Summer of '86 Review

Yikes. What was that pile of shit that I watched last night? How is it possible to take the story of the 1986 New York Mets and ruin it? MSG pulled it off with Part I of the Summer of '86.

First, this whole thing turned into some kind of scam to get us all to watch the Knicks post-game show. The Summer of '86 was supposed to start at 10pm, but didn't actually air until sometime around 10:45. This post-game show consisted of a bunch of terrible interviews and bogus "analysis" from Kelly Tripucka. The only thing worse than NBA basketball is people talking about NBA basketball.

Moving on to the actual show, I must start by reminding everyone how awesome the '86 Mets were. They were the last REAL baseball team. They drank, did coke, brawled with opponents, picked up women, and won the World Series.

There has not been a team in America that has since come close to having as much character and talent as Davey Johnson's boys. The '93 Phillies were close and the '04 Red Sox were closer, but not quite.

So I was excited for this new show on the best team of all-time. I wanted to hear about the Scum Bunch. I wanted new stories about bar sluts and Colombian cocaine. I wanted to know how many punches landed on Tom Niedenfuer's face.

Or, as one Mets-Thing insider described to me last night by text, "I will only watch if Doug Sisk is interviewed with his voice garbled and his identity protected".

We want the real shit, not more of the same lame-ass baseball cliche talk about how Keith Hernandez was a manager on the field.

But that's what we got. It was 15 minutes (the other 15 minutes were all commercials and self-promotion) of fodder. Everybody in New York knows who the players were and who the manager was. MSG did not need to rehash all that nonsense.

The narrator sucked too.

The highlight of the show was everything and anything Davey Johnson said, telling the team "we're going to dominate" in spring training. Nice.

Part II will be airing tonight at 10:30pm.