The ‘86 Mets: Cocaine, On and Off-field Brawls, and a Murder Outside Shea Stadium

Summary

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DISGRACELAND: The ‘86 Mets – Cocaine, On and Off-field Brawls, and a Murder Outside Shea Stadium

Host: Jake Brennan
Production Company: Double Elvis Productions
Air Date: November 5, 2024

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Overview

This episode of Disgraceland dives into the wild, unruly world of the 1986 New York Mets—a team as famous for their relentless, blue-collar bravado and baseball heroics as they were for off-field debauchery, cocaine-fueled chaos, and outright criminality swirling around Queens during their legendary World Series run. Through a blend of true crime storytelling and gritty atmosphere, host Jake Brennan parallels the Mets’ tumultuous season with the simultaneous political scandal and suicide of Queens Borough President Donald Manes, painting Queens as a microcosm of working-class struggle, pride, and potential disgrace.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Stage: Queens, Baseball, and Underdogs

• (05:55) Jake establishes Queens as a borough of working-class grit—endlessly overshadowed by Manhattan and the Yankees.
  • “The Mets, like Declan, were second class all the way... They lost all the time. But they showed up the next day and went to work. It’s a familiar routine for most hard-working Americans.”
• The Mets embody the underdog—never as polished as the Yankees, always connected with the everyday labor of their fans.
• The colors of the Mets symbolize loss and abandonment—the blue of the departed Dodgers, orange for the gone Giants, and gray for gloom.

The Private Investigator: Declan and the “Real Story”

• (08:22) Fictional P.I. Declan is tasked by MLB to surveil Mets pitcher Dwight “Doc” Gooden for illegal activities, feeling conflicted—caught between rooting for Queens and policing it.
  • “Like everyone else in Queens during that summer of 1986, [Declan] wanted nothing so much as he wanted the New York Mets to win the World Series that year.”
• Declan’s stake: The personal struggles and vices among the team become a metaphor for Queens’ own turbulence.

The Mets’ Excesses: Decadence and Debauchery

• (21:52) A harrowing story of the Mets’ infamous drunken, destructive playoff flight—beer, champagne, vomit, a food fight, even players destroying airplane seats (Strawberry physically bending seats to create loungers).
  • Cocaine is openly abused, especially by Doc Gooden, as confirmed by the traumatized stewardess.
  • Strawberry’s off-field violence (alleged assault on his wife before the game) is briefly referenced.
• “The Mets swashbuckling, take no prisoners swagger… their cockiness and hard-partying ways had been fodder for the back pages of New York newspapers all summer. Mets players were vile, disgusting human beings who, aside from catcher Gary Carter and a few others… had little to no sense of decency.” (23:30)

The Cocaine Scandal

• Star first baseman Keith Hernandez had been forced to testify before a grand jury about cocaine use—he was a central figure (and a reason for increased MLB scrutiny), though now supposedly clean.
• Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, the team's two electrifying young black stars, are “caught in an apex athlete’s body” but succumb to every temptation New York offers. The system is unable—or unwilling—to get them to stop.

Sex, Stardom, and Rock Star Status

• The ‘86 Mets partied like rock stars, welcomed in swanky Manhattan steakhouses and nightclubs, —with “Cristal flowing among the coke spoons.”
• “It all added up to something beyond debauchery. It was hedonism.” (25:59)

Corruption in Queens: The Donald Manes Case

• (14:05, 36:05) The attempted (then successful) suicide of Borough President Donald Manes, discovered bleeding in his car near Shea Stadium, becomes a parallel drama.
  • At first, Manes claims an ambush; it’s later revealed he stabbed himself as his years of bribery, extortion, and grift unravel in public.
• Renowned journalist Jimmy Breslin cracks the case, exposing Maines’ scheme: contractors slip cash to Manes’s fixer for lucrative deals—over $400,000 skimmed.
• The scandal ensnares others—“pay to play and greed”—and U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani preps cases as Maines loses grip and ultimately kills himself in despair.

Notable quote:

• “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.” — Jake Brennan (36:40)

Brawls on and Off the Field

• Mets ignited (and almost always won) four notorious bench-clearing brawls during the season.
• (Detailed at 41:00) Bar altercation in Houston: Several Mets arrested after scrap with off-duty cops—headline fodder back home: “Slap Happy Mets. A fine day for Mets baseball. The boys of Slammer.”

The Pennant & the Party

• (45:30) The episode builds to the NL pennant clincher at Shea: Mets fans are “rabid”; the city is tense amid the overlapping Mets/Manes dramas; Giuliani is in New Haven tracking the court case.
• When the Mets clinch, riots of joy erupt—players get mobbed by jubilant fans (“Rick Aguilera, who suffered a dislocated shoulder from a fan who jumped on his back as the champagne flowed in the dugout.”)
• The entire city, except the Bronx, becomes Mets territory—at last, Queens is on top.

The Coda: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Real Winners

• The Red Sox are vanquished in seven (with a wink to Buckner’s error). Mets claim the crown, but Doc Gooden misses the victory parade, high on crack in a Queens drug den as his “surveillance” (Declan) waits in a car outside.
• Manes and his cronies are convicted; their legacy is shame.
• Brennan closes with a meditation on who the real heroes are—not the “C-suite office holders, or celebrities, or pundits or the political class.... It’s the grinders, the stiffs, the humps…. Sometimes they’re brash, foul-mouthed, violent, cocky. Sometimes drunk and even disgraced. Sometimes they're the ‘86 Mets.” (53:15)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• 05:55 — Jake Brennan:
  “The Mets, like Declan, were second class all the way… The Yankees had been businesslike in their dominance of the league… The Mets uniforms were an ugly blend of blue and orange over gray… a color coded reminder of loss.”
• 21:52 — On the Mets' wild flight:
  “From the minute the players boarded, chaos ensued… Unable to handle so much alcohol so quickly, the wives started to vomit. It was contagious… after the puke fest, cake was served… the players started chucking the cake around the plane in a full-on Animal House style food fight.”
• 23:40:
  “Mets players were vile, disgusting human beings who, aside from catcher Gary Carter and a few others… had little to no sense of decency.”
• 36:40 — On Donny Manes:
  “Donny Maines had been scamming the people of Queens and of New York City in general for years… It was pay to play and greed.”
• 53:15 — Closing riff:
  “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… Sometimes they're brash, foul-mouthed, violent, cocky. Sometimes drunk and even disgraced. Sometimes they're the 86 Mets."

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | Description | |------------|----------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:48 | Episode Content Warning | Noting disturbing real-life themes ahead | | 05:55 | Episode Introduction | Mets as blue-collar underdogs; Queens identity | | 14:05 | Discovery of Donald Manes | Political scandal and violent self-harm | | 21:52 | The Mets’ infamous “Animal House” flight | Details of Mets’ out-of-control, destructive team celebration flight | | 25:59 | Hedonism in the mid-80s | Coke, celebrity, and team decadence | | 36:05 | The Truth About Maines | Breslin exposes the Manes corruption and suicide | | 41:00 | Bar Brawl in Houston | Mets’ off-field violence; mass arrest | | 45:30 | Mets clinch the pennant | The city erupts as the Mets win; parallel to unfolding political scandal | | 53:15 | Episode Summary and Reflection | Brennan’s working-class homage; the legacy of the ‘86 Mets and Queens |

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Episode Tone, Style and Structure

• Language/Tone: Blunt, gritty, irreverent, shaded with nostalgia and rage. The narration moves between noirish, hardboiled crime and loving, wry, and often profane baseball storytelling.
• Brennan leans into Disgraceland’s signature mix of historical detail, true crime tension, and sharp cultural commentary.
• The narrative blends real events, period journalism, and some dramatized vignettes (Declan as a fictional stand-in).

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Takeaways

• The ‘86 Mets weren’t just a baseball team—they were a “dirty, disgraced” reflection of their city, beloved for their flaws and their fighting spirit.
• Queens, and by extension all blue-collar cities, find honor in showing up and surviving, not just in winning.
• Scandal, addiction, and violence haunted both ballplayers and city leaders, but the everyday folk “with dirt under their fingernails” are the episode’s true heroes.

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This summary preserves the raw insight, attitude, and structure of the original Disgraceland episode, offering listeners an edge-of-your-seat narrative that echoes both the chaos and triumph of the ‘86 Mets and their city.

Transcript

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This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.

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Please check the show notes for more information.

[Jake Brennan (Disgraceland Host)]

Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis alright guys, in a perfect world you would have heard this episode on the New York Mets a week or so ago while they played in the World Series against the New York Yankees. But that didn't happen because the Mets never made it out of the nlcs. And then the Yankees embarrassed themselves in humiliating fashion against the LA Dodgers and lost it all in five games. So our risky plan of producing a Mets episode and releasing it during a Mets World Series didn't work. But we can't get enough baseball and true crime here in Disgraceland. So we are serving you up this Mets episode right now. Think of it as a timeless love letter to the working class. Or perhaps just a final nail in the coffin that is the Yankees 2024 season. I mean seriously, fuck the Yankees. Go Mets. Mellotron. This is a story about one of the most compelling teams in baseball history. But it's also a story about the borough where that team played, Queens, New York. It's a story about addiction, corruption, hard working lunch pail types and dirty, disgraced pinstriped politicians. It's a story about sex, cocaine, a private investigator and an iconic journalist, a doc A strawberry, a mustachioed first baseman, and one of the most vile group of ballplayers ever assembled on a Major League baseball field. The 1986 New York Mets. A team that made headlines in a team that, on the field, figuratively anyway, made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called high and tight mk2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Rock Me Amadeus by Falco. And why would I play you that specific slice of wigged and bustiered cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on April 8, 1986. And that was the day the New York Mets began one of the wildest seasons in Queens, New York's history. On this episode, cocaine, corruption and the 86 Mets. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. Saran. Declan hated his name. Interrupt him on his barstool at Pep McGuire's by calling him Fran and badge or no badge, you'd be spitting your teeth into your Jameson. Declan. That was his name. Just Declan. Fran. Declan was his father. And as far as this Irish working stiff was concerned, Fran Declan was dead and forgotten. Declan hated his job, too. Private investigator. It was a constant reminder of the job he no longer had. Detective First Grade. But that's another story. This story, this job that Declan hated, forced him to work in opposition to the city he loved. Queens, New York. Queens in 1986. With its urban grit, suburban ease and hard working people, Queens was the life's blood of Manhattan. New York City may have never slept, but Queens kept the city's lights on with its residents who got up early to go to work in Manhattan. Construction workers and cops, the housekeepers and bookkeepers, the small shop owners and public school teachers, the cabbies and factory workers. Queens was the blue collared grist for Manhattan's glitzy mill. But all that aside, Declan had a job to do. Keep an eye on the pitcher, trail him after he left the stadium, report back to the commissioner of Major League Baseball and the pitcher's activities. Translation, illegal activities. Declan did his job and he hated himself for it. Because like everyone else in Queens during that summer of 1986, he wanted nothing. So much as he wanted the New York Mets to win the World Series that year. The Mets were perennial losers, professional laughingstocks compared to the hated Yankees over in Manhattan. The Mets, like Declan, were second class all the way. The Yankees had been businesslike in Their dominance of the league throughout baseball history, winning 22 championships before the year 1986. The Mets had one championship, a fluke back in 69. The Yankees were steeped in major league lore and their hall of Fame names were as iconic as their pinstripe uniforms. Ruth and Garrig, Mantle and DiMaggio. The Mets history was checkered. Sure, they had Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, but they also traded Tom Seaver in Nolan Ryan. And the Mets uniforms were far from iconic. They were an ugly blend of blue and orange over gray, color coded reminders of loss. The blue representing the departure of the city's beloved Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. And the orange representing the New York Giants abandoning New York for San Francisco. And the gray representing the gloomy outcome of the next time the Mets took the field with a World Series loss to the Oakland athletics in the 1973 World Series. The Mets were at best also rams and at worst bottom feeders throughout the 70s and early 80s. Yet their fans and queens still loved them. Maybe that love was because the Mets were reliable. They lost all the time. But they showed up the next day and went to work. It's a familiar routine for most hardworking Americans. The deck is stacked against you getting ahead. And winning in this life like those Gordon Geckos over in Manhattan, is nearly impossible. What are you gonna do? What can you do? Not much. So you just hit the bar after work, then sleep it off and go back to work the next morning. Sort of like the mets in the 70s and 80s. Residents of Queens could easily find players from their favorite team sitting on the same bar stools they sat on over at Rusty's or Finn McCo. Fools. Say what you will about the Mets and their lack of winning record from 76 to 84. They were a lot of things. Losers, sure, but at least they weren't the fucking Yankees. Unapproachably aloof with all their clean cut corporate automaton bullshit. Pinstripes like the fucking Brooks Brothers, Wall street blowhards who filled Yankee Stadium's soulless stands. Shea Stadium, where the Clash played in 82, where Queens resident Johnny Ramone threw rocks at the Beatles when they played. Shea back in 66 was a stadium that rocked every night with the drunken steam whistleblown energy of the 50,000 working stiffs who were just happy to be at the ballpark and not on the job. The players on the field seemed to have a similar attitude as the fans in the stands. They were just happy to be there in the bigs, working for a living. But by the mid-80s, things had begun to change around Shea. New ownership. A new GM Frank Cashin, A new manager, Davey Johnson, an ex player who was part dirt dog, part intellectual. And two bright young stars. One, Darryl Strawberry, with a swing that drew comparisons to the greatest hitter of all time, Boston's Ted Williams. And the other, a pitcher with natural talent that rivaled that of another one time Mets phenom Nolan Ryan, named Dwight Gooden, aka Dr. K, aka Doc. Doc was as problematic as he was talented. Both he and Strawberry were. But Doc was the player the commissioner was paying Declan to investigate in 1986. It was a bullshit gig. Had Declan still been the detective his old man wanted him to be, he would have been on a real case. Like the case that was all over the front pages that summer. A case that no one who lived in Queens wanted to talk about, but a case that everyone else wanted to talk about. A case that put the corruption of New York City's leaders front and center for all to see. A case that weighed heavily on New Yorkers, but a case that, thankfully, was easy to forget when the Mets were storming their way toward the national league pennant in 1986. The car looked abandoned just a couple blocks from Shea Stadium, but the interior light glowing inside caught the two patrolling officers attention. The cops pulled their cruiser over and parked in a way that trained its headlights directly on the suspicious vehicle. The officers exited and approached the car with caution. Someone was inside alone on this abandoned street at this early morning hour. The driver couldn't be seen beyond the steamed up windows. Whoever was inside the foggy glow of the interior had to know that two cops were now outside and slowly approaching, but the driver made no effort to indicate his presence as the officers approached. It was curious. Ominous. Both cops palmed the pistols on their hips. One called out for the car's owner to come out with his hands up. Nothing. The other cop unholstered his weapon and trained it on the driver side window. Cop number one shouted again, commanding the car's driver to exit. Still nothing. Both cops froze, looked at each other. The shouting one nodded. The other cop slid to his right, still with his gun trained on the automobile to provide cover for his partner, who reached for the car's driver's side handle and pulled the door open. Inside, a middle aged white man slumped over in the driver's seat, barely conscious, blood covering his lap. Both cops fell back in shock, not so much because of the blood, but because they both knew this man. Any New York City cop would. Any resident of Queens would. This was the man elected to serve their interests to do the residents of Queens bidding over in Manhattan with the Mayor. This was the man tasked with ensuring that their Queens wasn't overlooked in favor of the other boroughs. This here was the popular and well respected Queen's Borough President Donald Maines, 52 years old, political powerhouse, Pride of Queens, the one time youngest Assistant DA ever elected. Also the youngest person ever elected to City Council. Donny Maynes was, as they said down at Pep McGuire's, a real comer. He was for the people, a fighter. And Donny Maines was also bleeding out in the front seat of his Ford LTD a few hundred yards from Shea Stadium, fighting for his life.

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Declan watched the Ozark Airlines stewardess's eyes as she explained the nightmare she just endured, a three and a half hour flight with a 1986 Metz. The woman was traumatized, nearly in shock. Declan listened intently as she explained the plane ride was pure mayhem. From the minute the players boarded, chaos ensued. The celebration of the last series win had begun back at the stadium and Lenny Dykstra, the Mets filthiest player in every sense of the word, boarded first, completely cocked and proceeded to shotgun beer after beer. Pitchers Jesse Orozco, Sid Fernandez and third baseman Ray Knight after shotgunning beers, then began shooting glasses of champagne. Ron Darling and his wife and some of the other players wives got in on the action. Unable to handle so much alcohol so quickly, the wives started to vomit. It was contagious. One wife would puke, another would catch wind and then she would vomit and so on. But that didn't stop the party. No, after the puke fest, cake was served and as soon as the plates landed on the players lapse, the players started chucking the cake around the plane in a full on Animal House style food fight. Darryl Strawberry, the Mets star right fielder, was not in a celebratory mood. His wife was along for the flight and they weren't getting along. It would be learned later that Strawberry had physically assaulted his wife before the game. His anger was still present on the plane, so Strawberry decided he needed to relax. He started converting the plane seats into loungers. Their upright positioning just wouldn't do for such a long flight. Strawberry needed to stretch out and chill, so he used the power of his 6 foot 6 frame to physically bend the backs of the plane seats backward, breaking them into makeshift couches. When the plane landed, the wives, covered in vomit, had to be carried out through thousands of dollars in damage to the DC10 and onto the tarmac by their drunken husbands who now had the task of readying themselves for the next home series. The Mets swashbuckling, take no prisoners swagger. Their cockiness and hard partying ways had been fodder for the back pages of New York newspapers all summer. Met's players were vile, disgusting human beings who, aside from catcher Gary Carter and a few others such as veteran first baseman Keith Hernandez, had little to no sense of decency. But Keith's reputation was already sullied, along with a dozen or so other prominent MLB players. Keith had been dragged into a grand jury by the feds to testify about his cocaine use while playing a full on cocaine scandal erupted in Major League Baseball and as a result of Keith Hernandez's drug use, he'd been traded from the Cardinals to the Mets. Keith's reputation took a hit, but he was still a star by all accounts, had quit doing cocaine. Declan wondered if Keith Hernandez was the reason the commissioner had him investigating Dwight Gooden. Because ultimately baseball didn't want more cocaine headlines. And they especially didn't want those headlines generated by star players like Doc Gooden, whose suspected bad influence could have landed another star, Keith Hernandez, right back inside of those troublesome legal crosshairs. Something that would prove to the public that baseball indeed still had a very prevalent cocaine problem. Keith Hernandez might have cleaned up his act, but there was no way Dwight Gooden was clean. The stewardess reinforced this fact for Declan by recounting the blatant cocaine use on display in the flight's bathroom. It troubled Declan because despite Gooden's menacing frame on the mound, he was just an innocent country kid caught in an apex athlete's body. With every temptation under the sun available to him in the big city. Doc Gooden fell victim to that temptation. The flight was just the latest example and there were countless other episodes all season long. Everyone knew Doc was abusing, but nobody could do anything about it. The same went for Darryl Strawberry. Both young stars partied hard and at various points throughout the year, their poor play reflected their up all night lifestyle. New York City opened itself up for the Mets as their winning ways continued. By mid season, it was no longer just queens who supported the ball club. It was Manhattan and the rest of the boroughs. Except perhaps for the Bronx. But nothing went on up there anyway. The real action was downtown or in midtown. Sparks Steakhouse, the Russian Tea Room, the China Club, Wherever celebrities and socialites hung out. In New York City, Mick Jagger, Mike Tyson, Madonna. The New York Mets were welcomed and celebrated. Free meals, free drinks and standing ovations under crystal chandeliers with Cristal flowing among the coke spoons. It was the mid-80s and cocaine was everywhere. So was sex for the Mets, who enjoyed a level of adoration and celebrity that summer in New York usually reserved for rock stars and matinee idols. It all added up to something beyond debauchery. It was hedonism. Most players kept it under wraps, but for Doc Gooden, there was a sense that it would eventually blow up. Major League Baseball was very worried about the potential press fallout. Declan knew this New York City knew this and despite the hedonistic hug, it pulled the Mets into. The people of New York, and especially the residents of Queens, didn't want their star's dirty laundry spilling out into the public and threatening their team's ability to win a championship. So Declan had his work cut out for him. He gathered information on Doc and reported back to the office of Major League Baseball's commissioner. He was unsure of what happened with his information. From there, for now, all was good. The winning the Mets did on the field and the unconventional way in which they won. Playing cocky and hard separated the Mets from their competitors. The Mets were marauders. They went into an enemy's city and not only publicly declared their on field dominance, they made it known they were going to steal the other team's beer and fuck their women while they were at it. The words cocky and arrogant don't quite do the 1986 Mets justice. Throughout that summer they made quick work of the iron of the league. The Reds and the Phillies jumping out to a 15 game lead in the division in July. By August they had the NLE sewn up. Winning by whatever means necessary. Pitching dominance from four starters who could have topped most of the team's rotations as number ones. Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Bobby Ojeda and Sid Fernandez. And winning with dramatic walk off hits with contributions from the entire roster from seasoned veterans like Ray Knight and Mookie Wilson to rookies like Kevin Mitchell. And winning with team unifying bench clearing brawls, four in total brawls at the Mets with their take no shit street fighting Queens Boulevard attitude one handily every single time. All that on field violence, all that off field drama, all of that winning captivated Queens residents on the back pages of the New York papers and distracted New Yorkers from the violence and drama unfolding on the front pages. From the beginning, Donny Maines story didn't track. When Maines was discovered bleeding out down the road from Shea Stadium, it was a major news story not just in Queens, but throughout all of Manhattan. Here was a borough president nearly murdered, for what and by who? Maines claimed that two hoodlums had been waiting for him in the backseat of his LTD and they ambushed him when he got into his car and stabbed him. But what was Maines doing in his car at that hour of the night? The cops had a lot of questions and the politicians answers weren't adding up. Another son of Queens, the famed Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin, had answers. This was unfortunate for Donny Maines because after Breslin filed his next story and took his God given seat after work at Pep McGuire's alongside Declan in a bar room full of other Queens working stiffs. Donnie Mains would be dead, but that didn't matter all that much because the Mets were still very much alive. We'll be right back after this Word, word, word.

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

Hello. Hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I recently spoke with IBM's new director of Research, Jake Mbeta. We discussed his vision for the future of quantum computing at IBM Research.

[Jake Mbetta (IBM Research Director)]

What we always do is answer what is the future of computing whether it's coming up with new algorithms, coming up with better AI, coming up with quantum, or coming up with just how do different accelerators go together? It's our DNA. To answer the question of what is the future?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Isn't it a perfect problem for IBM because you kind of need to have a legacy of building stuff.

[Jake Mbetta (IBM Research Director)]

Yes.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Building actual physical machines. Yeah.

[Jake Mbetta (IBM Research Director)]

It's why I came to IBM. I wanted the experience, the culture of building hard things that others have not done before.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Where do you imagine we are in the timeline of this technology? There will come a point when it will mature, right? Yeah. My cell phone is a mature technology at this point. How far are we from that point

[Jake Mbetta (IBM Research Director)]

with Quantum, by 2029 we'll build the first fault tolerant quantum computer that is one that can run a very, very large, large problem.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

To learn how IBM is building the future of computing, visit IBM.com quantum.

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[Jake Brennan (Disgraceland Host)]

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 [e-mail] 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. Visit disgracelandpod.com membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on [e-mail] Disgracelandpod right. He's a bad, bad man.

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Jake Brennan (Disgraceland Host)]

Wait.

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Wow.

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