Saturday Seasons: In 1980, the Pendulum Starts Swinging Back

A lot of good things happened to the Mets in 1980. Almost none of them occurred on the field.

The team lost 95 games and finished in fifth place, three games ahead of the even more woeful Chicago Cubs. And actually, the team was not that bad for the first two-thirds of the season – one game under .500 in mid-August, until a seven-game losing streak sent them into a tailspin from which they never recovered.

But the story of 1980 is actually more upbeat as the pendulum started swinging back to success, with decisions that would start the team on a march toward respectability, success and, finally, a World Championship in 1986.

               The first one came early in the year – on January 24 – when the Payson family sold their controlling interest in the team. While Joan Payson was an avid baseball fan and relished owning a team, her husband, Charles Shipman Payson, had no such interest, letting his daughters run the business. But as the business became a losing proposition – attendance was down to 800,000 in 1979 after drawing more than 2,000,000 routinely from Shea Stadium’s opening in 1964 through the 1969 and 1973 pennant years –  Payson lost  tolerance for the financial losses and put the team on the market.

Bidders beat a path to the door of a three-person committee that reviewed the proposal.  Robert Abplanalp, inventor of the aerosol spray valve and a close confident of that noted baseball fan, former president Richard Nixon, bid $10 million. Allen & Co., a Wall Street investment firm, bid $19.3 million, A real estate developer named Donald Trump came in at $19 million (he would also lose out a few years later in his attempt to buy a National Football League franchise, settling instead for the New Jersey Generals of the USFL, and turn his attention to politics three decades later).

But the winning bid was put together by a businessman experiencing considerable success in another major league sport: John Pickett, whose New York Islanders were in the middle of their run of four consecutive Stanley Cups. Pickett had unsuccessfully tried to buy 40 percent of Payson’s stock. So he turned to two friends to join his group: Fred Wilpon, a real estate developer who had the desire but not the cash (he could only come up with $1 million) and fellow country club member Nelson Doubleday, who had the cash but had to be convinced he had the desire. Doubleday and his family publishing company – at the time the country’s largest book publisher – fronted most of the money for what became a $21 million winning bid.

Under the arrangement, Wilpon, while a minority owner in terms of money, would run the team; Pickett would offer financial advice; and Doubleday, the majority shareholder, would sign off on all major decisions as president.

The media quickly seized on Wilpon as someone worth writing about – a Brooklyn-born, self-made success who was a teammate of Sandy Koufax at Lafayette High School. And Wilpon quickly endeared himself to writers and Mets fans when, at the news conference announcing their purchase, he said, “Our group is committed to bring top notch baseball to New York and we will commit the proper funds to do that. When you bring contending teams, when you put real good teams on the field, the fans will come out. The fans are fantastic. Show them good teams and the fans will come out.”

Added Doubleday, “Baseball and New York deserve a very successful New York franchise.”

Some of the media took as a sign of the commitment to spending the fact that the news conference was held at The 21 Club, a posh restaurant far out of the price range of a journalist’s salary.

The next puzzle piece appeared four weeks later, when Doubleday and Wilpon took another tip from Pickett’s playbook at hired a general manager who, like the Islanders’ Bill Torrey, favored bow ties: Frank Cashen, the former sportswriter and law school graduate who built the Baltimore Orioles into American League champions (and losers to the Mets in the 1969 World Series). Cashen had most recently been working in the commissioner’s office in an administrative capacity, which really was his forte, but in his introductory press conference, he talked about totally changing the way the team did business, from the way operators answered the phone to the way it invested its resources to restructuring the scouting and farm system to hiring the right talent evaluators. “You’ve got to remember when you trade for a player, most of the time you’ve never really seen him play,” Cashen said. As a general manager, your job is really to evaluate the evaluators.”

Cashen had kind words for manager Joe Torre, and did not criticize Joe McDonald, the general manager he was essentially replacing (albeit with a different title) and who still had one year left on his contract. McDonald was kept on but essentially  stripped of all  responsibilities.

Two of Cashen’s early moves reflected his marketing background more than his baseball resume. He hired a new public relations director who, despite spilling orange juice on Cashen during his interview, would get the job and remain with the Mets for 45 years (and counting): Jay Horwitz. And in a first for major league baseball, Cashman retained an advertising agency to help market the team.

Not just any marketing agency, but Della Femina Travisano and Partners, legendary for its cheeky, sometimes outlandish campaigns. Jerry Della Femina, some years back, had written a bestseller about the advertising world whose title reflected a suggestion on how to market Japanese cars to the United States: “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor.” His partner, Ron Travisano, was perhaps best known for his singing cat advertisements for Meow Mix.

Speaking to New York Times Mets beat reporter Joe Durso shortly after being hired in April 1980, Della Femina – who went to Lafayette High School with Koufax and Wilpon – said his plan was to market the Mets’ stars. "This town," he told Durso, "has had to settle for Reggie Jackson too long. We're looking to Mets with star quality, like Lee Mazzilli. We believe he's the big glamour player in this town in the mold of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, people like that. He's a handsome Bucky Dent who can hit, and he doesn't do fur-coat commercials."

As Wilpon was quoted in the article: "What are we selling? Baseball fever; also tickets. We're opening a campaign to get people into Shea Stadium, to persuade them that we're doing something."

Della Femina’s campaign used the slogan” “The Magic is Back.” And he plastered it all over town – most notably on subway posters featuring not only Mazzilli, but other photogenic starters such as second baseman Doug Flynn.

The campaign had measurable success. Attendance at Shea increased 51 percent, to 1,192,703 – not the more than 2 million from the glory years, but still a hefty jump that probably would have been even greater had the team not plummeted after August 15.

The next major event came on June 3, when the Mets had the first selection in the amateur draft and three others in the first 30 picks. With memories of having chosen Steve Chilcott over Reggie Jackson some years before, the Mets…”taking no chances of being forever second-guessed,” Bill Madden wrote in the Daily News…selected Darryl Strawberry, the odds-on first choice of almost all the major league scouts. (One was quoted as saying Strawberry was the best prospect he had seen in the last 30 years).

They resisted their urge to make another Chilcott-over-Jackson goof and take a player they rated equally highly, Billy Beane, who never really made it as a player but certainly succeeded as general manager of the Moneyball Oakland A’s. The Mets did snare Beane with the 23^rd pick – showing how other scouts had rated him versus Strawberry and 21 others. And later in the first round, they took catcher John Gibbons, who never starred in the majors but who did well as a manager and is now the Mets’ bench coach.

“It was a very tough choice as to which one to take first,” Madden quoted Pete Gebrian, the Mets’ scouting director, as saying. “They are obviously two great prospects. I guess it was more Strawberry’s left-handed bat that tilted it for him.”

What gave the Mets cause for concern about the player who as of this writing still holds the Mets’ home run record? For one, as Newsday’s George Usher noted, Strawberry was kicked off his high school baseball team in his sophomore year for not hustling, and he had signed a letter of intent to attend the University of Oklahoma. “We knew he had other options,” Horwitz told Usher. “We met for 18 hours a day the past six days and finally decided to draft him first and then worry about options.”

“Right now, it’s up to my mother,” Strawberry told Madden. “If she wants me to go to school, that’s what I’ll do.”

Thanks, mom, for making the right choice.

On the field, there wasn’t much to remember. They did have three come-from-behind wins over a five-day span in June, and stood at 56-57 on August 15 when they faced the Phillies in a five-game series. They were only 2 ½ games behind the Phils at the time, but it was 7 ½ after the series was over. Two more losses to the Giants and it was on to oblivion: 11-38 to end the season, which was marred by injuries such as second baseman fracturing his hand in a play at first base. Pat Zachry led the starting staff with a 3.01 ERA and 88 strikeouts, but his record was only 6-10. Neil Allen was the closer, with 22 saves in 59 games. Jeff Reardon got into 61 games and struck out 101. Lee Mazzilli led the team with 16 home runs and 76 RBI.

Fans realized that whatever magic had been there was gone, and so were they. The total attendance for the three-game final home series was only 5,933.

Being out of contention did give the Mets a chance to get a good look at some of their promising farmhands. September callups included Mookie Wilson, Wally Backman and Hubie Brooks.

The makings of advertising campaigns to come.