But I think you have to cut Leo a little slack because of the era he came from.Gil Hodges, the 1969 Mets' manager, came from the same era (and played in no few duel-to-the-death games against Durocher's Giants), and he adjusted where necessary, even though there was no question who was the boss in his dugout or clubhouse. So did most of the managers in the Show at that time come from Durocher's earlier era. Durocher's problem was that he corrected himself, if at all, a little too late.
I'd also agree with you on the 1986 Mets being better than the 1969 team in terms of raw talent and certainly a better team on paper. But it isn't team people talk much about anymore, partly over a feeling that they got the 1986 Series handed to them by Bill Buckner's famous error (another topic which I could expond upon) but more because the team members featured some pretty poor human beings-- drug users, wife beaters, etc.As if the 1986 Mets were the only team chock full of drug users, wife beaters, etc. (They were a more flamboyant team notwithstanding those issues, is all. The Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals of the early 1980s had the same problems with none of the 1986 Mets' visibility or notoriety unless you counted a) the infamous Royals' cocaine busts and sentences, or b) the stories about the Pirate roster at the infamous Pittsburgh drug trials.)
The 1986 Mets were a better all-around team than the 1969 club and not just on paper. On the other hand, they didn't get "handed" a World Series on Buckner's error. The real culprit: the passed ball that was called, erroneously, a a wild pitch just before the Wilson grounder, allowing the tying run to score. Aside from which, even if Buckner comes up clean with the ball, his nonexistent ankles notwithstanding, the best case scenario (I saw the play when it happened and have seen it about a thousand times since) is that the Mets end up with first and third (Wilson had the play beat; Bob Stanley was going to lose him by a step covering first on the play) and Howard Johnson coming up to hit. Either they get Johnson out to send it to a twelfth inning, or Johnson drives home Ray Knight (who could score on the error but wouldn't have scored on what would have turned out an infield hit) from third.
A hilarious post-script: A few years ago, Bill Buckner visited Shea Stadium. A stadium guard recognised him and asked if he'd like to visit with Mookie Wilson, at the time the Mets' first base coach. Buckner said, of course, and was escorted to the field. Wilson recognised him at once. As the two men approached each other, Buckner cracked, "Mookie, what do you say you hit me some grounders?"
It took a long time for poor Buckner to develop anything resembling a sense of humour about the play.
The crowning irony: Buckner's last major league home run---in a Red Sox uniform, when he returned for what proved a brief encore a couple of years after they dealt him away---was an inside-the-park job.
Forgotten fact about Leo Durocher: He spent a few years as a Dodger coach before he got the Cubs' managing job, when the team finally wised up and rid itself of the ridiculous College of Coaches concept. Before he got the Cub job, however, he was the intended target in one of baseball's most shameful episodes.
Midway in the 1964 season, the St. Louis Cardinals---struggling to keep up with the then-runaway Philadelphia Phillies, and under pressure from Branch Rickey (then a senior advisor) and possibly Harry Caray (working behind the scenes; he wouldn't have dared suggest it on the air if he knew what was good for him)---were looking for a way to dump manager Johnny Keane.
At the same time, the New York Yankees---struggling to stay in a pennant race, and facing a little too much freewheeling in the clubhouse under Yogi Berra's first regime as the team's manager---had decided to dump Berra at season's end. Even further behind the scenes, the Yankees managed somehow to reach out to Johnny Keane and determine that, if he was going to be canned by the Cardinals at season's end, he was very interested in the Yankee job: the Yankee brass liked Keane's style; Keane wasn't exactly a martinet or a tyrant but he was perceived to be a little more firm on team discipline than was Berra, who was being done in by a lot of his players running behind his back to former manager Ralph Houk, who was now the Yankee general manager.
The Cardinals were said to be looking at several candidates and one name said to be coming up frequently in their discussions was Leo Durocher. Whether Durocher ever indicated he'd be tempted to take the Cardinal job if Keane got the shiv is anybody's guess, and Durocher himself was smart enough to keep his yap shut, practically for life, on the matter.
Then the impossible happened.
The Phillies' collapse ended up in a potential three-way tie for the National League pennant, between the Phillies, the Cardinals, and the Cincinnati Reds (who surged a bit looking to bring one home in honour of Fred Hutchinson, their cancer-stricken manager who didn't live out the year, sadly enough) on the final weekend. The Cardinals had to go through the New York Mets to have a prayer and the Mets, as unlikely as it was at the time, made them work for it. They beat the Cardinals twice before the Cardinals finally won the regular season finale that meant the pennant when the Reds could polish off the Phillies but still have a little too much ground to cover if they wanted to pass the Cardinals.
The Yankees, meanwhile, put on a huge surge, played past Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore, and practically won the pennant at the last minute, too. (The heroes were Mel Stottlemyre, the rookie who came up to win nine games down the stretch, a la Whitey Ford in his rookie season; and, Pedro Ramos, a late-season acquisition who became the bullpen bellwether down the stretch.)
Now you have two managers whose skids have been greased squaring off in the World Series. The Cardinals won it in seven great games.
The next day, Cardinals owner Gussie Busch called a press conference to announce he was going to rehire Johnny Keane, after all. He made his opening remarkes and handed it off to Keane . . . who handed in his resignation right then and there. Take that, Gussie! In short order, Red Schoendienst became their manager.
On the same day, the Yankees called Berra into their Manhattan offices. Berra walked in thinking he was going to be asked about his 1965 plans and hopes---and after he'd said goodbye to his players for the season (including advising a few to come in to spring training with either fewer or more pounds, depending)---and walked out with his head on a plate. And the Yankees announced, now that it was safe to do so, that Johnny Keane would be their new manager.
The sad postscript is that Keane's style of ball was alien to the Yankee style, and the stress of the Yankees' collapse in 1965 and early 1966 may have contributed to the heart attack that killed him.
I never blamed Bill Buckner for the 1986 series error. The Red Sox could have still come back and won the 7th game. Instead the choked. I thought Buckner was one of the last of the great breed of that era. Not only did he put a lot of RBI's on the board, but he did it playing hurt. I always thought the Red Sox fans were a bunch of ungrateful snots for riding him so hard over a common error considering they likely would never have been there in the first place without Buckner's work ethic.
Interesting stuff on the 1964 season. I'd never read the whole story. Too bad about Johnny Keane taking the helm just as the franchise was falling apart. I first became a baseball fan as a youngster just as our local Minnesota Twins had their first World Series the following year and couldn't understand why Mickey Mantle got more praise than our hometown boy Roger Maris. Timing was everything, I guess. I look back to 1965 and it was clear that was when Mantle really started slipping, whereas Roger got traded to St. Louis and went on to post respectable final seasons with the 1967 and 1968 National League champs.
I guess to a kid anything which happened before they started following the game didn't count. The kids too young to remember Jimmy Carter who voted for Obozo sure proved that!