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

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

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Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
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Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is
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Speaker 1: a production of Double Elvis. All right, guys, In a
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Speaker 1: perfect world, you would have heard this episode on the
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Speaker 1: New York Mets a week or so ago while they
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Speaker 1: played in the World Series against the New York Yankees.
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Speaker 1: But that didn't happen because the Mets never made it
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Speaker 1: out of the NLCS, and then the Yankees embarrassed themselves
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Speaker 1: in humiliating fashion against the LA Dodgers and lost it
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Speaker 1: all in five games. So our risky plan of producing
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Speaker 1: a Mets episode and releasing it during a Mets world
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Speaker 1: series didn't work. But we can't get enough baseball and
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Speaker 1: true crime here in Disgraceland, so we are serving you
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Speaker 1: up this Mets episode right now. Think of it as
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Speaker 1: a timeless love letter to the working class, or perhaps
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Speaker 1: just a final nail in the coffin that is the
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Speaker 1: Yankees twenty twenty four season. I mean, seriously, fuck the Yankees.
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Speaker 1: Go Mets. Mellow draw. This is a story about one
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Speaker 1: of the most compelling teams in baseball history, but it's
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Speaker 1: also a story about the Burrow, where that team played
1:15
Speaker 1: Queens New York. It's a story about addiction, corruption, hardworking
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Speaker 1: lunch pale types, and dirty, disgraced, pinstriped politicians. It's a
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Speaker 1: story about sex, cocaine, a private investigator and an iconic journalist,
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Speaker 1: a doc, a strawberry, a mustachie at first baseman, and
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Speaker 1: one of the most vile group of ballplayers ever assembled
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Speaker 1: on a Major League Baseball field, the nineteen eighty six
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Speaker 1: New York Mets, a team that made headlines and a
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Speaker 1: team that, on the field figuratively anyway, made great music.
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Speaker 1: Unlike that music I played for you at the top
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Speaker 1: of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a
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Speaker 1: preset loop from my melotron called High and Tight MK two.
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Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
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Speaker 1: rights to rock me Amedaeis by Falco. And why would
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Speaker 1: I play you that specific slice of wigged and Boustier Cheese.
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Speaker 1: Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
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Speaker 1: song in America on April eighth, nineteen eighty six, and
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Speaker 1: that was the day the New York Mets began one
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Speaker 1: of the wildest seasons in Queens New York's history. On
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Speaker 1: this episode, Cocaine, corruption, in the eighty six mets. I'm
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Speaker 1: Jake Brennan, and this this disgraceland Fran Declan hated his name,
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Speaker 1: interrupted him on his barstool at Pep Maguire's by calling
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Speaker 1: him Fran and badge or no badge, you'd be spitting
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Speaker 1: your teeth into your Jamison Declan. That was his name,
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Speaker 1: just Declan. Fran Declan was his father, And as far
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Speaker 1: as this Irish working stiff was concerned, Fran Declan was
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Speaker 1: dead and forgotten. Declan hated his job too, private investigator.
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Speaker 1: It was a constant reminder of the job he no
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Speaker 1: longer had, detective first grade. But that's another story. This story,
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Speaker 1: this job that Declan hated, forced him to work in
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Speaker 1: opposition to the city he loved. Queen's New York Queen's
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Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six, with its urban grit, suburban ease,
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Speaker 1: and hard working people, Queen's was the life's blood of Manhattan.
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Speaker 1: New York City may have never slept, but Queen's kept
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Speaker 1: the city's lights on with its residents who got up
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Speaker 1: early to go to work in Manhattan. Construction workers and cops,
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Speaker 1: the housekeepers and bookkeepers, the small shop owners and public
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Speaker 1: school teachers, the cabbies, and factory workers. Queen's was the
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Speaker 1: blue collar grist for Manhattan's glitzy mill. But all that aside,
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Speaker 1: Declan had a job to do. Keep an eye on
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Speaker 1: the pitcher, trail him after he left the stadium, report
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Speaker 1: back to the Commissioner of Major League Baseball and the
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Speaker 1: pitcher's activities translation illegal activities. Declan did his job, and
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Speaker 1: he hated himself for it, because, like everyone else in
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Speaker 1: Queens during that summer of nineteen eighty six, he wanted
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Speaker 1: nothing so much as he wanted the New York Mets
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Speaker 1: to win the World Series that year. The Mets were
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Speaker 1: perennial losers, professional laughingstocks compared to the hated Yankees over
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Speaker 1: in Manhattan. The Mets, like Declan, were second class all
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Speaker 1: the way. The Yankees had been business like in their
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Speaker 1: dominance of the league throughout baseball history, winning twenty two
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Speaker 1: championships before the year in nineteen eighty six. The Mets
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Speaker 1: had one championship, a fluke back in sixty nine. The
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Speaker 1: Yankees were steeped in Major League lore, and their Hall
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Speaker 1: of Fame names were as iconic as their pinstripe uniforms.
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Speaker 1: Ruth and Garrick Mantlin DiMaggio. The Mets history was checkered.
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Speaker 1: They had Tom sever In Nolan Ryan, but they also
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Speaker 1: traded Tom sever In Nolan ryan In. The Mets' uniforms
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Speaker 1: were far from iconic. They were an ugly blend of
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Speaker 1: blue and orange over gray, color coded reminders of loss,
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Speaker 1: the blue representing the departure of the cities beloved Brooklyn
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Speaker 1: Dodgers to Los Angeles, and the orange representing the New
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Speaker 1: York Giants abandoning New York for San Francisco, and the
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Speaker 1: gray representing the gloomy outcome of the next time the
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Speaker 1: Mets took the field, with a World Series loss to
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Speaker 1: the Oakland Athletics in the nineteen seventy three World Series.
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Speaker 1: The Mets were at best also rans and at worst
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Speaker 1: bottom feeders throughout the seventies and early eighties, Yet their
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Speaker 1: fans and queens still loved them. Maybe that love was
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Speaker 1: because the Mets were reliable. They lost all the time,
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Speaker 1: but they showed up the next day and went to work.
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Speaker 1: It's a familiar routine for most hard working Americas. The
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Speaker 1: deck is stacked against you getting ahead and winning in
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Speaker 1: this life. Like those Gordon get Goos over in Manhattan
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Speaker 1: is nearly impossible. What are you gonna do? What can
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Speaker 1: you do? Not much? So you just hit the bar
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Speaker 1: after work, then sleep it off and go back to
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Speaker 1: work the next morning, sort of like the Mets. In
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Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties, residents of Queens could easily find
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Speaker 1: players from their favorite teams sitting on the same barstools
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Speaker 1: they sat on over at Rusty's or Fid mccool's. Say
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Speaker 1: what you will about the Mets and their lack of
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Speaker 1: winning record from seventy six to eighty four. They were
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Speaker 1: a lot of things. Losers, sure, but at least they
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Speaker 1: weren't the fucking Yankees unapproachably aloof with all their clean cut,
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Speaker 1: corporate automaton bullshit pinstripes like the fucking Brooks Brothers, Wall
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Speaker 1: Street blowhearts who filled Yankee Stadium, Solis stands, Shay Stadium
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Speaker 1: where the Clash played in eighty two, where Queen's resident
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Speaker 1: Johnny Ramon threw rocks at the Beatles when they played
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Speaker 1: Shay back in sixty six, was a stadium that rocked
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Speaker 1: every night with the drunken, steam whistle blown energy of
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Speaker 1: the fifty thousand working stiffs who were just happy to
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Speaker 1: be at the ballpark and not on the job. The
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Speaker 1: players on the field seemed to have a similar attitude
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Speaker 1: as the fans in the stands. They were just happy
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Speaker 1: to be there in the bigs working for a living.
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Speaker 1: But by the mid eighties things had begun to change
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Speaker 1: around Shay new ownership, a new GM Frank Cashin, a
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Speaker 1: new manager, Davy Johnson, an ex player who was part
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Speaker 1: dirt dog, part intellectual, and two bright young stars, one
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Speaker 1: Darryl Strawberry with a swing that drew comparisons to the
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Speaker 1: greatest hitter of all time, Boston's Ted Williams, and the
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Speaker 1: other a pitcher with natural talent that rivaled out of
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Speaker 1: another one time Mets phenom Nolan Ryan named Dwight Goodin
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Speaker 1: aka Doctor k aka Doc. Doc was as problematic as
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Speaker 1: he was talented, both he and Strawberry were, but Doc
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Speaker 1: was the player the commissioner was paying Declan to investigate
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Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six. It was a bullshait. Gig had
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Speaker 1: decland still been the detective his old man wanted him
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Speaker 1: to be. He would have been on a real case,
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Speaker 1: like the case that was all over the front pages
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Speaker 1: that summer, a case that no one who lived in
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Speaker 1: Queens wanted to talk about, but a case that everyone
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Speaker 1: else wanted to talk about, A case that put the
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Speaker 1: corruption of New York City's leaders front and center for
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Speaker 1: all to see, A case that weighed heavily on New Yorkers,
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Speaker 1: but a case that, thankfully was easy to forget. When
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Speaker 1: the Mets were storming their way toward the National League
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Speaker 1: pennant in nineteen eighty six, the car looked a and
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Speaker 1: in just a couple of blocks from Shay Stadium, but
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Speaker 1: the interior light glowing inside caught the two patrolling officers attention.
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Speaker 1: The cops pulled their cruiser over and parked in a
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Speaker 1: way that trained its headlights directly on the suspicious vehicle.
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Speaker 1: The officers exited and approached the car with caution. Someone
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Speaker 1: was inside alone on this abandoned street at this early
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Speaker 1: morning hour. The driver couldn't be seen beyond the steamed
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Speaker 1: up windows. Whoever was inside the foggy glow of the
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Speaker 1: interior had to know that two cops were now outside
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Speaker 1: and slowly approaching, But the driver made no effort to
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Speaker 1: indicate his presence. As the officers approached, it was curious ominous.
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Speaker 1: Both cops palmed the pistols on their hips. One called
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Speaker 1: out for the car's owner to come out with his
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Speaker 1: hands up. Nothing. The other cop unholstered his weapon and
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Speaker 1: trained it on the driver's side window. Cop number one
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Speaker 1: shouted again, commanding the car's driver to exit. Still nothing.
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Speaker 1: Both cops froze, looked at each other. The shouting one nodded.
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Speaker 1: The other cops slid to his right, still with his
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Speaker 1: gun trained on the automobile to provide cover for his partner,
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Speaker 1: who reached for the car's driver's side handle and pulled
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Speaker 1: the door open. Inside, a middle aged white man slumped
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Speaker 1: over in the driver's seat, barely conscious, blood covering his lap.
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Speaker 1: Both cops fell back in shock, not so much because
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Speaker 1: of the blood, but because they both knew this man.
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Speaker 1: Any New York City cop would, any resident of Queen's would.
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Speaker 1: This was the man elected to serve their interests, to
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Speaker 1: do the residence of Queen's as bidding over in Manhattan
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Speaker 1: with the mayor. This was the man tasked with ensuring
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Speaker 1: that their queens wasn't overlooked in favor of the other Burrows.
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Speaker 1: This here was the popular and well respect did Queen's
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Speaker 1: Borough President Donald Maynes fifty two years old, political powerhouse,
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Speaker 1: pride of Queen's the one time youngest Assistant DA ever elected,
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Speaker 1: also the youngest person ever elected the city Council. Donnie
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Speaker 1: Maynes was, as they said down at PEP McGuire's, a
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Speaker 1: real comer. He was for the people, a fighter, and
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Speaker 1: Donnie Maynes was also bleeding out in the front seat
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Speaker 1: of his Forward Ltd. A few hundred yards from Shay Stadium,
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Speaker 1: fighting for his life. Declan watched the Ozark Airlines stewardess's
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Speaker 1: eyes as she explained the nightmare she'd just endured a
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Speaker 1: three and a half hour flight with the nineteen eighty
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Speaker 1: six Mets. The woman was traumatized, nearly in shock. Declan
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Speaker 1: listened intently as she explained the plane ride was pure mayhem.
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Speaker 1: From the minute the players boarded, chaos ensued. The celebration
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Speaker 1: of the last series win had begun back at the stadium,
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Speaker 1: and Lenny Dykstra, the mets filthiest player in every sense
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Speaker 1: of the word, boarded first, completely cocked and preceded shotgunned
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Speaker 1: Beer after Beer. Pitchers Jesse Rosco, Sid Fernandez and third
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Speaker 1: baseman Ray Knight. After shotgunning Beer's then began shooting glasses
13:53
Speaker 1: of champagne. Ron Darling and his wife and some of
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Speaker 1: the other players wives got in on the action. Unable
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Speaker 1: to handle so much alcohol so quickly, the wives started
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Speaker 1: to vomit. It was contagious. One wife would puke, another
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Speaker 1: would catch wind, and then she would vomit, and so on.
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Speaker 1: But that didn't stop the party. No. After the puke
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Speaker 1: fest cake was served, and as soon as the plates
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Speaker 1: landed on the player's laps, the players started chucking the
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Speaker 1: cake around the plane in a full on Animal House
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Speaker 1: style food fight. Darryl Strawberry, the Mets starright fielder, was
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Speaker 1: not in a celebratory mood. His wife was along for
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Speaker 1: the flight and they weren't getting along. It would be
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Speaker 1: learned later that Strawberry had physically assaulted his wife before
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Speaker 1: the game. His anger was still present on the plane,
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Speaker 1: so Strawberry decided he needed to relax. He started converting
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Speaker 1: the plane seats into loungers. Their upright positioning just wouldn't
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Speaker 1: do for such a long flight. Strawberry needed to stretch
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Speaker 1: out and chill, so we used the power of a
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Speaker 1: six foot six frame and to physically bend the backs
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Speaker 1: of the plane seats backward breaking them into makeshift couches.
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Speaker 1: When the plane landed, the wives, covered in vomit had
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Speaker 1: to be carried out through thousands of dollars in damage
15:12
Speaker 1: to the DC ten and onto the tarmac by their
15:15
Speaker 1: drunken husbands, who now had the task of readying themselves
15:19
Speaker 1: for the next home series. The Mets swashbuckling, take no
15:25
Speaker 1: prisoner's swagger, their cockiness and hard partying ways had been
15:30
Speaker 1: fodder for the back pages of New York newspapers all summer.
15:34
Speaker 1: Mets players were vile, disgusting human beings who, aside from
15:38
Speaker 1: catcher Gary Carter and a few others such as veteran
15:42
Speaker 1: first baseman Keith Hernandez, had little to no sense of decency.
15:47
Speaker 1: But Keith's reputation was already sullied. Along with a dozen
15:51
Speaker 1: or so other prominent MLB players, Keith had been dragged
15:54
Speaker 1: into a grand jury by the Feds to testify about
15:57
Speaker 1: his cocaine use while playing a full on cocaine scandal
16:01
Speaker 1: erupted in Major League Baseball, and as a result of
16:05
Speaker 1: Keith Hernandez's drug use, he'd been traded from the Cardinals
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Speaker 1: to the Mets. Keith's reputation took a hit, but he
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Speaker 1: was still a star by all accounts, had quit doing cocaine.
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Speaker 1: Declan wondered if Keith Hernandez was the reason the commissioner
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Speaker 1: had him investigating Dwight Gooden, because ultimately baseball didn't want
16:25
Speaker 1: more cocaine headlines, and they especially didn't want those headlines
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Speaker 1: generated by star players like Doc Gooden, who suspected bad
16:33
Speaker 1: influence could have landed another star, Keith Hernandez, right back
16:38
Speaker 1: inside of those troublesome legal crosshairs, something that would prove
16:42
Speaker 1: to the public that baseball indeed still had a very
16:45
Speaker 1: prevalent cocaine problem. Keith Hernandez might have cleaned up his act,
16:49
Speaker 1: but there was no way Dwight Gooden was clean. The
16:53
Speaker 1: stewardess reinforced this fact for Declan by recounting the blatant
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Speaker 1: cocaine use on display in the flight's bathroom. Troubled Declan
17:01
Speaker 1: because despite Goodin's menacing frame on the mound, he was
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Speaker 1: just an innocent country kid caught in an apex athlete's body,
17:09
Speaker 1: with every temptation under the sun available to him. In
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Speaker 1: the big city, Doc Gooden fell victim to that temptation.
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Speaker 1: The flight was just the latest example, and there were
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Speaker 1: countless other episodes all season long. Everyone knew Doc was abusing,
17:24
Speaker 1: but nobody could do anything about it. The same went
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Speaker 1: for Darryl Strawberry. Both young stars partied hard, and at
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Speaker 1: various points throughout the year their poor play reflected their
17:36
Speaker 1: up all night lifestyle. New York City opened itself up
17:41
Speaker 1: for the Mets as their winning ways continued. By mid season,
17:44
Speaker 1: it was no longer just queens who supported the ball club.
17:47
Speaker 1: It was Manhattan and the rest of the Borrows, except
17:50
Speaker 1: perhaps for the Bronx, but nothing went on up there anyway,
17:54
Speaker 1: and the real action was downtown or in Midtown Spark Steakhouse,
17:59
Speaker 1: the Rush and Tea Room, the China Club, wherever celebrities
18:03
Speaker 1: and social lights hung out in New York City. Mick Jagger,
18:06
Speaker 1: Mike Tyson, Madonna, the New York Mets were welcomed and
18:10
Speaker 1: celebrated free meals, free drinks, and standing ovations under crystal
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Speaker 1: chandeliers with crystal flowing among the cokespoons. It was the
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Speaker 1: mid eighties and cocaine was everywhere, so was sex for
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Speaker 1: the Mets, who enjoyed a level of adoration and celebrity
18:28
Speaker 1: that summer in New York usually reserved for rock stars
18:31
Speaker 1: and matinee idols. It all added up to something beyond debauchery.
18:35
Speaker 1: It was hedonism. Most players kept it under wraps, but
18:39
Speaker 1: for Doc Gooden there was a sense that it would
18:42
Speaker 1: eventually blow up. Major League Baseball was very worried about
18:45
Speaker 1: the potential press follow Declan knew this. New York City
18:50
Speaker 1: knew this, and despite the hedonistic hug, it pulled the
18:53
Speaker 1: Mets into the people of New York, and especially the
18:56
Speaker 1: residents of Queens. Didn't want their stars dirty laundry spilling
19:00
Speaker 1: out into the public and threatening their team's ability to
19:03
Speaker 1: win a championship, so Declan had his work cutout for him.
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Speaker 1: He gathered information on Doc and reported back to the
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Speaker 1: office of Major League Baseball's commissioner. He was unsure of
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Speaker 1: what happened with his information from there. For now, all
19:19
Speaker 1: was good. The winning the Mets did on the field
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Speaker 1: in the unconventional way in which they won. Playing cocky
19:25
Speaker 1: in hard separated the Mets from their competitors. The Mets
19:30
Speaker 1: were marauders. They went into an enemy city and not
19:34
Speaker 1: only publicly declared their on field dominance, they made it
19:37
Speaker 1: known they were going to steal the other team's beer,
19:40
Speaker 1: and fuck their women while they were at it. The
19:42
Speaker 1: words cocky and arrogant don't quite do the nineteen eighty
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Speaker 1: six Mets justice. Throughout that summer, they made quick work
19:51
Speaker 1: of the iron of the league, the Reds and the Phillies,
19:54
Speaker 1: jumping out to a fifteen game lead in the division
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Speaker 1: in July. By August, they had the NL sewn up.
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Speaker 1: Winning by whatever means necessary pitching dominance from four starters
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Speaker 1: who could have topped most teams rotations as number ones
20:08
Speaker 1: Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Bobby Oheita, and Sid Fernandez, and
20:12
Speaker 1: winning with dramatic walk off hits with contributions from the
20:16
Speaker 1: entire roster, from seasoned veterans like Ray Knight and Mookie
20:19
Speaker 1: Wilson to rookies like Kevin Mitchell. And winning with team
20:24
Speaker 1: unifying bench clearing brawls four in total brawls at the
20:29
Speaker 1: Mets with their take no shit street fighting, Queen's Boulevard
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Speaker 1: attitude won handily every single time. All that on field violence,
20:38
Speaker 1: all that off field drama, all of that winning captivated
20:43
Speaker 1: Queen's residence on the back pages of the New York
20:45
Speaker 1: papers and distracted New Yorkers from the violence and drama
20:50
Speaker 1: unfolding on the front pages. From the beginning, Donnie Mains's
20:57
Speaker 1: story didn't track. When Mains was discovered bleeding out down
21:02
Speaker 1: the road from Shay Stadium, it was a major news story,
21:06
Speaker 1: not just in Queen's but throughout all of Manhattan. Here
21:09
Speaker 1: was a borough president nearly murdered for what and by who.
21:15
Speaker 1: Mains claimed that two hoodlums had been waiting for him
21:17
Speaker 1: in the back seat of his LTD and they ambushed
21:20
Speaker 1: him when he got into his car and stabbed him.
21:23
Speaker 1: But what was Mains doing in his car at that
21:25
Speaker 1: hour of the night. The cops had a lot of questions,
21:29
Speaker 1: and the politician's answers weren't adding up. Another son of Queen's,
21:35
Speaker 1: the fame Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin, had answers. This
21:41
Speaker 1: was unfortunate for Donnie Maines because after Breslin filed his
21:45
Speaker 1: next story and took his god given seat after work
21:47
Speaker 1: at pet Maguire's alongside Declin in a barroom full of
21:51
Speaker 1: other Queens working stiffs, Donnie Maines would be dead. But
21:56
Speaker 1: that didn't matter all that much because the Mets were
22:00
Speaker 1: still very much alive. We'll be right back after this
22:11
Speaker 1: we're We're, We're. The newspapers didn't lie, at least back
22:20
Speaker 1: in those days. They didn't. Sure, they editorialized, and there
22:25
Speaker 1: was inherent bias, as there is in most things. But
22:28
Speaker 1: the rot that is so prevalent in mainstream media today
22:32
Speaker 1: hadn't yet set in back in the nineteen eighties, back
22:36
Speaker 1: before the Internet disrupted the news business and forced it
22:39
Speaker 1: to switch from ad sales to a subscription based model,
22:42
Speaker 1: where news outlets newspapers are forced to over deliver the
22:46
Speaker 1: exact point of view that their readers demand lest they
22:49
Speaker 1: lose subscribers and thus revenue. Before this new paradigm, in
22:54
Speaker 1: decades passed, the traditional daily newspaper was almost universally trusted
23:00
Speaker 1: local news. The morning and afternoon edition newspapers delivered stories
23:04
Speaker 1: via local sources that local residents could trust because those
23:09
Speaker 1: sources were woven into the fabric of the local community.
23:13
Speaker 1: It's hard for journalists to publish editorialized content disguised as news,
23:17
Speaker 1: or to lie outright if they have to go into
23:20
Speaker 1: their neighborhood every day and look the people they're lying
23:22
Speaker 1: to in the eye. Today it's all different. There are
23:26
Speaker 1: hardly any local newspapers anymore. But in nineteen eighty six,
23:31
Speaker 1: New York City was still a local newspaper town, just
23:34
Speaker 1: as most cities and towns in America were. Queen's residents,
23:38
Speaker 1: along with a healthy portion of the rest of the city,
23:41
Speaker 1: read the daily news, and the daily news didn't lie,
23:46
Speaker 1: and Queen's calmness Jimmy Breslin definitely didn't lie. Jimmy was
23:51
Speaker 1: a lot of things. Brash, often drunk, egotistical, dogged, stubbornly,
23:56
Speaker 1: old school, unkempt, hypocritical effect, undeniably talented as a writer,
24:02
Speaker 1: and compelling as a personality. But he wasn't a liar.
24:07
Speaker 1: So when he reported back in eighty six that local
24:10
Speaker 1: politician and Queen's Borough President Donnie Maynes was a liar,
24:14
Speaker 1: the city believed him. There's an old adage in the
24:18
Speaker 1: news business, and it's this often the first story is
24:22
Speaker 1: the wrong story. News takes a minute to develop, and
24:26
Speaker 1: as the news concerned Donnie Mans, the first reports on
24:30
Speaker 1: the politician's Shay Stadium stabbing had it all wrong. Donnie
24:34
Speaker 1: didn't get stabbed, Donnie stabbed himself. Donnie was looking to
24:40
Speaker 1: create a distraction, perhaps trying to manipulate some sympathy from
24:44
Speaker 1: his constituents. Poor old Donnie, Look how hard he's working
24:48
Speaker 1: for us, up laid in a bad part of town,
24:50
Speaker 1: doing his job and getting stabbed for there is something
24:53
Speaker 1: like that. Who really knows what? We do know because
24:57
Speaker 1: Jimmy Breslan told us so in the pages of the day.
25:00
Speaker 1: The news is that while the New York Mets have
25:02
Speaker 1: been entertaining the people of Queen's, Donnie Maines had been
25:06
Speaker 1: scamming the people of Queen's and of New York City
25:09
Speaker 1: in general for years, executing a long running grift wherein
25:13
Speaker 1: he'd extorted over four hundred thousand dollars for himself and
25:17
Speaker 1: tens of thousands for others. The scam went like this.
25:23
Speaker 1: Donnie mains, as powerful borough president, had influence over which
25:27
Speaker 1: contractors received lucrative deals for city work. Dear Old Donnie,
25:31
Speaker 1: man of the people, would dispatch his ski little buddy,
25:34
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Lindenauer to meet with said contractors, and the contractors
25:38
Speaker 1: would slip Jeffrey and envelope stuff with cash. The cash
25:41
Speaker 1: would find its way into Donnie Maynes's personal coffers, and
25:44
Speaker 1: Donni would see to it that the contractor got the
25:46
Speaker 1: lucrative contract. It was basically as simple as that, and
25:50
Speaker 1: there were a bunch of details about the various ways
25:53
Speaker 1: the scam was run and on whom, including cable TV contractors,
25:57
Speaker 1: debt collectors, soliciting pass du parking tickets, but essentially it
26:01
Speaker 1: was blatant paid of play and greed to declan. The
26:06
Speaker 1: nature of the case this once proud son of Queen's
26:09
Speaker 1: found stabbed under questionable circumstances near where the Mets played
26:12
Speaker 1: every night, was an embarrassment. Donnie Mayns wasn't supposed to
26:17
Speaker 1: be embroiled in controversy. Donnie Mayns was supposed to be
26:20
Speaker 1: doing what the Mets were doing, representing Queen's Declan wished
26:25
Speaker 1: that this whole story would resolve itself quickly. It didn't.
26:29
Speaker 1: Things got worse and quick word got back to Donnie
26:34
Speaker 1: Mayins that Jimmy Breslin had got into Donnie's corrupt bagman,
26:37
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Lindenauer, and that Jeffrey was spilling everything he knew
26:40
Speaker 1: to the Barstool newspaper man. And by this time tomorrow,
26:45
Speaker 1: as Queen's residents grabbed their daily news to read about
26:48
Speaker 1: their Mets, the story of who Donnie Mayins really was
26:52
Speaker 1: and how he'd become a corrupt embarrassment would be all
26:54
Speaker 1: over the front page. Donnie couldn't have that. Sure of
27:00
Speaker 1: what to do, Donnie called his psychiatrist. Donnie was frantic.
27:05
Speaker 1: His shrink tried talking him down. Donnie spun out wildly.
27:10
Speaker 1: The doctor pleaded, and Donnie pulled up in a drawer
27:12
Speaker 1: in his kitchen and found what he was looking for,
27:15
Speaker 1: And the doctor heard a thump on the other end
27:16
Speaker 1: of the line. Then the line went dead. Hours later,
27:22
Speaker 1: Donnie Mainz's daughter found her father prone on the kitchen floor,
27:27
Speaker 1: Donnie's fourteen inch echo flint knife sticking straight up out
27:30
Speaker 1: of the dead politician's chest. It was suicide, similar to
27:37
Speaker 1: a corrupt politician. The New York Mets were not accustomed
27:40
Speaker 1: to not getting what they wanted, whether it was Lenny
27:44
Speaker 1: Dykster trying to find an all night high stakes card
27:46
Speaker 1: game in the seedier part of an away game town,
27:49
Speaker 1: or Darryl Strawberry having sex with a groupie in the
27:52
Speaker 1: tunnel behind the dugout during a game, or Keith Hernandez
27:55
Speaker 1: smoking a cigarette on the bench, or Gary Carter partaking
27:58
Speaker 1: in one of what seemed like all insufferable curtain calls
28:01
Speaker 1: her doc goodin staying up all night on a cocaine
28:04
Speaker 1: bender before starting the next day on the mound. The
28:07
Speaker 1: Mets were winners that year, and to the winners go
28:12
Speaker 1: the spoils. The entitled jock attitude ran deep with the
28:16
Speaker 1: Mets in eighty six. They were the cool kids, the bullies. Basically,
28:21
Speaker 1: they were dicks everywhere they went, and they expected to
28:25
Speaker 1: be treated with a certain level of respect and accommodation
28:27
Speaker 1: whether they were in New York or not. Texas didn't agree.
28:33
Speaker 1: Texas knew about big Texas knew about big egos, and
28:39
Speaker 1: Texas could give a shit about the New York Mets,
28:43
Speaker 1: which was why the security at Cooter's Bar in Houston,
28:46
Speaker 1: two off duty cops did not take lightly the comment
28:50
Speaker 1: made by Mets ballplayers when they were asked to leave
28:52
Speaker 1: for the umpteeth time after closing. Where the fucking New
28:56
Speaker 1: York Mets And we'll leave when we want to, Joa,
29:00
Speaker 1: Ron Darling, Rick Aguilera, and Tim tuffle eventually got off
29:04
Speaker 1: their barstools and went out through the exit. Stupidly, However,
29:08
Speaker 1: Tuffe still carried his half empty Heineken, which was all
29:11
Speaker 1: the off duty cops needed to pounce. One cop told
29:15
Speaker 1: Tuffle he couldn't leave at the beer. Tuffel told the
29:17
Speaker 1: cop to fuck off. The cop lunged for Tuffle, Tuffle
29:21
Speaker 1: drew back and walloped the cop. Two dormen jumped into
29:24
Speaker 1: the fray to help the cop, and they pinned Tuffle down,
29:27
Speaker 1: and Ron Darling walked out of the bar just in
29:29
Speaker 1: time to hear the doorman encouraging the cops to break
29:31
Speaker 1: Tuffle's arm. Darling jumped into the melee to help Tuffle,
29:35
Speaker 1: punching one of the cops in the throat, and the
29:37
Speaker 1: cop threw Darling back into a glass sign, shattering it
29:40
Speaker 1: into pieces. Darling was cuffed, Tuffel was cuffed, and inside
29:44
Speaker 1: the bar, Ohita and Aguilero were cuffed two despite the
29:48
Speaker 1: fact that they weren't involved in the fight in any way.
29:51
Speaker 1: All they were guilty of was being New York Mets,
29:55
Speaker 1: and they were all fingerprinted, booked, and forced to spend
29:58
Speaker 1: the night in a Houston jail. But by eleven am
30:01
Speaker 1: they'd been released and we're on the field at the
30:03
Speaker 1: Astrodome for the next game's warm ups. Still, the damage
30:08
Speaker 1: was done, the news was out and back home the
30:12
Speaker 1: evening edition papers in New York were covered with ridiculous
30:15
Speaker 1: headlines slap happy Mets, a fine day for Mets base
30:20
Speaker 1: brawl The Boys of Slammer Declan threw his paper down
30:26
Speaker 1: on the bar in discussed who came up with the shit.
30:31
Speaker 1: The Mets had managed to do exactly what Donnie Maines
30:34
Speaker 1: had done, embarrassed Queen's but neither black Mark would last.
30:40
Speaker 1: Fall was in the air, and something was about to
30:43
Speaker 1: happen in this burrow that hadn't happened in a long time.
30:47
Speaker 1: The New York Mets were about to win the National
30:50
Speaker 1: League pennant On September seventeenth, nineteen eighty six. With Dwight
31:16
Speaker 1: Gooden on the mound at Chase Stadium about to record
31:19
Speaker 1: the last out of a complete game, six hit shutout,
31:22
Speaker 1: the New York Mets were poised to clinch the pennant
31:24
Speaker 1: and a World Series birth, but the Mets players on
31:28
Speaker 1: the field were petrified. About seventy miles north, in a
31:34
Speaker 1: drab New Haven, Connecticut hotel room, US attorney Rudolph Giuliani
31:38
Speaker 1: was prepping his documents for the racketeering and bribery case
31:41
Speaker 1: he was mounting against the remaining living defendants in the
31:44
Speaker 1: Mains corruption case. A small transistor radio broadcasting ongoing events
31:49
Speaker 1: at Shay. Down at pet Maguire's, Declan was watching the
31:53
Speaker 1: game on the tiny television above the bar. A small
31:57
Speaker 1: handful of men ignored the TV, choosing to talk among
32:00
Speaker 1: themselves in the corner. The Mains case and Donnie getting
32:04
Speaker 1: a raw deal or some shit. Declan couldn't really tell.
32:08
Speaker 1: The Mets players on the field weren't afraid of the
32:10
Speaker 1: US Attorney. They were afraid of the Mets fans and
32:14
Speaker 1: the stands. As soon as the game's last out was
32:17
Speaker 1: recorded and the pennant was clinched, all hell would break
32:21
Speaker 1: loose At Shay, Giuliani stacked his documents neatly on his
32:26
Speaker 1: bed and considered the past summer's events. Somehow, as the
32:31
Speaker 1: Mets were overtaking his Yankees in New York City popularity,
32:35
Speaker 1: he'd been following the corrupt spiderweb of the Mains Case
32:38
Speaker 1: into the dirtiest corners of New York politics, uncovering corruption
32:42
Speaker 1: at multiple levels and netting some of the city's most
32:46
Speaker 1: powerful local political leaders. It made the staying of the Yankees,
32:50
Speaker 1: losing the American League pennant to Boston and the inevitable
32:53
Speaker 1: Mets NL Pennant win much less painful. Declan watched the
32:58
Speaker 1: tension mount on the televion. The fans in the stands
33:02
Speaker 1: at Shay looked and sounded rabid. Their energy matched the
33:05
Speaker 1: energy inside the barroom. It felt like a happy bomb
33:09
Speaker 1: was about to explode, but the energy back behind Declan
33:13
Speaker 1: was off. The small handful of men were now drunkenly
33:17
Speaker 1: toasting Donnie Mans as if the Mets weren't about to
33:20
Speaker 1: cap off the best fucking season they'd had since sixty nine.
33:24
Speaker 1: Declan shot them a look that went unnoticed. Back at Shay,
33:28
Speaker 1: Keith Hernandez kicked the dirt at his feet near first
33:31
Speaker 1: base and contemplated his exit strategy. Once the Mets got
33:35
Speaker 1: the last out, he was just going to bline it
33:38
Speaker 1: for the dugout into the tunnel and straight back to
33:40
Speaker 1: the clubhouse. He wasn't going to get cute, like he
33:43
Speaker 1: knew some of his other teammates were planning and make
33:45
Speaker 1: for the bullpen, or even crazier descend into the madness
33:49
Speaker 1: in the stands and up and over and out of
33:51
Speaker 1: the stadium to the parking lot. Giuliani, in his hotel room,
33:56
Speaker 1: considered the defendants who were corrupted in the Donnie Mains
33:59
Speaker 1: case won the chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party and
34:03
Speaker 1: another the director of the city's parking violations bureau. He
34:07
Speaker 1: also thought of the c suite corporate city contractors he'd indicted,
34:10
Speaker 1: who had received millions in government contracts in exchange for payoffs.
34:15
Speaker 1: They were all guilty, and Giuliani was confident the jury
34:19
Speaker 1: would find them so. At pet Maguire's Declan realized why
34:24
Speaker 1: the group of men behind him wouldn't shut up about
34:26
Speaker 1: Donnie Manz and were paying no mind to the history
34:29
Speaker 1: about to be made on the television. They were Yankees fans.
34:33
Speaker 1: The expensive pinstriped suits should have tipped them off, some detective,
34:37
Speaker 1: he thought. On the Say Stadium infield, Wally Backman fielded
34:42
Speaker 1: a ground ball, made the transition from glove hand to
34:45
Speaker 1: throwing hand, tossed to Hernandez at first, and that sealed it.
34:49
Speaker 1: The New York Mets were National League champions. It was instant.
34:55
Speaker 1: The stadium exploded in violent jubilation. Mets fan Queen's residents,
35:01
Speaker 1: thousands of them, poured onto the field from the stands
35:04
Speaker 1: to celebrate. Doc Gooden was swarmed and Keith Hernandez's plan
35:08
Speaker 1: was foiled. The Mets ace was on the bottom of
35:10
Speaker 1: a giant pile of slap happy fans. Hernandez and Burley
35:14
Speaker 1: center fielder Kevin Mitchell dove into the pile to pull
35:17
Speaker 1: their ace out of the melee pet Maguires exploded in
35:20
Speaker 1: cheers around for the bar was ordered up. The Yankees
35:24
Speaker 1: fans and the Backs spit in their beers and drank accordingly.
35:28
Speaker 1: Donnie was gone, so was their ticket to the trough,
35:31
Speaker 1: and the fucking Mets were going to the World Series.
35:35
Speaker 1: Giuliani listened to the riot unfolding at Shay and shook
35:39
Speaker 1: his head. He was too confident to care. The Mets
35:43
Speaker 1: might have been winners, but so was he. He knew
35:46
Speaker 1: the jury would convict the defendants in this case, and
35:49
Speaker 1: the prosecutor smiled and went to bed back at Shay. Hernandez, Mitchell,
35:55
Speaker 1: and Gooden eventually made it into the clubhouse without harm,
35:59
Speaker 1: as did the rest to the Mets players, except for
36:01
Speaker 1: number five starter Rick Aguilera, who suffered a dislocated shoulder
36:05
Speaker 1: from a fan who jumped on his back. As the
36:08
Speaker 1: champagne flowed in the dugout, the Mets and their fans
36:11
Speaker 1: knew they were set for a historic run. The cheating
36:15
Speaker 1: Houston Astros wouldn't keep them down in the NLCS, nor
36:19
Speaker 1: would the Boston Red Sox with their fearsome young ace
36:21
Speaker 1: Roger Clemens. In the World Series. It was inevitable, almost preordained.
36:28
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty six was different. This year. The people of
36:32
Speaker 1: Queen's were going to come out on top. No amount
36:35
Speaker 1: of bad headlines, bench clearing, brawls, arrests, cocaine, alcohol, or
36:41
Speaker 1: corrupt politicians could alter the outcome. This year, the people
36:46
Speaker 1: of Queen's were winners. Mike Scott and the Astros did
36:52
Speaker 1: their best to cheat their way into a series win,
36:54
Speaker 1: but they were disposed of in six. It took a
36:57
Speaker 1: miracle and Bill Buckner's bad knees, but Boston was brought
37:00
Speaker 1: down in seven. The nineteen eighty six World Series Championship
37:05
Speaker 1: Parade was, of course, held in Manhattan, not Queen's. Millions
37:10
Speaker 1: of New Yorkers swarmed the streets to celebrate the Mets.
37:13
Speaker 1: Everyone who as anyone was there except for Doc Gooden.
37:18
Speaker 1: He was watching the parade on TV from a Queen's
37:21
Speaker 1: drug den, high on crack cocaine outside in his Sedan.
37:27
Speaker 1: Declan was watching doc now that the eighty six season
37:31
Speaker 1: had wrapped. The gig with the Commissioner was up, but
37:34
Speaker 1: Declan had nothing better to do by now. He saw
37:37
Speaker 1: it as a public service. Making sure the Mets Young
37:41
Speaker 1: Ace didn't end up in jail on Queen's most significant
37:44
Speaker 1: day and over a decade was Declan's way of giving back,
37:50
Speaker 1: which is more than could have been said for Donnie
37:52
Speaker 1: Mainz or any of the city's public servants who lined
37:55
Speaker 1: up at Donni's trough to feed off the cash from
37:57
Speaker 1: dirty corporate contractors. They were all convicted criminals now. When
38:03
Speaker 1: they laid Donnie out at Schwartz Brothers Jeffery Memorial Funeral
38:06
Speaker 1: Home and then toasted him down at Pep's, they said
38:09
Speaker 1: he wasn't what the papers made him out to be.
38:12
Speaker 1: They said he was a hard working man from Queen's.
38:16
Speaker 1: That was just something, they said. The dead politician had
38:19
Speaker 1: less in common with the hard working people he was
38:21
Speaker 1: supposed to serve than he did with the pinstripe suits
38:25
Speaker 1: he'd been scamming with. In the end, mains was more
38:29
Speaker 1: of a Yankee than a Met. The eighty six Mets
38:33
Speaker 1: reflected the people in queens who rooted for them, and
38:36
Speaker 1: that year they were the best Major League Baseball had
38:39
Speaker 1: to offer. The best this country has always had to
38:43
Speaker 1: offer is its people who get up and go to
38:46
Speaker 1: work every morning, who punch a clock somewhere, who work
38:50
Speaker 1: for somebody, who works for somebody else. It's not at
38:53
Speaker 1: C suite officeholders or celebrities or pundits or the political class.
38:58
Speaker 1: It's not the people who designed the buildings. It's the
39:01
Speaker 1: people who build them. It's not the people who collect
39:04
Speaker 1: the taxes. It's the people who pay them. And it's
39:07
Speaker 1: not the people who start the fires. It's the people
39:10
Speaker 1: who put them out. It's the grinders, the stiffs, the humps.
39:15
Speaker 1: There are millions of them, and a million more just
39:18
Speaker 1: like them. They've got dirt under their fingernails, not in
39:21
Speaker 1: their bank accounts. Sometimes they're brash, foul mouthed, violent, cocky,
39:28
Speaker 1: sometimes drunk and even disgraced. Sometimes they're the eighty six Mets.
39:38
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan in this this disgrace Slam. All right, guys,
39:56
Speaker 1: hope you dug this episode. This was obviously a story
39:59
Speaker 1: about a baseball team, but it's also about a baseball
40:02
Speaker 1: town queen. So with that the question of the week
40:05
Speaker 1: is which city in America or anywhere actually is the
40:09
Speaker 1: best sports town? There is, of course, only one answer.
40:12
Speaker 1: It's Boston six seven nine oh six six six three eight, Though,
40:16
Speaker 1: text and voicemail to tell me I'm wrong and to
40:18
Speaker 1: prove to me. Why come at me? All right? This goes?
40:20
Speaker 1: Let me know and Mets fans, I want to hear
40:22
Speaker 1: from you, queens represent fifty cent DMC let me know,
40:25
Speaker 1: get at me again. Six one seven nine oh six
40:28
Speaker 1: six six three eight, Lead me a voicemail. Greatest sports
40:32
Speaker 1: town out there? All right? Lead me voicemail, send me
40:34
Speaker 1: a text and let me know. You can also reach
40:35
Speaker 1: me at disgracelam pod as well on Instagram, X and Facebook.
40:40
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40:42
Speaker 1: Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here comes
40:44
Speaker 1: some credits. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is
40:49
Speaker 1: produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode
40:53
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40:56
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41:00
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