still registers as a 300-320 inning a year guy by mid-80s standards tells you how dominant he was in that category in his era.

The odd thing is Gibson’s 1968 W-L record; although 22-9 is a fine record, common sense tells you that you need some bad luck to lose 9 games with a 1.12 ERA. Gibson threw 13 shutouts that season (second on the all-time list; Alexander threw 16 in 1916), which means that he was 9-9 with an ERA still in the ones when not throwing a shutout. But his team was a pennant winning team in a pitcher’s park; the Translated Record system reduces his winning percentage to reflect an above average offense. Hard to say this is anything but arbitrary bad luck – which tends to mostly even out over a career but can vary a lot from year to year – but it’s awfully hard to reconcile a disappointing record in Gibson’s very best season with the popular image of Gibson as the ultimate "gamer," a guy with an almost mystical ability to win close games.

Baseball Prospectus.com just came out with their own translated pitcher records, using a similar methodology to mine (so far as I can tell) but translating into present-day rather than mid-80s numbers. More on that later; the BP analysis gives the following career totals:

and totals for the five-season peaks:

Same general conclusion. Win Shares, you say? Bill James gives Alexander his due in the new Historical Abstract, ranking him 3d to Gibson's 8th (in the original historical book he had Alexander 9th in peak value to Gibson's 11th, and 5th in career value to Gibson's 9th among righthanded starters). The Win Shares method puts Alexander 4th among pitchers at 476 (behind only Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Kid Nichols), and Gibson 28th at 317 (the book has him tied with Greg Maddux, but that was two years ago).

4. WHAT ABOUT THE POSTSEASON?

The heart of Gibson’s case, and it is an impressive one, is his record in the World Series: 7-2 with a 1.89 ERA and eight complete games in nine starts. Gibson started three games in the 1964 World Series, losing Game Two 8-3 (Gibson allowed 4 runs in 8 innings before his bullpen imploded), but rebounding to win Game Five 5-2 in 10 innings (the two runs were unearned, and Gibson struck out 13), and clinging on to win Game Seven 7-5 despite allowing two runs in the ninth. In 1967, returning to action after a broken leg, he was more impressive: 10 K in a 2-1 complete game victory in Game One, a 6-0 shutout in Game 4, and a complete game 7-2 victory with 10 K as Jim Lonborg got pounded on two days’ rest in Game Seven. Yaz, fresh off the Triple Crown and an incredible stretch run, was held to just 3 for 11 against Gibson; the rest of the “Impossible Dream” Sox were 11 for 80. In 1968, Gibson was utterly dominant in his first two starts -- a 5-hit 4-0 complete game shutout in Game 1, and a 10-1 blowout in Game 4 (Gibson had a 6-run lead when he took the mound in the fourth inning). The series, and the season, came down to one game -- and Gibson looked like the same old Gibson for six innings, but allowed 3 key runs in the seventh and lost 4-1. It wasn't all Gibson's fault -- Jim Northrup's 2-run triple broke the game open, and some sources lay most of the blame for that on poor outfield play by Curt Flood. But the game underlined the fact that Gibson, a great pitcher who was usually good in the clutch, was not invincible.

Alexander’s first two Series visits were nearly as impressive. In 1915, Alexander's Phillies faced off against an incredibly deep 101-win Red Sox team at the height of the Sox dynasty: besides the outfield of Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper and Duffy Lewis, the pitching staff included Babe Ruth, Smokey Joe Wood, Carl Mays and Dutch Leonard, the latter a year removed from setting the ERA record. And those weren't even the aces of the staff; the Sox didn't use Ruth, Wood or Mays (except a pinch hit appearance for Ruth, in which Alexander got the Babe to ground out) the whole series. Alexander went the distance in Game One, allowing just a single run on the way to a 3-1 victory when the Phillies scored two in the bottom of the 8th. In Game Three he went the distance again on two days' rest, allowing just 6 hits but losing a 2-1 heartbreaker to Leonard when Lewis singled home Hooper in the bottom of the 9th; Leonard had retired the last 20 in a row.

The Phillies lost the series in five games, and there was some controversy over whether Alexander was unavailable (i.e., hung over) to start Game Five, when Erskine Mayer and Eppa Rixey combined to blow a 4-run first inning lead. Bill James reviewed the controversy in The Baseball Book 1990 and left the answer unclear (he thought it odd that Alexander told the manager that his arm was stiff). Alexander would have been coming back on one day's rest after a complete game, and even if they'd held the lead, he would have most likely been expected to start either Game Six or Game Seven; even by 1915 standards, that's asking a lot. On the whole, he acquitted himself quite well.

In 1926, well past his prime at age 39, Alexander was the hero of the Series with a performance that entered the annals of baseball legend. Facing the Ruth/Gehrig Yankees, Alex threw a complete game 4-hitter in Game Two, allowing just two early runs in a game the Cards blew open in the 7th for a 6-2 win; he got stronger as the afternoon went on, retiring the last 21 batters he faced. Five days later he did it again, staving off elimination on the road with a 10-2 complete game victory in Game Six (again, the game was close until a 5-run seventh). The next day - hung over or not, although his teammates swore he was sober and just tired - Alexander came out of the bullpen in the bottom of the seventh, with a 1-run lead, the bases loaded and two out, and struck out Tony Lazzeri (on a low and away pitch, of course) to squash the Yankee threat. Alexander then retired the side in the 8th and the first two batters in the ninth before walking Ruth, only to have the Babe foolishly try to steal second with Bob Muesel coming up and Gehrig on deck, leading to the most damaging caught stealing in Series history.

Unfortunately for Alexander, like his contemporary Walter Johnson, he didn’t get as many shots as Gibson at postseason glory in his prime, and Alexander came back for one more turn in 1928 at the age of 41. If you can imagine Bob Gibson, who was bombed to the tune of a 5.04 ERA at age 39, coming out of retirement at age 40 to face the 1976 Reds in the World Series, you get an idea of how well Alexander pitched against the 1928 Yankees: Ruth and Gehrig ate him alive to the tune of 11 earned runs in 5 innings. Those two by themselves went 16 for 26 with 4 doubles, 7 homers, 7 walks, 14 runs and 13 RBI in 4 games in that Series, and Alexander took his share of the abuse (it was Alexander's misfortune to face Babe Ruth's teams in all three of his postseason excursions; Alex had held the Babe to 0-for-8 with 2 walks in 1915 and 1926). This ruined Alexander’s lifetime Series record, but in this particular comparison, I don't see how that can be unduly held against him.

If you count his first two appearances in the Series, Alexander's postseason record is nearly as impressive as Gibson's: 3-1, a 1.42 ERA, complete games in all four starts, a 27-8 strikeout/walk ratio, and just over 6 hits allowed per 9 innings.

So, Alexander was a real good money pitcher, and Gibson a great one. What does that all mean? There have been an awful lot of statistical studies done in attempts to determine whether there is such a thing as clutch hitting. The usual answer is either (1) ain’t no such thing or (2) if there is, there’s no evidence to prove it. The latter is the more sensible answer, since there’s always the chance that we have looked in the wrong place. Bill James did a study in the Baseball Book 1992 (at page 201) in which he determined that veteran players, generally, had just a slight advantage over otherwise similar young players in certain types of clutch situations.

For all the work done in this area, there has been (as far as I've seen) precious little really systematic attention paid to clutch pitching – whether the evidence, broadly speaking, supports the idea that some pitchers are better than others at pitching in big games or tough game situations. Intuitively, it seems possible for pitchers to have a greater ability to "turn it up," since pitchers can vary their arsenal and often have to pace themselves if they are in midseason or midgame, although I understand that some studies have suggested that "pitching to the score" (i.e., changing a pitcher's approach based on the game situation) may be a myth.

Where this relates to Bob Gibson is this: how much credit do we give him for raising his level of performance in big games? Because that's the only way to really toss out the numerical advantages for Alexander. Given that Alexander's postseason performances were outstanding, however, I can't give Gibson enough credit to swing the analysis his way.

5. WHAT ABOUT THE COMPETITION? COULD THESE GUYS SURVIVE TODAY?

Some people would write off the exploits of pre-1947 stars like Alexander, reasoning that competition before the color line was broken must have been watered down; if that's your attitude, then this argument isn't even worth having. I don’t think you can really prove very well how strong the competition in any given era was, or at least it’s nearly impossible to quantify it. The game, in Alexander’s day, drew from a smaller group of potential players due to discrimination, yes – but except for 1914-15 there were fewer big league teams, 16 compared to 20 or 24 for most of Gibson’s career. And in those days, baseball was it; even guys like Jim Thorpe, Greasy Neale, and George Halas tried to make a living in the game because you couldn’t make decent money playing every other sport. If the conditions were like that in Gibson’s day, he would have been pitching against Jim Brown and Wilt Chamberlain.

In any event, Alexander’s teams were trying to do the same thing that Gibson’s were - win the pennant and the World Series – and the big question is how much each guy did to help his team to that goal.

Inter-league levels of competition is another story. Because the available evidence does suggest that Gibson played in the NL at a time when it was the dominant league, featuring many more of the game’s biggest stars, winning the All-Star Game on a regular basis, and winning the World Series 6 times in 9 tries between 1963 and 1971. By contrast, Alexander pitched in the NL at a time when it was decidedly the weak sister of the AL. AL teams won every World Series between 1910 and 1920 but two: the "Miracle" of 1914 and the fix of 1919. (The 1919 Reds, you may remember, had a better regular season record than the White Sox, but the Sox were overwhelming favorites anyway due in large part to the lopsided World Serieses of the previous several years.)

Taking them out of their contexts . . . each pitcher, of course, would face a very different game today. Gibson had the advantage of mammoth ballparks, centerfield bleachers full of white shirts, a high mound, and did his best work in a part of the strike zone that was only just recently resettled after a 30-year occupation by the hitters. As for Alexander, he had his best years before the advent of the lively ball, the breaking of the color line, night baseball, etc. But I have to think that Alexander would be at least as suited to the modern game as Gibson, given that his sinker and pinpoint control would leave him far less vulnerable to today's patience-and-power offenses (think Kevin Brown).

There is, however, the issue of the spitter, which was outlawed after 1920. Alexander was 34 at that point, and maybe he threw it and maybe he didn't; he wasn't one of the veteran pitchers who was allowed to keep throwing it. (Then again, I remember reading that his manager and first baseman Fred Luderus was famous for licking the baseball, such that an opposing team once retaliated by putting a substance on the ball that caused his tongue to swell up). But check out Alexander's strikeout rate, which was first or second in the league six times between 1911 and 1920, and which dropped almost in half immediately thereafter, generally staying below the league average the rest of his career. It's a fair inference that Alexander's devastating sinker was at least partially a phenomenon of the dirty, wet, dinged-up baseballs he used.

6. SO WHY DOES EVERYBODY LIKE GIBSON BETTER?

Well, the postseason is a huge part of it; the whole nation was watching those games on television, and they became a critical part of the game’s lore. The idea that Gibson was unbeatable is big games led people naturally to assume that he was just unbeatable, at least when he needed to be. The fact that he had his best serieses against teams from New York and Boston just underlined that. Then there’s the 1.12 ERA; having a single, impressive "record" or a signature skill does a lot for a player after he retires, and can make the difference between being Hank Aaron or Roger Maris and being Stan Musial or Frank Robinson, who are far less well-remembered than they should be even though Robinson's still managing. That one ERA gives some statistical ammo to the people who use Gibson’s postseason performance as the platform for arguing that he was an absolutely unbeatable pitcher, capable of raising his game as far as the situation demanded.

There's also the fact that Gibson pitched more recently – there are scores of fans out there, as well as writers and broadcasters, who saw him pitch; Alexander’s been dead for 50 years, so his image is vague at best even in the minds of people who think about baseball all day. Then there’s Tim McCarver, Gibson’s catcher in his best years, who has a huge megaphone as a New York and national broadcaster. McCarver may have once been identified with Steve Carlton, but he obviously thought of Carlton as his student; Gibson he treats with reverence. If I hear him tell that story about how Johnny Keane wouldn’t take Gibson out of the seventh game of the 1964 World Series because he "had a commitment to his heart" one more time, I’m gonna gag.

Gibson also scared people; as my older brother likes to point out, Alexander was like Greg Maddux in that he could shut you out, shut you out again and still leave you feeling like you didn't hit him just because you were having an off day, not because Alex was pitching. Gibson retired as the #2 man all time in strikeouts. Alexander's reputation has also been sullied by his alcoholism, epilepsy and "shell shock" (what's known today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), the combination of which rendered him a pathetic figure by the end of his life.

Finally . . . well, it’s partially Ronald Reagan’s fault. You may remember that shortly after Alexander died, Hollywood rushed out a movie of his life called "The Winning Team," starring Reagan as Alexander and Doris Day as his wife. It was just awful. The movie had a few dramatic high points, but they made little enough attempt to capture the real Alexander. And Reagan – put aside your politics for a minute and just think acting – gave what had to be the worst performance of his acting career: adept at playing the genial Everyman and the B-movie hero, Reagan was completely out of his league trying to portray a morose, moody alcoholic. Only Reagan’s political career kept the movie from disappearing into complete obscurity, but the butchering of Alexander’s life story left him less well known today than Crash Davis and Moonlight Graham.

CONCLUSION: WHO WAS BETTER?

Well, if you’ve read this far, you can tell that I’m partial to Alexander in this debate; I think he’s really gotten shafted in the discussion of the all-time great pitchers, not least because his service to his country cost him his shot at 400 wins. Gibson was really a great one, and my in-depth look at his numbers definitely left me more impressed than before. Things like the color line and other factors relating to the strength of competition also speak in Gibsion's favor. But at the end of the day, Alexander was more dominant in his prime, and more durable over the course of his career. Based on the evidence I've laid out above, yes, reasonable people could disagree. But I'd put my money on Old Pete.

After a two-year collapse following the 1966 retirement of Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers of the late 60s and early 70s were mostly a good team; although perennially stuck behind the Big Red Machine, they finished second five times and third once between 1970 and 1976. The Dodgers tried a lot of different things -- for example, importing veteran sluggers Dick Allen and Frank Robinson. But at the core was the rebuilding of the infield. Garvey broke in as a third baseman, playing semiregularly after 1971, and moved to first base to make room for Cey (after Wes Parker's sudden retirement in 1972) in 1973. Russell replaced Maury Wills at short in 1972. In 1974, Garvey became an everyday fixture at first, moving Bill Buckner to the outfield and relegating Manny Mota to pinch hitting duties. The 1973 team was already a good one, winning 95 games. Garvey began a series of nearly identical productive seasons in 1974 -- .312 average, 21 HR, 111 RBI, 200 hits. He was named the NL MVP.

In addition, two acquisitions radically changed the face of the Dodgers in 1974, albeit only for a year. They traded long-time centerfielder Willie Davis to the Expos for workhorse reliever Mike Marshall, and brought in Jimmy Wynn from Houston to play center. The two acquisitions could hardly have worked better; in fact, they were probably the Dodgers' two best players, the MVP voters notwithstanding.

Marshall's season, netting him the Cy Young Award, was historic, and the records he set are among baseball's most impressive. I separate "impressive" records from "unbreakable" ones, since all the most unbreakable records are ones that were set under different playing conditions. Cy Young threw 751 complete games in his career, which at the modern league leader's pace would take 100 years; single-season records for starting pitchers, set by underhand throwers in the 1880s (when the mound was 50 feet and anywhere from 5 to 9 balls were needed for a walk) will never be approached. Marshall's records of throwing 106 games and 208.1 innings in relief in a season are likewise the product of vanished conditions, although we may will see a lefthanded specialist challenge the 100-games mark in the next decade or so, 1 or 2 batters at a time. But what makes the records impressive is how far they stand out even from his own time. There have been only seven 90-game seasons -- three by Marshall and three by Kent Tekulve -- and the nearest is 12 games off Marshall's pace. The innings record is more impressive - like Babe Ruth in 1920, Marshall not only shattered the previous record (179 innings), it was a record he himself had set the prior year. And he pitched well: a 2.42 ERA, just 9 home runs allowed in over 200 IP, an almost 3-to-1 K/BB ratio. (For good measure, Marshall added 12 appearances in the postseason, including 9 innings of relief in appearing in all 5 World Series games).

The impact of a quality reliever taking over such a gigantic workload -- the work of three men, really, at least by the standards of today's game -- is hard to measure comprehensively, given the number of ways this affects the pitching staff. But between Marshall and Charlie Hough (who tossed 96 innings in 49 relief appearances), the Dodgers were able to paper over some weak links in the rotation, notably Doug Rau, who posted a 3.72 ERA (a subpar performance in that pitcher's era and park) and completed just 3 of his 35 starts, averaging less than 6 innings a start -- an unheard-of ratio in those days. Sore-armed Tommy John also staggered to a 13-3 record in 22 starts before his season ended early, while finishing just 5 of them; John pitched well, but probably benefited from not finishing his own games. John's injury, of course, would make baseball history with the famous surgery; staff ace Andy Messersmith (20-6, 2.59 ERA in 1974) would make another kind of history when an arbitrator awarded him free agency following the 1975 season, and fifth starter Al Downing (later replaced in the rotation by Geoff Zahn) would enter the history books in April of 1974 when he surrendered Hank Aaron's 715th home run (if you look at the footage of the homer, you can see Dodger left fielder Bill Buckner, in one of the two most memorable moments of his career, scaling the fence to try to take it away).

As for Wynn, finally free of the Astrodome only to land in yet another pitcher's paradise, he proved to be the critical element of a truly fearsome offense. Looking at the numbers, they may not look like much by modern standards, but consider that the Dodgers outscored the average team in the league by 18%, and then factor in the fact that 25% fewer runs were scored in Dodger home games than Dodger road games in 1974; on the road, the Dodgers scored 5.47 runs/game, 31.8% above the league average. A typical league leading offense will outscore the league average by 15% or so; the 1927 Yankees outscored the average AL team by 28% (the 1976 Reds were over 30%). I don't really think the park was quite that hostile, but comparing this offense to some of the all-time great offensive teams is perfectly fair.

Wynn was the best of the bunch, hitting 32 homers and drawing 108 walks, leading to a .271/.497/.387 batting line and 108 RBI. Everyone in the lineup had an on base percentage of .334 or better (the league average was .325), including right fielder Willie Crawford at .376 and backup catcher Joe Ferguson at .380. Everyone but Russell also bested the league slugging average. Buckner, then young (24) and fleet-footed (his ankles hadn't given out yet) batted .314 and stole 31 bases in 44 tries; Lopes also added 59 steals.

The pennant race wasn't close for the season's first half; the Dodgers blasted out of the gate at a 37-14 (.725) clip, and led by 8 games on June 1. The Reds cut the margin to 2.5 games in mid-August, going 35-15 from July 7 to August 28, but dropped back a bit with an early September slump, including the Dodgers taking 2 of 3 in a series in Cincinnati in which Garvey went 6 for 13 with a double, homer and 3 RBI and Sutton pitched a key 3-1 victory. The Reds then won 7 of 8 to cut the lead to 1.5 games on September 14, including consecutive victories in LA, but Sutton pitched a six-hitter the next day, Garvey doubled and homered, and Wynn hit a grand slam off Pedro Borbon in the 7th (followed by Garvey's homer) to put the game away 7-1. A week later the Dodger lead was 4.5 games and the race was over.

The postseason started well enough, as the Dodgers rolled over the Pirates 3 games to 1, the sole loss the result of a 5-run first inning against Rau. Garvey batted .389 in the LCS, kicking off a career of spectacular postseason batting. But the World Series, with four 3-2 games and a 5-2 game in five matchups, just didn't break the Dodgers' way (except for the famous pickoff of A's pinch runner Herb Washington by Marshall). In the deciding Game 5, Joe Rudi homered off Marshall in the bottom of the 7th, and the series was effectively put to bed when Buckner, in a baserunning blunder that was much celebrated at the time, was thrown out at third base leading off the top of the 8th (the ball got past Bill North but was corralled by Reggie Jackson, who threw a strike to cutoff man Dick Green, who threw Buckner out at third). The Dodgers would be back a few years later after Walter Alston retired and Wynn and Marshall broke down, but this team never got the ultimate glory it deserved.

The 1980s: 1988 New York Mets
100-60 (.625), 1st place (by 15 games), lost NLCS to Dodgers 4-3, 4.39 R/G, 3.33 RA/G (Avg 3.88)

Like the 1974 Dodgers, these Mets are hardly forgotten, but rather have been persistently overshadowed -- overshadowed by the 1986 team, overshadowed in the regular season by the A's, overshadowed in the postseason and in the award voting by Hershiser's Dodgers. But this was a distinct team from the 1986 team, and a powerful one.

The Mets' rise from the obscurity of the 1977-83 period to the dominating force of the 1986 team needs no introduction. This was followed by 1987 . . . there's probably no season of baseball I remember better than the 1987 Mets; I was 15 and hanging on every single pitch. It was agony watching such a superior team have the same things continually unravel. To make a long story short, the Mets in 1987 had seven very good starting pitchers (Gooden, Darling, Fernandez, Ojeda, Aguilera, Cone and Leach), and it wasn't enough; they still wound up giving nearly 30 starts to pitchers who were ineffective, sometimes spectacularly so, and even tried to coax Tom Seaver out of retirement. The team scored a league-leading 5.08 R/G, a staggering figure for a team playing in Shea Stadium, and still they fell 3 games short of the division title.

The 1988 roster had turned over a good deal from 1986. World Series MVP Ray Knight was let go after 1986, giving Howard Johnson the full time third base job. The aging Jesse Orosco (so we thought at the time) was dealt to the Dodgers for prospects after 1987, handing over the lefthanded closer job to young fireballer Randy Myers. Kevin Mitchell was shipped to San Diego after 1986 for Kevin McReynolds. Weak-hitting shortstop Rafael Santana was let go, to be replaced in 1988 by rookie Kevin Elster. And in April 1987, the Mets traded two minor players -- backup catcher Ed Hearn and minor league veteran pitcher Rick Anderson -- to the Royals for a seven-year minor league vet named David Cone.

For the Mets, Cone's emergence was the biggest story of 1988. In 1987, Cone started 13 times, which included a visibly nervous Cone getting pounded in his first two outings (Davey Johnson then settled him down by starting Cone in the Jimmy Fund in-season exhibition against the Red Sox) and getting hammered again in his first start off the DL after getting his right pinky finger crushed against the bat by a pitch while bunting. In his other ten starts, Cone's ERA was below 3.00. In 1988, he lived up to that promise after sliding into the rotation when an April injury finished Rick Aguilera's season (the Mets would move Aguilera to the bullpen the following year before dealing him to Minnesota in the Frank Viola deal). At the time, I thought Cone had been robbed in the Cy Young voting by Hershiser, since Cone had a better W-L record (20-3 vs. 23-8) and a lower ERA (2.22 to 2.26), but Hershiser did throw 36 extra innings, had a lot less offensive support, and unlike Cone (who was tagged for 8 unearned runs in one inning that summer), and unlike Cone, Hershiser wasn't tagged for an unusual number of unearned runs (Cone allowed 10, including 5 in his last 3 starts while Hershiser was rolling up his consecutive shutout streak). It's still a close call, but the voters got it right.

Myers was another revelation, putting permanently aside his minor league reputation as a guy who couldn't find the plate. Myers' numbers look impressive enough -- 1.72 ERA, 69K and 62 baserunners in 68 IP. But during the season they looked even better; at the end of September, Myers' ERA was 1.35 and he had been taken deep only twice all year, but he got tagged for a pair of home runs in the next to last game of the season. Randall K would go on to an illustrious career in places like Cincinnati, Chicago and Baltimore, saving 347 major league games, although ironically enough, the two older pitchers he replaced in his first two stops -- Orosco and John Franco -- are still pitching five years after Myers threw his last pitch. Beyond Myers, the bullpen was as solid as the rotation, with Roger McDowell and Terry Leach combining with Myers to carry nearly the entire relief load and posting ERAs below 2.70. Leach, a 34-year-old minor league veteran submariner who'd been known to throw complete game shutouts for the Mets in games started on a half hour's notice, went 7-2 (all in relief this time), raising his record to 18-3 over a two year period and 24-9 for his career.

On offense, 1988 saw a changing of the guard. Gary Carter had cracked 20 home runs and driven in 83 runs in 1987, but it was his first real off year in a decade; in 1988, at age 34, Carter started hot in April to get to 299 career homers, then went homerless for three months waiting for number 300. He finished at .242/.358/301, a non-factor in the offense, and was mercifully removed from the cleanup slot as the season progressed. Keith Hernandez, also 34, also began an abrupt decline, missing almost 70 games with hamstring problems and dropping him to .276 with a .333 OBP. Like Carter, Hernandez would never regain the form that made him an MVP candidate just two years earlier. 25-year-old Lenny Dykstra had an off year, and 29-year-old platoon second baseman Tim Teufel came back to earth after slugging .545 in the lively ball air of 1987. Elster hit no better than Santana, batting .214. Pinch hitter Lee Mazzilli hit .147.

None of it mattered. The unquestioned star of this team was Darryl Strawberry, and Darryl had probably his best season in 1988 at age 26, scoring and driving in 101 runs apiece, slamming 39 homers, and finishing at .269/.545/.366, stealing 29 bases while grounding into just 6 double plays for good measure. The Straw Man led the league in homers by 9 and was one of just three NL players (along with Will Clark and Andy Van Slyke) to both drive in and score 100 runs. In Strawberry's case, it's obvious that he was robbed in the MVP voting; Kirk Gibson's 25 homers and 76 RBI don't stack up. Granted, Gibson was a better percentage base thief (4 CS to Straw's 14) and had a slightly higher OBP (.377 to .369), but Strawberry's 62-point advantage in slugging easily overcomes that, and if Strawberry was an underachieving fielder, at least he could throw, which Gibson couldn't.

Instead, the MVP voters focused on Gibson's intense emotional leadership -- notably a celebrated spring training incident when he blew up at Orosco for playing the kind of practical joke that had been common in the looser Mets clubhouse -- and probably held against Strawberry the perception that the Mets had sleepwalked through the summer, since Darryl was always the poster boy for sleepy ballplayers. The Mets buried the competition early, and then coasted for much of the summer. The Mets started 30-11 (.731); Gooden was 8-0 already, Cone was 6-0. By June 6, they stood 38-17 (.690), 7 games ahead of the revived Pirates and 8.5 ahead of the defending champion Cardinals. But from May 23 to August 21, this was a .500 team, 41-41. The Cardinals fell by the wayside, but the Pirates closed to just 3.5 games back. The Mets had backed their way into a close pennant race. Gooden had gone 6-6 in the interim, and Cone had also won just 6 games in the intervening 82. The two lefthanders, Ojeda and Fernandez, stood 15-22 through August 22.

Then they woke up, and proceeded to tear the division to ribbons with a 29-8 surge in which they allowed just 2.78 runs/game (while scoring 5 a game). Cone won his last 8 starts to improbably finish 20-3. Fernandez went 5-0 down the stretch, and Gooden won 4 straight decisions before dropping his last two starts (at the time I was indignant that Davey Johnson started a lineup full of scrubs behind Gooden on September 23, with Dr. K needing 2 wins in 2 starts for his second 20-win season; Johnson benched Strawberry, McReynolds, Hernandez and Carter and let Gooden lose a 2-1 complete game defeat).

Besides Darryl, the Mets got a big year from McReynolds, who set a record (since broken) by stealing 21 bases without being caught once, and slugged .496 on the way to 99 RBI; McReynolds (like Hernandez and Carter in 1986 and Gooden and Carter in 1985) split much of the MVP vote with Strawberry (there's a reason no Met has ever won the award). 25-year-old Dave Magadan stepped in seamlessly for Hernandez, posting his customary .393 on base percentage. And 32-year-old Mookie Wilson, the last holdover (other than the returning Mazzilli) from the dark days of the Joe Torre years, had his best season, batting .296/.431/.345 in a part-time role. Wally Backman also played well, to the tune of a .388 OBP.

Two events of September overshadowed the rest of the team. One was Bob Ojeda's accident. Ojeda has had an incredible array of freak accidents and injuries, ranging from a rare blood disease in his Red Sox years that caused fainting spells to head injuries suffered in the fatal 1993 boat crash that claimed the lives of Indians teammates Steve Olin and Tim Crews. In 1988, it was a gardening mishap; through September 11, Ojeda was pitching exceptionally well -- a 2.88 ERA and a 133-33 K/BB ratio, allowing about a baserunner an inning while surrendering just 6 home runs in nearly 200 innings, and having thrown shutouts in two of his last three starts -- when he cut the tip off the middle finger of his pitching hand with a hedge trimmer. Ojeda had recovered from arm trouble that limited him to 10 appearances in 1987, but the hedge trimming accident finished his season, and while he would pitch effectively again he never regained his pinpoint control.

The other September sensation was 20-year-old Gregg Jefferies. Jefferies had been Baseball America's Minor League Player of the Year -- a highly prestigious award that usually led to major league stardom -- two years running as a teenager in 1986 and 1987, batting around .360 with power as a switch-hitting, base-stealing shortstop blessed with a compact, textbook-perfect swing from both sides of the plate. He was known for his father's extensive grooming efforts -- Jefferies had his own training regimen, which famously included swinging a bat underwater -- and his arrogance, such as his boast that he would break Pete Rose's hit record (he ultimately fell some 2,500 hits short).

Jefferies hit Shea in late August like a bomb going off. Arriving August 28, a week into the hot streak that would put paid to the division, Jefferies was immediately inserted in the starting lineup, batting second and playing third base (which forced Howard Johnson, now an established star after his 30/30 season in 1987, to play out of position at shortstop) with Dwight Gooden on the mound. Jefferies singled and doubled as the Mets lost 7-4. The next day, Davey Johnson asked Cone to take the mound with an appalling defensive infield of Jefferies at second, HoJo at short and Magadan at third; Cone somehow managed to toss a 1-hit shutout, and Jefferies doubled, tripled and homered. (Johnson wasn't totally oblivious to defense; two days later he pulled Jefferies for a defensive sub after Leach replaced no-ground-balls Sid Fernandez in the second inning). After a 4-hit game on September 12, Jefferies' line for his first 13 games on the roster looked like this: 12 games, 48 at bats, 24 hits, 7 doubles, 2 triples, 5 home runs, 13 runs, 10 RBI, one steal, .500 batting average, 1.042 slugging, .520 OBP. Jefferies cooled off after that, but finished at .321/.596/.364 in over 100 at bats.

Given the threat Jefferies posed to the team's incumbent infielders, particularly Backman, Teufel and Johnson, Jefferies' veteran teammates decided to alternately torture and ignore him, including repeatedly sawing his custom-made bats in half; the result was not good for team 'chemistry,' whatever the importance of that may be. Jefferies, like Jeff Kent after him, was uptight and humorless, and responded poorly to these slights and gags, and unlike Kirk Gibson, nobody gave him an award for the response. I do hold the Mets organization partly responsible for Jefferies' ultimate failure to develop as a hitter, though less due to the hazing than due to the failure to fix a position for him.

In the short run, sticking a 20-year-old rookie with a gigantic ego into the lineup had other problems. Davey asked him to bunt in one LCS game, only to discover -- on national television -- that a guy who had been his team's best hitter his entire life had no idea how to lay a bunt down (Johnson had made the same mistake with Strawberry in the heat of the pennant race three years earlier and gave up on asking him to bunt after that). Still, the Mets had manhandled the Dodgers in the regular season, winning 10 of 11 matchups, and after Carter broke Hershiser's scoreless innings streak in Game One of the LCS -- leading to a 3-run ninth and a thrilling 3-2 victory reminiscent of where the team had left off in the postseason two years earlier -- it looked like it would be easy.

Unfortunately, the Mets couldn't keep their mouths shut. Cone wrote a boastful piece in the NY papers and promptly got shelled in Game Two; Strawberry started griping about his contract; McReynolds said that if the Mets won, he'd go to the World Series and if they lost, he'd be back in Arkansas in time for duck hunting season, so as far as he was concerned he would win either way. The Mets won a rain-soaked Game Three 8-4; as in Game One, they'd bested Hershiser by tearing up Dodgers' closer Jay Howell. Gibson pulled up lame, and was hobbled for the rest of the LCS, although he'd hit two more home runs in the series.

Then, two things happened to turn the series. One was that Gooden, leading 4-2 in the ninth inning of Game 4 at home -- a situation where no manager, today, would have his starter on the mound, but it was a different era then -- was tagged by Mike Scioscia for a game-tying two-run homer. Second, Howell got suspended for putting pine tar on the brim of his cap, leading to suspicions of doctoring the ball. The Mets had been torturing Howell, but Tommy Lasorda now went to Hershiser to close out Game 4 (his third appearance in five days). The Dodgers won Game Five, Cone rebounded to shut them down in Game 6, and then in Game Seven the wheels came off: Ron Darling, the team's money pitcher the prior three years, came out with nothing, and errors by Backman and Jefferies contributed to a 6-0 hole after two. Gooden, Leach and Aguilera held the line valiantly after that -- both Leach and Myers were unscored-upon in