The Lost 1986 Mets Game: How a Forgotten Lynchburg Exhibition Sent Me Down the Greatest Mets Rabbit Hole Ever

If you’ve read any of my stuff over the last three years, first of all thank you, and second of all my condolences. You already know I am dangerously prone to falling down Mets rabbit holes on the internet. One minute I’m innocently looking for a Gary Carter highlight to avoid doing something productive, and the next thing I know I’ve lost three hours, three 20 ounce bottles of Diet Pepsi, and any grip on the space-time continuum while watching pixelated footage of long-forgotten exhibition games. The kind of videos that look like they were filmed through a windshield in light rain but still manage to pull you in like it’s Game 7 of the World Series.

And before the game even started, this one delivered. Buried in the front end of the broadcast, like a bonus feature on a VHS tape someone taped over three times, was a pregame press conference featuring Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra, and a young, wonderfully frazzled-looking Jay Horwitz trying to keep the whole thing on the rails. That alone made falling down the rabbit hole worth it. You could’ve stopped the tape right there and I still would’ve walked away feeling like Indian Jones as I just unearthed a lost Mets artifact.

That’s exactly how I found myself hypnotized by 2 hours and 58 minutes, yes, I checked, of grainy, time-capsule gold: the May 5, 1986 exhibition between the eventual World Champion New York Mets and their A-ball cousins, the Lynchburg Mets of the Carolina League. A regulation baseball game played on a field that looked like it doubled as a high school marching band practice lot. And yet, I couldn't turn it off. I was hooked. Absolutely no one in my house understood why.

Actually, that’s not true. I was hooked five seconds in. You know that line from Jerry Maguire, “You had me at hello”? Well, this game had me at opening credits. When those glorious, pixel-chunky, circa-1984 Commodore 64 Print Shop graphics started scrolling, The America’s Best in Red, White and Blue, I felt my soul leave my body and travel directly back to the Reagan administration. Then came the sponsors: Brown’s Tropical Fish and Pet Supplies, followed by ShowBiz Pizza, located beside the Hilton (because the exact geography is apparently crucial to the broadcast). At that point, I wasn’t just hooked. I was spiritually committed.

Then I got to the Player of the Game.

Steve Phillips.

Yes, that Steve Phillips—future Mets GM, MLB Network analyst, Sirius XM co-host, former guest on my radio show as well as victim (I mean guest) on Down on the Korner. Suddenly this wasn’t just a rabbit hole. This was destiny. Or at least the closest thing a middle-aged Mets fan gets to it on a Tuesday night.

Naturally, I texted the video to Steve because if I’m going to waste nearly three hours of my life on 1986 A-ball aesthetics, I’m sure as heck bringing him down with me. The next morning, as he was wrapping up the leadoff spot on national radio and television, he thanked me in the most Steve Phillips way possible: by announcing to America that he went 3-for-4 with a walk that day, should have been a big leaguer, and has personally decided he’s going to watch the video every day for the rest of his life.

What followed was five glorious minutes of on-air comedy: Steve taking a victory lap on hits the Lynchburg infielders apparently refused to dive for, his co-hosts roasting him like a marshmallow at a Cub Scout bonfire, and a spirited debate over whether his swing looked more like a professional ballplayer’s or someone trying to swat a June bug with a wiffle bat. Also, Steve would like you to know he was “jacked.” His co-host Xavier Scruggs and basic visual reality would like you to know he was not.

And that, dear reader, is how a simple late-night Mets nostalgia dive became this story.

From here, we go to Lynchburg. To the exhibition. To the legends who played. To the kid who almost pulled off the hidden-ball trick on Kevin Mitchell. And to the man who called the whole thing Frank Adkisson whom I tracked down for an interview to finally put this wonderfully weird baseball relic into context.

Buckle up. It’s 1986 again. Only blurrier. And somehow even more Mets.

Once you peel away the charm, nostalgia, and 1980s VHS fuzz, the actual baseball part of this baseball game was… well, about what you’d expect when the World Champion-to-be New York Mets wandered into Lynchburg on zero sleep and even less enthusiasm.

The big-league Mets rolled into town around 10 a.m., fresh off a two-week road slog through Montreal, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Cincinnati—a tour that would exhaust even Dwight Gooden’s fastball. They skipped batting practice, skipped infield, and judging by the first four innings, might've preferred skipping the entire afternoon.

Lynchburg, meanwhile, came out looking like they’d been told the winner got promoted straight to Shea. They jumped all over Rick Aguilera—himself a former Lynchburg Met tagging him for five runs before anyone in the visiting dugout looked fully awake. Steve Phillips, Mike Westbrook and Hector Perez led the charge, combining for seven hits off Aggie, including Phillips’ now-famous “broken-bat-but-I’ll-tell-my-family-it-was-a-liner” single and a double that had just enough hang time to qualify as aviation.

By the end of four innings, it was 5–0 Lynchburg. No one in the sold-out crowd of 7,122 believed it. No one in the New York dugout seemed aware of it.

But these were the 1986 Mets. Eventually somebody nudged the beast.

In the middle innings, the Mets scratched across a run here, another there, doing just enough to remind the A-ball kids that, yes, good morning, a major-league team is still present. Then came the eighth, when the varsity finally said: “Okay, enough cute stuff.”

With two outs and Lenny Dykstra on first, New York assembled a hit parade that would’ve made Don Draper proud—six straight knocks off reliever Ralph Adams. Barry Lyons, Kevin Mitchell, George Foster, Ray Knight, Tim Teufel… one after another. Knight doubled. Teufel launched a three-run shot off the top of the center-field wall that probably left a dent still visible today.

Barry Lyons, who went 3-for-4 in the game after coming in for Gary Carter, told me, “I had just played in Lynchburg two seasons prior and won the Carolina League MVP. That season was when I first knew I was going to be a major-league player, so returning there as a New York Met was really special. It represented everything good that could be happening in my life at that point.”

By the time the inning ended, New York had turned a 6–3 hole into a 9–6 lead. In the ninth, they repeated the routine against Steve Gay, piling on five more runs with a string of doubles that felt like batting practice with an audience. The final tally: 14–8 Mets Over Mets, which is exactly the kind of box score that gives statisticians migraines.

Reflecting on competing against the A-ball team, Lyons said, “I don’t think there was any concern really. The veteran guys just wanted their at-bat, get in the shower, and get back on the plane. But for me and a few of us younger guys, we relished every moment. You want to compete, show you belong, and I loved every second of it.”

But here’s the thing: the Lynchburg kids hung in. They hustled. They entertained. And as their manager Bobby Floyd put it afterward, “We showed people the kind of baseball we’re capable of.” He wasn't wrong.

It was also a reunion of sorts. Dykstra returned to the place where he once hit .358 and stole 105 bases, and Darryl Strawberry tried to act thrilled to be spending his off-day in Virginia. Kevin Mitchell joked before the game he might play all nine positions. (He didn’t, but the fact that it seemed possible tells you everything about Kevin Mitchell in 1986.) Barry Lyons looking every bit the energetic rookie trying to prove he belonged—which, of course, he did.

Lyons recalled, “Gary Carter did what Gary always did—one at-bat, signed autographs, and made every fan feel like they mattered. That was part of the charm. The fans loved it, and he loved that they loved it.”

And regarding his own perspective on the day, Lyons said, “A lot of the veteran guys were focused on their at-bats and the next plane. I get it. But for me, having been in that Lynchburg clubhouse not long before, I was soaking in every moment. It was special being there as a major leaguer, especially with a crowd like that.”

And Steve Phillips? Three hits, two RBI, the unquestioned star of Lynchburg’s early ambush, and—thanks to modern broadcast technology and a friend with too much time on YouTube—now forever immortalized in a national TV segment that roasted his swing, his bat path, and quite possibly his masculinity.

Barry Lyons, who had won the Carolina League MVP in Lynchburg just two years prior, reflected on returning to the ballpark as a major leaguer. “I was really excited to be going back to Lynchburg,” Lyons said. “That place had given me so much—my MVP season, the championship, my first taste of success. Returning as a New York Met, a soon-to-be World Champion, made it even more meaningful. It wasn’t just a game; it was a full-circle moment.”

Lyons also reflected on the broader context of his time in Lynchburg and the talented teammates and coaches he encountered. “Lynchburg was stacked with talent year after year,” Lyons recalled. “Randy Myers, Aguilera, Magadan… we had some great coaches, too. John Cumberland, for example, was huge for the pitchers coming through. That place shaped careers. Being back there, I could really appreciate what went into making guys ready for the big leagues.”

But that’s the beauty of baseball: sometimes the best stories are tucked inside the strangest games.

And as luck would have it, the man who called this bizarre, wonderful, 14–8 scrimmage was more than willing to revisit it with me nearly four decades later. Frank Adkisson was a rookie himself in 1986—his first year in professional baseball after being introduced to the Lynchburg organization at the 1984 Winter Meetings. “I was not hired,” he told me, “but was brought aboard in 1986.” By the time the big-league Mets rolled into town, he had only been in Lynchburg about seven weeks, still learning the town, the ballpark, the league, and the job. His very first broadcast had come in the iconic Durham Athletic Park—yes, the Bull Durham ballpark—where, as he noted, “Gary Cohen worked for the Bulls,” and where the visiting broadcaster actually worked from a dugout behind home plate. “If you look closely at the footage of Bull Durham you’ll see a dugout behind home plate. That’s where I worked from.”

Frank had known from the moment he interviewed that the Mets exhibition was coming. “Whenever a minor league team has a big event like that, all of the resources go into making that day go smoothly,” he said. But while everyone else was preparing for the circus, Frank still had games before and after the exhibition—no days off, no time to script anything special. When I asked whether he prepped differently knowing he’d be calling a game full of major leaguers, he laughed: “This may be disappointing to you, but I truly don’t remember. I’m sure I did. Until you brought it up, I had nearly forgotten this game even occurred.”

What he does remember is the crowd. “What definitely stood out was the size of the crowd,” he said. Early-season Monday afternoon Carolina League baseball wasn’t supposed to draw 7,000 people. But this one did. The scheduling was pure logistics—“I seem to recall game time may have been 12 noon. On a Monday”—and the Mets had to be on the road again quickly, so no one was entirely sure whether they flew into Lynchburg, Roanoke, or just dropped from the sky like baseball superheroes.

One of the great unintentional comedy bits of the broadcast was the repeated early reference to Rick Aguilera as “Al Lachowicz” a name belonging to an actual Lynchburg player. Frank had no memory of the mix-up—but it was pre-internet chaos. “We were at the mercy of whatever information we were told,” he explained. “NY brought some AAA guys from Tidewater to eat up innings… I had no idea who those guys were other than a name and uniform number. No bios. No advance notice. And no way of knowing if it was accurate.” He reminds me: “1986 was the first year all minor league teams even had thermal paper fax machines,” which might be the single most 1986 sentence ever spoken.

When we talked about Steve Phillips—Lynchburg’s surprise hero that day—Frank smiled in his voice. “I always liked Steve. I recall enjoying having off-field conversations with him.” But as for projecting his future? Frank made it clear that was never his job. “I am the worst judge of who will progress to a specific level of baseball stardom,” he said. “I didn’t try to anticipate front office moves; I always felt my job was just to report what did happen on the field.” Still, he gets a kick out of seeing Phillips on MLB Network today: “Our hair is the same color now,” he joked.

As for standout moments of the game itself? Here Frank is wonderfully honest: “Barely remember that game. I think you may know more about what transpired than I do today. I hadn’t a clue it was uploaded to YouTube.” To him, it wasn’t a classic. It wasn’t a pennant race. “It wasn’t really a game,” he said. “It was a spectacle and a way for the New York Mets to offer a payday to their minor league affiliate.” And he suspects many Mets would have preferred spending their off day anywhere but Virginia.

What about significance? Did the later World Series win add glow to the memory? Not really—not from Lynchburg’s vantage point in 1986. “We knew next to nothing of what was going on in New York,” Frank said. “No internet; no Twitter. Other than seeing a Mets logo on Lynchburg jerseys, we knew next to nothing of what was going on in New York.” They didn’t even have WOR on local cable, so the ’86 Mets legend was happening a world away.

Behind-the-scenes stories? Frank didn’t have any simply because he had no time to explore them. “We all were handling all of the different logistics areas and preparations we had to do,” he said. “I wasn’t around the clubhouse. I believe Scott Skadan could shed more light on that than me.”

Frank was right—if anyone had the real goods on the operation, it was 1986 Promotions Manager Scott Skadan. So yes, I immediately went into full Mets-detective mode to track him down. That’s what we do here on the Korner: we follow every lead, no matter how deep into the Carolina League it takes us

Talking with Scott was like opening a time capsule labeled “How Did We Pull This Off?” When I asked what the front office looked like back then. “Now, every minor league front office has upwards of 20 staff members and interns,” he told me. “Back in 1986, with the Lynchburg Mets, we had six.” That was the entire operation—General Manager Frank Cappiello, Assistant GM Paul Sunwall, Scott running promotions, Mark Giles handling marketing (“I believe,” Scott added ), broadcaster Frank Adkisson, and Frank’s assistant. That was it. “We did it all… sold the promotions sponsorships, outfield wall signs, program ads, season tickets—you name it, we did it.”

So when the big-league Mets said they were coming to town, what was Scott’s reaction? Panic? Anxiety? A deep need to lie down in a dark room?

“No panic at all,” he said. “Just pure excitement—for our staff and the entire community.” Even he wasn’t entirely sure how Cappiello and team chairman Calvin Falwell pulled it off. “I’m not sure how they convinced the New York Mets to do an exhibition game in Lynchburg, but they did. The Mets were great to work with, and were first class in all of our dealings with them.”

Preparing City Stadium, however, was like building a cruise ship out of toothpicks. “It was like Opening Night times a hundred,” Scott said. They added restrooms, opened extra ticket gates, and planned for overflow. And by overflow, he means they sold standing room on the warning track, roping it off and filling it with fans. “It was the most people that had ever attended a game at City Stadium,” he said. “But honestly, we were prepared… I don’t believe I heard ANYTHING negative about the event at all.”

When I asked if the game was instantly a hot ticket, Scott didn’t hesitate. “We sold every ticket available, including Standing Room Only on the Warning Track. We sold EVERY Box Seat SEASON TICKET available, because that was the only way you could get a Box Seat ticket to the game.” Major league clubs didn’t play in Class A parks. This was baseball Haley’s Comet. “We had pulled off something that every other Class A team would have loved to do.”

And while the front-office world outside was “controlled chaos,” Scott’s personal assignment was even better: he was, for one day, the New York Mets' clubhouse manager.

“I was designated as the official liaison to take care of the major league players and staff with whatever they needed,” he said. Food, drinks, equipment—whatever. And after the second or third inning, when most starters were back inside, Scott suddenly found himself in the middle of Mets downtime. “I remember a couple of card games being played in the clubhouse, and I was making sure they had a great time. I knew Lynchburg was probably NOT how they wanted to spend a travel day, but they were awesome.”

And then came the moment he’ll never forget.

Arthur Richman—the legendary Mets traveling secretary—pulled Scott aside. As the players packed up, Richman told them, “Hey guys, take care of the Clubbie.” And nearly every player stopped, thanked Scott for the hospitality, and slipped him some cash. “It honestly caught me off guard,” Scott said. “I was not expecting that at all… it was a great experience for me, one that I’ll never forget.”

As for the game itself, Scott barely saw any of it. “As minor league front office staff, we rarely get to see much of the game,” he said. “I eventually watched a VHS of the game the next day.” But he did remember the crowd. “There is absolutely no comparison… This was our World Series. Our MLB All-Star Game. The biggest thing that would ever happen at City Stadium.”

Even years later, people still brought it up. “Everyone wanted to know if we were going to do this every year!” he said, laughing. And while Lynchburg liked to joke that the exhibition was the “tipping point” that launched the Mets to the ’86 World Series title, Scott knew how special that one day really was. “Being a part of that exhibition game was one of the highlights of my minor league front office career,” he said. Even after going on to run minor league affiliates for the Expos, Orioles, Rangers, and Red Sox, the Lynchburg exhibition still ranks at the top. “The Mets didn’t have to come to Lynchburg, but they chose to. They could have behaved like spoiled superstars… but they didn’t. They were tremendous to work with.”

Little did I know that one harmless YouTube click would set off what our staff now call “The Korner Effect”: a midnight text to Steve Phillips, me getting name-checked on MLB Network the next morning, tracking down the Lynchburg broadcaster and promotions director, and catching up with Barry Lyons like it was still 1986. That’s the beauty of being a Mets writer with Wi-Fi. Sometimes you end up finding a baseball story that was waiting for you all along, because sometimes baseball fate has a sense of humor and leads you right where you didn’t even know you needed to go.

Relive the Mets’ 1986 exhibition against Lynchburg in all its VHS glory—blurry pixels, early-’80s graphics, and yes, the clock still blinking 12:00—watch the full game here :