October 19, 1999: Kenny Rogers Walks Andruw Jones

Historically, October 19 has been a bad day for New York baseball teams:

* October 19, 1976: Game 3 of the World Series, the 1st Series game at the renovated Yankee Stadium. The Yankees lost to the Cincinnati Reds, and were swept.

* October 19, 1986: Game 2 of the World Series, and the Mets fall 2 games to 0 behind the Boston Red Sox. But they came from behind to win.

* October 19, 2004: Game 6 of the American League Championship Series. Alex Rodriguez and the Slap Play. The Red Sox complete the comeback, and set up the Game 7 embarrassment.

* October 19, 2006: Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. Yadier Molina hits a home run, and Carlos Beltrán leaves the bat on his shoulder, and the Mets lose the Pennant.

* October 19, 2010: Game 4 of the ALCS. The Yankees lose at home to the Texas Rangers.

* October 19, 2019: Game 6 of the ALCS. Jose Altuve vs. Aroldis Chapman. 

This one stands out as much as any of them:

October 19, 1999, 25 years ago: A wild National League Championship Series, just 2 days after Robin Ventura's "Grand Slam Single" won Game 5 at Shea Stadium, moves on to an even wilder Game 6 at Turner Field in Atlanta. (The stadium is now known as Center Parc Stadium.) The Atlanta Braves blow Al Leiter off the mound with 5 runs in the 1st inning, and later lead the Mets, 7-3. But the Mets storm back, with Mike Piazza tying the game with a home run. The Braves take an 8-7 lead late, but the Mets tie it. The Mets take a 9-8 lead in the 10th, but the Braves tie it.

In the bottom of the 11th inning, the Braves load the bases, and Met manager Bobby Valentine, instead of bringing in righthanded reliever Octavio Dotel to pitch to righthanded hitter Andruw Jones, brings in lefthander Kenny Rogers. Rogers has been one of the top pitchers in baseball in regular-season play the last few years, but his postseason experience has been limited to some terrible outings for the Yankees in 1996 and '97. For whatever reason, Valentine brings him in to face the Braves'
kinderwonder from the Netherlands Antilles.

I watched this game on TV with my father, who was a nominal Met fan (the only sports team he really cared about was Rutgers football), and it was this series, with all its twists and turns, that led him to finally understand what lunatics like me see in the game of baseball.

And I remember telling him, late in the game, that this game and this series deserved to end with a hero, and that it would be a shame if it ended with a goat.

With a 3-2 count on Jones, Rogers threw a pitch low and outside. Jones would not swing at it. Ball 4. 10-9 Braves. Winning run forced home. Pennant dream over.

If Jones had gotten a hit, to drive home the Pennant-winning run, he would have been a hero, and you couldn't really criticize anyone on the Mets. They had fought gallantly, at moments even brilliantly, from a 3-games-to-none deficit.

Of course, no one had ever come back from such a deficit to win a postseason series. Not in baseball, anyway. None had even forced a Game 7. None had even forced a Game 6 until the Braves themselves did it the year before against the San Diego Padres in the NLCS.

Back from 3-0 to win the series? That was never going to happen in baseball. Everybody who had ever watched baseball was thinking that in October 1999. If only it had stayed that way for 5 more years, plus a couple more days.

Was the goat Rogers, for pitching poorly when his team needed him to get one more out and get out of the 11th-inning jam? Or was the goat Valentine, for yet another dimwitted bullpen move? (Paging Mel Rojas, and that was in a game with far less significance.)

Did this move convince him to leave Leiter in to face Luis Sojo in Game 5 of the next year's World Series after 141 pitches? Who knows. Bobby V himself probably doesn't know.

What is known is that the Mets had taken their fans on a thrilling ride, their first October ride in 11 years, and provided them with treasured moments on the ride... and then they crashed. What a way for the Mets and their fans to end the 20th Century.

One more thing: In the 2010s, in sports, "goat" ceased to be short for "scapegoat," someone or something you blamed for a defeat; and became an abbreviation: "GOAT," meaning "Greatest Of All Time." It even became a verb: A player who had reached elite status was said to have been "goated." To those of us old enough to remember earlier times, this sounds really stupid.