The Bad Guys Won

A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo Chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, the Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform - and Maybe the Best

By: Jeff Pearlman

Narrated by: Jeff Pearlman

Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Award-winning Sports Illustrated baseball writer Jeff Pearlman returns to an innocent time when a city worshipped a man named Mookie and the Yankees were the second-best team in New York.

It was 1986, and the New York Mets won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, capturing the hearts (and other assorted body parts) of fans everywhere. But their greatness on the field was nearly eclipsed by how bad they were off it. Led by the indomitable Keith Hernandez and the young dynamic duo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, along with the gallant Scum Bunch, the Amazin's left a wide trail of wreckage in their wake-hotel rooms, charter planes, a bar in Houston, and most famously Bill Buckner and the hated Boston Red Sox.

With an unforgettable cast of characters - including Doc, Straw, the Kid, Nails, Mex, and manager Davey Joshson - this "affectionate but critical look at this exciting season" (Publishers Weekly) celebrates the last of baseball's arrogant, insane, rock-and-roll-and-party-all-night teams, exploring what could have been, what should have been, and what never was.

©2004, 2011 Jeff Pearlman (P)2021 Tantor

So much fun

A legendary team, all the parties, all the dirt, all the success. A lot of fun

Worth a read… Even if you are nowhere near a Mets fan

Went from listening to “Three Ring Circus“ – Jeff Pearlman‘s 2010’s-era account of the LA Lakers – to this, and it certainly shows the maturation of Jeff Pearlman. First, this inaugural voyage of his does a very good job of chronicling the Mets’ 1986 success, with sufficient profiles of the players and administrators at hand. However, it definitely shows that Pearlman was still learning, and still growing as a novelist, because his later works show just how much more depth he goes into to show the three dimensions of each person involved in his writings a decade later. It also shows the maturation of Pearlman (or his Audible editor) to realize that Perlman - like many of those scribes from this era – is a good writer, but not a great speaker. In some ways, he sabotages his own great writing in this, So in later books, he/they let more professional speakers handle delivering his prose. Still definitely worth a read.

Jeff Pearlman ALWAYS Delivers

Everything Pearlman writes is creative, literary, yet also accessible. This is no exception. Great storytelling with amazing attention to detail.

Pretty good

Not as good as boys will be boys but still good! Recommended if you liked pearlmans other books

hate the Mets, love the writer

many interesting stories if you are a baseball fan, Mets are tough to hear about but the individual stories are very good

My childhood memories now come with some flavor!

I was 11 when the Mets win the ‘86 World Series and to me, they where the Olympian Gods of baseball. To see them as they really were does not diminish that memory for me, but enhances it with the full story. I will always cherish those ‘86 Mets and to see them as human, as flawed, makes them all the more dear to my heart.

Reliving the greatest summer of my life.

1986 was magical and the Mets were a big part of that. This is a must listen for any Mets or Baseball fan. Thanks for the memories!!!

Unfortunate

The way the author chose to describe some people and situations does not reflect well on his journalistic ability.

Ehhh … nothing special

Nothing special . You get a better look at watching the Once Upon a time in Brooklyn on ESPN

Maybe 3.5

This is a pretty good book, I remember the 1986 season and though I wasn't a Mets fan I followed the game closely in those days. There were a couple of reasons this book didn't get a higher ranking from me.
First, Moneyball author Michael Lewis received a pre publication copy and after reading it told the author that it was pretty good but that everyone was an asshole. I have to agree with that assessment, because, yeah, almost every one of them comes off that way.
My second issue is with the author himself who seems to lament the lack of that abhorrent behavior in "modern'" player. He bemoans the players of the 2000's who would sit quietly and listen to their I-Pods rather than smoke, drink, use drugs get into fights with their teammates, abuse the cabin crew, and worst of all, they never have food fights on the airplane. Evidently today's players don't provide the same level of self inflicted harm disguised as fun and excitement, not to mention good stories for baseball writers.