Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Bad Guys Won Book Review

This is a book about the 1986 New York Mets that beat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series that year. It's a pretty good book, and here's some of my quick thoughts on it:

The Scum Bunch is awesome. This is a group comprised of Jesse Orosco, Danny Heep, and Doug Sisk who drank heavily and tried to corrupt as many of their teammates as possible. They were successful in most cases.
They were part of the reason that Tim Teufel, who was known as one of the nicest guys on the team, celebrated the birth of his first child by getting in a bar fight...with cops.

It became pretty clear that the author absolutely hated Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden.
He kept bringing up the fact that Darryl was an asshole when he was drunk (who isn't?), and how he was selfish. He then barely touched on how low-level employees of the team absolutely loved the guy and thought he was one of the nicest guys they've met.
Meanwhile, he hated Dwight Gooden for not playing well on the field when Gooden was one of the 5 best pitchers in the league that year. Still, since he wasn't as dominant as the year before, Pearlman lambasted Gooden for not trying hard enough.

Just a side note, Darryl Strawberry liked big women back in the day.

The highlights of the book involved Lenny Dykstra and Kevin Mitchell.

"Lenny Dykstra, after signing hundreds of baseballs had a fat woman walk up, and he snapped, 'Lady, you are too fuckin' fat for me to sign this thing for you!'"

But Kevin Mitchell was definitely my favorite character, because he was a straight up G. Also, he's not great with historical landmarks.

Mitchell: What is that thing?
Clubhouse Manager: You mean the Statue of Liberty?
Mitchell: Holy Shit! You mean to tell me the Statue of Liberty is here in New York? I’ve got to call my brother and tell him.

He was in an interview where he said, "I ain’t never used drugs in my life. I’m high off sex and I’m high off life." Good for him.

And finally, him and Strawberry were coming up with the Mets at the same time. In Spring Training, some of the Mets played basketball, and Darryl was acting like a bitch, so Kevin Mitchell punched him in the face. As Strawberry was bleeding, he threatened that the Mets would release him since he just punched the Mets #1 pick in the face. Mitchell didn't know that he had just hit THE Darryl Strawberry until that, but when he found out, did he apologize? Hell no. He went back to where he was staying to get a baseball bat so he could murder him. Luckily the other Mets got Strawberry out of there before Mitchell returned.

So yeah, it's a pretty entertaining book that does a solid job of covering things. I would have rather heard more partying stories, but it's still a good read. Also, they tried to blatantly rip off the Super Bowl Shuffle:


They Got The Teamwork To Make The Dream Work

-Joe

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