Saturday Seasons: In 1991, The Buddy System Failed

The 1991 season marked a return to the bad old days for the New York Mets: their first losing record since 1983, the departure of a hero, a bad free agent signing in return, and a fractured clubhouse that the manager was either unwilling or unable to control.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…..

The seeds for what became a 77-84, fifth place disaster were actually planted just after the 1990 season ended, when star slugger Darryl Strawberry departed for the Los Angeles Dodgers and a five-year, $22.25 million contract. Years later, Strawberry would say he regretted leaving the Mets, but if you read press accounts at the time, the Mets gave him little choice, showing tepid interest at best in keeping their home-grown, power hitting star. As Tom Verducci commented in Newsday: “Dating to June, when their archaic negotiating strategy virtually assured Strawberry of exercising his free agent rights, they made one blunder after another….The Mets went about re-signing such a valuable commodity with such casualness, it moved Strawberry to remark: ‘It’s hard to believe they didn’t show interest in me like the other clubs. They just didn’t do it.’ ”

A little less than a month later, the team did dip its foot into the free agent pool and inked  speedster Vince Coleman to a four-year, $11.95 million contract. It would turn out to be one of the worst free-agent signings in club history – over the length of the contract, he would miss 215 games due to injury and suspensions, get into numerous fights with his coaches and managers and be arrested for rape (but eventually not charged) – but at the time, the signing was hailed as a coup.

“Vince Coleman will add a new dimension to our lineup that we haven’t had in some time,” Mets General Manager Frank Cashen said. “He just brings fear into the hearts of the opposition each time he gets on base.”

It wasn’t just Mets brass trumpeting the signing. A video looking at how the Cardinals lost the battle characterized this as a good gain for the Flushing nine, with the manager noting how one aspect the team had been lacking was speed:

Even with one speedster, the team lacked overall speed, and a lot more. With the exception of Howard Johnson, who hit 38 home runs and drove in 117, the team had no reliable power hitters. Kevin McReynolds, a shell of his former self, hit only .259 with 16 home runs. Hubie Brooks, reacquired in the offseason, also hit 16 home runs but drove in only 50. Catching duties were shared by Rick Cerone and Mackey Sasser, who made every throw back to the pitcher an adventure. Tom Herr, who contributed to the Mets’ strong finish in 1990, stopped hitting and lost his second base starting job to Greg Jefferies, who had his own fielding deficiencies.

Herr did not take the demotion well. When asked whether he would provide fielding tips to Jefferies, Herr responded (according to a published report): “That’s a joke. That’s what coaches and charts are for.” Herr would be released in August, his batting average six points under the Mendoza line.

Pitching? Adequate but not spectacular. David Cone went 14-14, with a 3.29 ERA, Frank Viola, 13-15 and 3.97. Dwight Gooden’s record was 13-7 but his ERA was 3.60, nowhere near his 1986 numbers, and he didn’t really recover from an April 13 outing, a rainy- 45-degree day in which manager Bud Harrelson left Gooden in for 150 pitches because, Harrelson would say, “Doc was in his rhythm.”

Above all, this was not a happy clubhouse.

Certainly, it was not a happy clubhouse when Harrelson, after the team got off to a decent start (it was 10-5 after the first 15 games), called a team meeting, not to congratulate and encourage them, but to chide them for not running out ground balls – in batting practice.

It wasn’t a happy clubhouse in May, when Gregg Jefferies, tired of reading anonymous quotes from teammates criticizing his play, decided he had had enough. “I'm not going to take it anymore," he was quoted as saying in a New York Times article. "I really am tired of being butchered. I don't mean to sound like a baby because I've been quiet about this for three years. Darryl wanted the limelight. I don't want it. I just want to play baseball….You got guys in here and you think, 'God, they really like me,' and then the next day you read something they say about you. I'm not taking this anymore."

Jefferies’ response?  A nine-paragraph open letter addressed to Mets fans and read on WFAN. Jefferies wrote: "The core of all the criticism lashed out at me is that, admittedly, a few of my teammates don't regard me as a friend. It would be great to be friends with everyone, but my main concern is to play good baseball and to help the Mets win."

Amplifying his comments in the Daily News, Jefferies said, “I was getting buried and keeping quiet. I’ve been waiting three years for it to go away and it hasn’t. Now I’ll probably get buried again. I don’t care if it makes people mad or not. I’m tired of being walked on.”

Jefferies’ remarks did prompt Cerone to call a players-only meeting. Reporting on the meeting, Cone said was quoted in the News: “The point was made very heatedly that if you have something to say, then put your name next to it….We have to stop all this backstabbing and one guy saying things to the press.”

The smoldering bonfire became a conflagration in late July, when the team suffered its fifth loss in six games to drop its record to 54-43. After that 2-0 loss to the San Diego Padres, Johnson and first baseman Dave Magadan openly question their teammates’ attitude in a Newsday story. “Specifying no names, Howard Johnson and Dave Magadan wondered aloud where the team concept and dedication had gone,” Marty Noble wrote, quoting Johnson as saying, “We’ve got a lot of bad attitude here.” Said Magadan in a Verducci column in the same day’s Newsday: “I don’t think guys are coming to the park ready to play. It’s as simple as that. There is a feeling of concession in here. Guys are coming to the park thinking we’re out of it. I’m tired of that. This thing is getting old.”

And then…it got worse. And more public.

Coleman cursed out coach Mike Cubbage and threw his equipment around the dugout after Cubbage committed the sin of asking Coleman to take batting practice with his assigned group. Coleman’s outburst was visible not only to his teammates, but to fans watching the pregame session.

Did Harrelson defend his coach? Not by a long shot. Instead of disciplining Coleman, Harrelson did nothing. “What if I ask him to apologize and he says he won't?" Harrelson was quoted as saying in newspaper stories. "What, am I supposed to solve all problems?" Harrelson asked. "Where is it written that I have to do that? I keep reading about how it's a problem. But I don't see it."

The next day, Harrelson finally sat Cubbage and Coleman down in his office to clear the air – but only after the beat writers and columnists eviscerated the manager. Writing about the media scrum in which Harrelson admitted the stories forced him to act, Verducci wrote, “By now it was clear Harrelson didn’t have a clue. But we kept pressing, hoping some light would click in the dark corners of his mind. But every fuse was out.”

Comparing Harrelson (unfavorably, of course) to Pirates manager Jim Leyland, who didn’t hesitate to publicly chew out star outfielder Barry Bonds when he thought Bonds was whining, Verducci wrote, “You can talk all you want about the Pirates’ bullpen depth and the sock in the middle of their lineup, but where they really have it all over the Mets is in the dugout. If you didn’t know that already, during the past five days, Harrelson left no doubt about it.”

The team went 22-39 over the last two months of the season. And Harrelson was a dead man walking, something everyone seemed to know except him.

As the season drew to a close, general manager Frank Cashen, the architect of the team’s 1980s revival, announced, essentially, that he was implementing his succession plan, turning over the reins to Al Harazin – the man who mishandled the Darryl Strawberry contract negotiations – and Gerry Hunsicker. Harazin promised to be aggressive in free agency, while trying to “preserve and enhance” what Cashen had built.

Cashen left himself with one last official act: firing Harrelson.

Which came as a shock to nobody except the now former manager. In an interview the week before, Harrelson said he thought there was a chance he’d be back in 1992, and news reports on the dismissal quoted a Mets official as saying Harrelson was surprised.

Asked why he acted before the season ended – after saying previously that he wouldn’t – Cashen was quoted as saying, “Buddy has been on the defensive, and it was cruel and inhuman treatment to have him being grilled every day…I would have made the same decision even if I was staying on as general manager."

The media only wondered why the ax hadn’t come sooner. “One of the great Mets baseball heroes just got smaller and smaller as the season went along, and now the summer is gone and so is Harrelson,” Mike Lupica wrote in the Daily News. “What really became official yesterday was that the manager who should have been fired six weeks ago finally disappeared entirely.”

Accompanying the News’ stories was a graphic detailing “Five Blunders to Remember.”

Blunders? Those paled in comparison to the ones Harazin made as he put together the 1992 team.

You remember that squad.

The one immortalized in a book entitled, “The Worst Team Money Could Buy.”