Jake Brennan (Disgraceland Host) (36:05)
The newspapers didn't lie. At least back in those days they didn't. Sure, they editorialized and there was inherent bias, as there is in most things. But the rot that is so prevalent in mainstream media today hadn't yet set in back in the 1980s, back before the Internet disrupted the news business and forced it to switch from ad sales to a subscription based model where news outlets newspapers are forced to over deliver the exact point of view that their readers demand, lest they lose subscribers and thus revenue. Before this new paradigm, in decades past, the traditional daily newspaper was almost universally trusted. Local news, the morning and afternoon edition newspapers delivered stories via local sources that local residents could trust because those sources were woven into the fabric of the local community. It's hard for journalists to publish editorialized content disguised as news or to lie outright if they have to go into their neighborhood every day and look the people they're lying to in the eye. Today it's all different. There are hardly any local newspapers anymore. But in 1986, New York City was still a local newspaper town, just as most cities and towns in America were. Queens residents, along with a healthy portion of the rest of the city read the Daily News and the Daily News didn't lie. And Queen's calm Ms. Jimmy Breslin definitely didn't lie. Jimmy was a lot of brash, often drunk, egotistical, dogged, stubbornly old school, unkempt, hypocritical, offensive, undeniably talented as a writer and compelling as a personality. But he wasn't a liar. So when he reported back in 86 that local politician and Queensborough president Donny Maynes was a liar, the city believed him. There's an old adage in the news business and it's this. Often the first story is the wrong story. News takes a minute to develop. And as the news concerned Donny Mains, the first reports on the politicians Shea Stadium stabbing had it all wrong. Donnie didn't get stabbed. Donnie stabbed himself. Donnie was looking to create a distraction, perhaps trying to manipulate some sympathy from his constituents. Poor old Donny. Look how hard he's working for us. Up late in a bad part of town, doing his job and getting stabbed for or something like that, who really knows? What we do know, because Jimmy Breslin told us so in the pages of the Daily News is that while the New York Mets have been entertaining the people of Queensland, Donny Maines had been scamming the people of Queens and of New York City in general for years, executing a long running grift wherein he'd extorted over $400,000 for himself and tens of thousands for others. The scam went like this. Donny Maynes as powerful borough president had influence over which Contractors received lucrative deals for citywide work. Dear old Donny, man of the people, would dispatch his skeevy little buddy Jeffrey Lindenhauer to meet with said contractors. And the contractors would slip Jeffrey an envelope stuffed with cash. The cash would find its way into Donny Maines personal coffers and Donnie would see to it that the contractor got the lucrative contract. It was basically as simple as that. And there were a bunch of details about the various ways the scam was run and on whom, including cable TV contractors, debt collectors soliciting past due parking tickets, etc. But essentially it was blatant pay to play and greed. To Declan, the nature of the case, this once proud son of Queens found stabbed under questionable circumstances near where the Mets played every night was an embarrassment. Donny Maines wasn't supposed to be embroiled in controversy. Donny Maynes was supposed to be doing what the Mets were doing. Representing Queens. Declan wished that this whole story would resolve itself quickly. It didn't. Things got worse and quick. Word got back to Donny Maines that Jimmy Breslin had gotten to Donnie's corrupt bag man, Jeffrey Lindenauer, and that Jeffrey was spilling everything he knew to the barstool newspaper man. And by this time tomorrow, as Queens residents grab their daily news to read about their Mets, the story of who Donnie Maines really was and how he'd become a corrupt embarrassment would be all over the front page. Donnie couldn't have that. Unsure of what to do, Donnie called his psychiatrist. Donnie was frantic. His shrink tried talking him down. Donnie spun out wildly. The doctor pleaded. Donnie pulled open a drawer in his kitchen and found what he was looking for. And the doctor heard a thump on the other end of the line. Then the line went dead. Hours later, Donnie Maines daughter found her father prone on the kitchen floor. Donnie's 14 inch Echo Flint knife sticking straight up out of the dead politician's chest. It was suicide. Similar to a corrupt politician. The New York Mets were not accustomed to not getting what they wanted. Whether it was Lenny Dykstra trying to find an all night high stakes card game in the seedier part of an away game town, or Darryl Strawberry having sex with a groupie in the tunnel behind the dugout during a game, or Keith Hernandez smoking a cigarette on the bench, or Gary Carter partaking in one of what seemed like a million insufferable curtain calls, or Doc Gooden staying up all night on a cocaine bender before starting the next day on the mound. The Mets were winners that year. And to the winners go the Spoils the entitled jock attitude ran deep with the Mets in 86. They were the cool kids, the bullies, basically. They were dicks everywhere they went, and they expected to be treated with a certain level of respect and accommodation whether they were in New York or not. Texas didn't agree. Texas knew about big, Texas knew about big egos. And Texas could give a shit about the New York Mets. Which was why the security at Cooter's bar in Houston, two off duty cops did not take lightly the comment made by Mets ballplayers when they were asked to leave for the umpteenth time after closing. We're the fucking New York Mets and we'll leave when we want to. Bobby Ojita, Ron Darling, Rick Aguilera and Tim Tuffle eventually got off their bar stools and went out through the exit. Stupidly. However, Tuffle still carried his half empty Heineken, which was all the off duty cops needed to pounce. One cop told Tuffle he couldn't leave with the beer. Tuffle told the cop to fuck off. The cop lunged for Tuffle. Tuffle drew back and walloped the cop. Two doormen jumped into the fray to help the cop and they pinned Tuffle down and Ron Darling walked out of the bar just in time to hear the doorman encouraging the cops to break Tuffle's arm. Darling jumped into the melee to help Tuffle, punching one of the cops in the throat, and the cop threw Darling back into a glass sign, shattering it into pieces. Darling was cuffed. Tuffle was cuffed, and inside the bar, Ojeda and Aguilera were cuffed too, despite the fact that they weren't involved in the fight in any way. All they were guilty of was being New York Mets and they were all fingerprinted, booked and forced to spend the night in a Houston jail. But by 11am they'd been released and were on the field at the Astrodome for the next game's warm ups. Still, the damage was done. The news was out and back home. The evening edition papers in New York were covered with ridiculous headlines. Slap Happy Mets. A fine day for Mets baseball. The boys of Slammer Declan threw his paper down on the bar in disgust. Who came up with this shit? The Mets had managed to do exactly what Donny Maynes had done, embarrass Queens. But neither Black Mark would Last fall was in the air and something was about to happen in this borrow that hadn't happened in a long time. The New York Mets were about to win the National League. Penn. On September 17, 1986 with Dwight Gooden on the mound at Shea Stadium, about to record the last out of a complete Game 6 hit shutout, the new York Mets were poised to clinch the pennant in a World Series birth. But the Mets players on the field were petrified. About 70 miles north, in a drab New Haven, Connecticut, hotel, U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani was prepping his documents for the racketeering and bribery case he was mounting against the remaining living defendants in the Maine's corruption case. A small transistor radio broadcasting ongoing events at Shea. Down at Pep McGuire's, Declan was watching the game on the tiny television above the bar. A small handful of men ignored the tv, choosing to talk among themselves. In the corner, the Mains case and Donnie getting a raw deal or some shit. Declan couldn't really tell. The Mets players on the field weren't afraid of the U.S. attorney. They were afraid of the Mets fans in the stands. As soon as the game's last out was recorded and the pennant was clinched, all hell would break loose at Shea. Giuliani stacked his documents neatly on his bed and considered the past summer's events. Somehow, as the Mets were overtaking his Yankees and New York City popularity, he'd been following the corrupt spiderweb of the Maine's case into the dirtiest corners of New York politics, uncovering corruption at multiple levels and netting some of the city's most powerful local political leaders. It made the sting of the Yankees losing the American League pennant to Boston and the inevitable Mets NL pennant win much less painful. Declan watched the tension mount on the television. The fans in the stands at Shea looked and sounded rabid. Their energy matched the energy inside the barroom. It felt like a happy bomb was about to explode. But the energy back behind Declan was off. The small handful of men were now drunkenly toasting Donnie Mains, as if the Mets weren't about to cap off the best fucking season they'd had since 69. Declan shot them a look that went unnoticed. Back at Shea, Keith Hernandez kicked the dirt at his feet near first base and contemplated his exit strategy. Once the Mets got the last out, he was just going to beeline it for the dugout, into the tunnel and straight back to the clubhouse. He wasn't going to get cute like he knew some of his other teammates were planning and make for the bullpen or even crazier, descend into the madness in the stands and up and over and out of the stadium to the parking lot. Giuliani, in his hotel room, considered the defendants who were corrupted in the Donny Maynes case, one the chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party and another the director of the city's Parking Violations Bureau. He also thought of the C Suite corporate city contractors he'd indicted who had received millions in government contracts in exchange for payoffs. They were all guilty, and Giuliani was confident the jury would find them so. At Pep McGuire's, Declan realized why the group of men behind him wouldn't shut up about Donny Maines and were paying no mind to the history about to be made on the television. They were Yankees fans. The expensive pinstripe suits should have tipped him off. Some detective, he thought. On the Shea Stadium infield, Wally Backman fielded a ground ball, made the transition from glove hand to throwing hand tossed to Hernandez at first. And that sealed it. The New York Mets were National League champions. It was instant. The stadium exploded in violent jubilation. Mets fans, Queens residents, thousands of them poured onto the field from the stands to celebrate. Doc Gooden was sworn and Keith Hernandez's plan was foiled. The Mets ace was on the bottom of a giant pile of slap happy fans. Hernandez and Burley center fielder Kevin Mitchell dove into the pile to pull their ace out of the melee. Pep McGuire's exploded in cheers. A round for the bar was ordered up. The Yankees fans in the back spit in their beers and drank accordingly. Donnie was gone, so was their ticket to the trough. And the fucking Mets were going to the World Series. Giuliani listened to the riot unfolding at Shea and shook his head. He was too confident to care. The Mets might have been winners, but so was he. He knew the jury would convict the defendants in this case, and the prosecutor smiled and went to bed. Back at Shea, Hernandez, Mitchell and Gooden eventually made it into the clubhouse without harm, as did the rest of the Mets players, except for number five starter Rick Aguilera, who suffered a dislocated shoulder from a fan who jumped on his back as the champagne flowed in the dugout. The Mets and their fans knew they were set for a historic run. The cheating Houston Astros wouldn't keep them down in the nlcs. Nor would the Boston Red Sox with their fearsome young ace, Roger Clemens in the World Series. It was inevitable. Almost preordained. 1986 was different this year. The people of Queens were going to come out on top. No amount of bad headlines, bench clearing, brawls, arrests, cocaine, alcohol or corrupt politicians could alter the outcome this year. The people of Queens were winners. Mike Scott and the Astros did their best to cheat their way into a series win, but they were disposed of in six. It took a miracle and Bill Buckner's bad knees, but Boston was brought down in seven. The 1986 World Series championship parade was of course held in Manhattan, not Queens. Millions of New Yorkers swarmed the streets to celebrate the Mets. Everyone who was anyone was there, except for Doc Gooden. He was watching the parade on TV from a Queen's drug den high on crack cocaine. Outside in his sedan, Declan was watching Doc. Now that the 86 season had wrapped, the gig with the commissioner was up. But Declan had nothing better to do. By now he saw it as a public service, making sure the Mets young ace didn't end up in jail on Queens. Most significant day in over a decade was Declan's way of giving back. Which is more than could have been said for Donny Maines or any of the city's public servants who lined up at Donnie's trough to feed off the cash from dirty corporate contractors. They were all convicted criminals now. When they laid Donnie out at Schwartz Brothers Jeffer Memorial Funeral Home and then toasted him down at Peps, they said he wasn't what the papers made him out to be. They said he was a hard working man from Queens. That was just something they said the dead politician had less in common with the hard working people he was supposed to serve than he did with the pinstripe suits he'd been scamming with. In the end, Maines was more of a Yankee than a met. The 86 Mets reflected the people in Queens who rooted for them. And that year they were the best Major League Baseball had to offer. The best this country has always had to offer is its people who get up and go to work every morning, who punch a clock somewhere. Who work for somebody who works for somebody else. It's not its C suite office holders or celebrities or pundits or the political class. It's not the people who design the buildings. It's the people who build them. It's not the people who collect the taxes. It's the people who pay them. And it's not the people who start the fires. It's the people who put them out. It's the grinders, the stiffs, the humps. There are millions of them and a million more just like them. They've got dirt under their fingernails, not in their bank accounts. Sometimes they're brash, foul mouthed, violent, cocky. Sometimes drunk and even disgraced. Sometimes they're the 86 Mets. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Alright guys, hope you dug this episode. This was obviously a story about a baseball team, but it's also about a baseball town, Queens. So with that, the question of the week is which city in America or anywhere actually is the best sports town there is. Of course only one answer. It's Boston. 617-906-6638 though text and voicemail to tell me I'm wrong and to prove to me why come at me. Alright this goes. Let me know and met fans. I want to hear from you. Queens represent 50 cent DMC. Let me know. Get at me again. 617-906-6638 Leave me a voicemail. Greatest sports town out there. All right, leave me a voicemail, send me a text and let me know. You can also reach me at disgracelandpod as well on Instagram X and Facebook. Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland and ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections and early access to merchandise and events. 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