{"id":26739,"date":"2020-07-14T03:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T00:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/joe-torres-surprising-mets-know-closest-thing-to-60-game-sprint\/"},"modified":"2020-07-14T03:26:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T00:26:00","slug":"joe-torres-surprising-mets-know-closest-thing-to-60-game-sprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/joe-torres-surprising-mets-know-closest-thing-to-60-game-sprint\/","title":{"rendered":"#Joe Torre\u2019s surprising Mets know closest thing to 60-game sprint"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Joe Torre\u2019s surprising Mets know closest thing to 60-game<\/a> sprint<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Inside, away from the deafening roar of his players, the manager of the Mets tried to play it off as just another baseball game. That\u2019s what managers do after all \u2014 and it\u2019s certainly what Joe Torre did, what he was famous for doing as a skipper, surely later on.<\/p>\n

But this wasn\u2019t a dynasty-level Yankees team who\u2019d just won a second-straight September cliff-hanger. This was the 1981 Mets, who had mostly inspired a different roster of \u201cd\u201d words \u2014 deplorable, disastrous, disgusting \u2014 and had forced Torre to ponder depths of the sport during 4 \u00bd years on the job he\u2019d never thought possible.<\/p>\n

Still, the smile that accompanied his postgame cigar was telling. The Mets had won the day before by erasing a 5-0 lead and finishing a sweep of the first-place Cardinals when Mookie Wilson, of all people, drilled a two-run, two-out, walk-off homer off Bruce Sutter. They\u2019d won this night by shaking off a ninth-inning Pirates rally and winning in the 13th when John Stearns scored on a wild pitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good thing I already have an ulcer,\u201d Torre said between puffs. \u201cOr this team would be giving me one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mets had won four straight. They were two games out of first place with 12 games to go. It was preposterous, of course, because the \u201981 Mets were much like the four Mets clubs that had preceded them and the two that would follow \u2014 a 25-man team with, maybe, 15 or 16 major league-quality players. They started the season 17-34. It was widely assumed Torre would be gone soon.<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/img>
Joe Torre with the Mets in 1977.<\/span>AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then a funny thing happ<\/a>ened.<\/p>\n

At midnight on Friday, June 12, the MLBPA went on strike. The owners, fortified by strike insurance, didn\u2019t cave as quickly as they had nine years earlier and so this time the work stoppage gobbled up the rest of June, all of July. The strike was finally settled July 31, the sport returned Aug. 9 with the All-Star Game in Cleveland, and the season resumed the next day.<\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t pick up where it left off. On Aug. 6, the owners voted for a split-season, and the moment the vote was revealed there were a number of self-fulfilling problems. The four first-half division leaders (including the Yankees in the AL East) were declared half-pennant champs; they would face the winners of the second half in a first-ever best-of-five Division Series<\/a>. If a team won both halves, they\u2019d face the second-best team, which would have caused a lot of arguments (first half? Second half? Overall?).<\/p>\n

Except that never happened because all four first-half teams, their playoff berths secure, essentially took two months off. That alone was problematic. What the split-season format promised in terms of chaos it delivered: the Reds had baseball\u2019s best overall record, 66-42, but won neither half of the NL West and stayed home while the Dodgers and Astros advanced. The Cardinals, 59-43, had the top mark in the NL East but could beat out neither the Phillies in the first half nor the Expos in the second.<\/p>\n

That was the downside.<\/p>\n

Submit your Mets questions here to be answered in an upcoming Post mailbag<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The up? Every team\u2019s first half was forgiven. Every team started 0-0. They would all play schedules of varying length \u2014 mostly between 52 and 55 games \u2014 and get one of the great do-overs of all time. And so it was that the 17-34 Mets became 0-0 like magic, started 3-0, and after winning four in a row capped by the 13-inning win over Pittsburgh were 20-20, right in the thick of an improbable pennant race.<\/p>\n

It is as close as we have been in modern times to the 60-game sprint baseball is scheduled to kick off next week. And it was every bit as quirky and unpredictable then as it seems it\u2019ll be now. The \u201981 Mets were a prime example of that. Think of the Tigers (114 losses last year) the Orioles (108) or the Marlins (105) making a similar push this September.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think these guys finally believe like they\u2019re in a pennant race,\u201d Torre said.<\/p>\n

Few others did. Only 7,429 came to Shea Stadium for the Pittsburgh game; and even with talk of 1969 and \u201973 filling the papers only 6,855 came the next night. The Mets of that era had perfected social<\/a> distancing, even if they hadn\u2019t coined a phrase for it yet. They were also ready to tumble back to earth, and did, finishing 24-28, 5 \u00bd games back. Torre was fired on the season\u2019s final day; he gave his executioner, Frank Cashen, one of his private-stock cigars after getting the axe.<\/p>\n

And why not? That made as much sense as anything else the last time baseball opted for a sprint over a marathon.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

\n

If you want to read more Sports News<\/a> articles, you can visit our General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Joe Torre\u2019s surprising Mets know closest thing to 60-game sprint” Inside, away from the deafening roar of his players, the manager of the Mets tried to play it off as just another baseball game. That\u2019s what managers do after all \u2014 and it\u2019s certainly what Joe Torre did, what he was famous for doing as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38268],"class_list":["post-26739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-joe-torres-surprising-mets-know-closest-thing-to-60-game-sprint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}