These 30 for 30 episodes were amazing (no pun). And as much as the Sox have won and the Mets haven't in the last 35 years, that last episode was gut-wrenching. Being a strike away 16 times (16 TIMES!) is insane. ESPN could do a ten-part episode on the 1986 post season and I'd watch every second of it. All of the Mets came off as affable, good guys; even assholes like Dykstra, Backman and Strawberry. Hernandez seemed the coolest and you can tell why he was the leader of the bunch, but Kevin Mitchell seemed like a really good guy too.
I started to look into the numbers a little and how McNamara managed that team was fucking criminal, especially the pitching staff. I understand that it was a different time, but eight pitchers threw the ball in that seven-game series. Only two (Clemens and Hurst) had ERAs under 3.20. You could argue that McNamara had to manage around such a shitty staff or you could say that McNamara's staff was running on fumes due to overuse. I prefer to believe the latter. It may have been Jeff Pearlman, but someone in the documentary said for such an exciting game, Game 6 was the worst managed game ever. And I tend to agree. McNamara was clueless and Davy Johnson was just a little less clueless.
If social media was around in those days ... man.
I thought that Hernandez' theory of why Buckner was playing so far back (he was the only former NL guy on the Sox and knew how fast Mookie was) was interesting. But the more I think about it, it seems a bit counter intuitive. Like, shouldn't Buckner have been playing up more? So that he wouldn't have had far to run? IDK. This documentary brought back a lot of memories. And it's good that 2004, 07, 13 and 18 happened.