Revisionist history: Darryl and Dawson on the Mets

MLB.com's Bryan Hoch was at the Baseball Assistance Team's annual dinner last night and filed a story comprised of several conversations with some of the Hall of Famers and other baseball illuminati. This one particular anecdote from former Mets manager Davey Johnson, speaking about Andre Dawson, really stood out:

"I pleaded with [GM] Frank Cashen to sign him," Johnson said. "I said, 'It's not going to be expensive. I think he'll play for $500,000 and we can really use him.' It wasn't in our policy. We never signed a free agent, and Frank Cashen just wouldn't do it, as long as I was there, anyway. I really tried to get him. I really thought he was a heck of a player and I could find playing time for him."

In 1987, coming off of a World Series victory, the manager of the Mets wanted to sign Andre Dawson. And the team wouldn't do it. Amazing.

As Hoch writes in introducing that quotation, "suppose the Mets had acquired Dawson for the 1987 season instead of Kevin McReynolds? It could have happened, and while it might not have staved off a rash of pitching injuries in '87, maybe those '88 Mets could have overtaken the Dodgers and made it two World Series appearances in three years." Wow -- an outfield of Dawson, Lenny Dykstra/Mookie Wilson and Darryl Strawberry. And supposing what Hoch suggests would mean that the trade for McReynolds didn't happen, and Kevin Mitchell would've remained a Met. Obviously, he wouldn't have been a starter in the outfield with those four, but maybe he would've been a supersub, much like he was in '86, or maybe he would've been dealt in a deal for a pitcher who would've strengthened that staff in '87 and '88.

And since we're supposing, let's suppose what Mets Walk-offs supposed yesterday: that Strawberry never signed with the Dodgers. Not only might the Mets have had a second World Series appearance (and title?) in 1988, but maybe they would've done it with two Hall of Fame outfielders manning the corners that year. Maybe Dawson still would've won the MVP in '87 and maybe Strawberry follows it up with the one he just missed in '88. And maybe a Mets championship in '88, led by the National League's two most recent MVPs, convinces the Mets to hold onto Strawberry when he becomes a free agent in 1990. So maybe it's not that that big a stretch. You know, once we project Dawson as a Met in '87.

That's enough speculation for one day, but since it's getting harder and harder to speculate who the Mets might actually still sign this offseason, it's a refreshing break from reality.

When the Mets leased New York

I've been sitting on a recent article by Tyler Kepner in The New York Times because I haven't had the time to finish all the research I'd intended for this post. The piece included an interesting statistic (and echoed some of what I wrote upon Andre Dawson's induction): Kepner points out that, from 1979-83, the Montreal Expos ranked no lower than fourth in the National League in attendance. After watching the team's demise at the beginning of this century because of a lack of fan interest, that is an eye-opening note to those of us who became baseball fans as children in the '80s, because most of what we know in baseball has been about big markets drawing the fans while the small markets suffer -- especially for those of us who grew up around the big markets like New York.

Montreal clearly suffered with its mausoleum-as-ballpark, and the strike in 1994 with the Expos leading the NL East (Kepner points out that they were on pace to win 105 games) was probably the last great hope for baseball in Montreal. If that team -- with Cliff Floyd, Moises Alou, Marquis Grissom, Larry Walker, Pedro Martinez and John Wetteland had won the division, it might've sparked passion in the team, which could've led to revenue -- perhaps a new ballpark -- and the retention of all those great young players.

But back to the attendance. In the New York area, we tend to think of the Yankees as kings of New York, with the Mets second. But there have been periods when the Mets were the more popular team. The Mets reached 3 million fans in a season in 1986, long before the Yankees first did it in 1998. And from 1984 through 1990 (the Davey Johnson years), the Mets outdrew the Yankees, 16,345,325 to 15,542,726. The Mets ranked higher in the Majors in attendance than the Yankees in each of those years, never ranked lower than fourth overall after '84 and ranked second from '85-87 and first in '88. Granted, it's a very small stretch in the nearly 50 years of Mets-Yankees co-habitation in New York City (My god! We're coming up on the Mets' 50th anniversary!), but it's worth noting that, while the Yankees have generally owned the town throughout, they at least leased it to the Mets for a time.

Team Attendance and MLB Rankings, 1979-90
	Expos	Rank	Mets	Rank	Yankees	Rank
1979	2,102,173	8	788,905	24	2,537,765	3
1980	2,208,175	7	1,192,073	19	2,627,417	3
1981	1,534,564	4	704,244	18	1,614,353	3
1982	2,318,292	4	1,323,036	18	2,041,219	7
1983	2,320,651	4	1,112,774	23	2,257,976	6
1984	1,606,531	17	1,842,695	11	1,821,815	12
1985	1,502,494	17	2,761,601	2	2,214,587	7
1986	1,128,981	24	2,767,601	2	2,268,030	7
1987	1,850,324	17	3,034,129	2	2,427,672	6
1988	1,478,659	22	3,055,445	1	2,633,701	5
1989	1,783,533	20	2,918,710	4	2,170,485	12
1990	1,373,087	23	2,732,745	4	2,006,436	14