The Bad Guys Won! by Jeff Pearlman
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Book Reviews of The Bad Guys Won!
Book Review: Thank you sir, may I have another?
Summary: 5 Stars
Someone gave me this book at the same time as the Buster Olney "Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty" book. Olney's writing was better, and even though he was chronicling the downfall of the Yankees--which is always fun--I'm a Mets fan so my vote goes to the guy writing about the Mets winning a World Series, even if they were arrogant coked up jerks.
Advantage: Pearlman.
Book Review: Excellent Read
Summary: 5 Stars
As a big Mets fan who didnt get to remember this era this book filled me in with some great details about about my beloved 86 Mets. Hearing the first hand accounts of the players, trainers and management shed light on the championship Mets and how their hard partying led to the demise of what could have a been a dynasty.Book Review: Great Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I was only 2 years old when the Mets won it all in 1986, but reading this book made me feel like I lived through it all. Pearlman does a fantastic job bringing the highlights (and lowlights for that matter) of the 1986 season to life in full detail. A must read for any Mets fan or any fan of baseball.Book Review: From a Red Sox's fan view...
Summary: 5 Stars
Even though I am a diehard Red Sox fan, I absoulety loved this book. It was funny, out-rageous, informative, honest, everything you could possibly want from a sports book.
And yes, I almost tore the book into when Pearlman gave a detailed account of Game 6.
Book Review: Between the White Lines
Summary: 4 Stars
Jeff Pearlman wasn't much older than me in 1986... deep into his junior high school years and watching the baseball playoffs on TV. While many books have been written about the 1986 Mets, most of those were from participants and first-hand observers. Jerry Izenberg and Dan Shaughnessy wrote quickly-forgotten journalistic accounts the following year, as did ghost-writers for Gary Carter and Lenny Dykstra. Of course, to say that Dykstra's book was quickly forgotten would be unjust... his book is well-remembered, but not for any of the right reasons.
Pearlman's achievement is to insert himself into the story nearly 20 years later and write an extended "Sports Illustrated"-style look at the seamy underbelly of "baseball like it oughtta be". He does this through 187 interviews, but no bibliography. Therefore, if you're keeping track of that kind of thing, it's not easy to determine which player quotes derive from fresh interviews, and which are recycled from old sources. However, his recreations of the infamous Cooter's nightclub arrests, and the trashing of the charter plane flying home from Houston after Game 6 of the NLCS, benefit from an I-was-there sardonic third-person reporting style.
John Rocker now plays baseball on Long Island, for an independent team -- for Bud Harrelson, in point of fact. The intersection is amusing for readers of "The Bad Guys Won!", as Harrelson features in the book, and as Pearlman is the guy who in some respects helped Rocker travel the terrifying downward spiral from World Series to Central Islip. As you might expect from the author who allowed Rocker to marinate in his own oratory, "The Bad Guys Won!" also features more finger-pointing than other books. Shaughnessy's "One Strike Away" tells us that Wally Backman went bowling when Game 7 of the World Series was rained out; Pearlman is more interested in following Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, and in reopening the Kevin Mitchell vs. the kitten tale, and in pointing out that some oblivious Met did some lines of coke on the way back from Houston.
Pearlman is at his best talking about the role players, whom he clearly admires: the two unnecessary Eds, Hearn and Lynch, do well here. On the other hand, George Foster, who was bounced out of baseball before the playoffs began, doesn't merit the author's sympathy; I would have expected Pearlman to defend him, simply because no-one else ever did. The playoff game accounts are authentic. Pearlman has clearly spent a lot of time with the game tapes and ESPN Classic rebroadcasts, as he takes time to describe the flight path of the toilet paper roll spiraling behind Mookie Wilson just before Bob Stanley wild pitched the tying run home.
"Bad Guys" is a short, meaty read, providing a new look at often-told tales about a bunch of players who won it all and then promptly raced into early obscurity. A few days after I finished the book, new allegations about Lenny Dykstra popped up in the media. Clearly Pearlman may have been on to something.