Congratulations to proven Amazin’ research maven Mathias Kook and talented Metsian writer William Akers for understanding the 1986 World Series was a Fall Classic Sly Stone probably adored, for almost Everybody [Was] A Star. As noted here, 26 of the 43 players who played in the last truly great World Series — parochially speaking — made an All-Star team at one point or another in their major league careers. Their stellar ranks included three future Hall of Famers (Gary Carter, Wade Boggs, Jim Rice), five Most Valuable Players (Keith Hernandez, Kevin Mitchell, Don Baylor, Roger Clemens, Rice) and a couple of Cy Young winners (Dwight Gooden, Clemens) plus varied and sundry record-holders, defensive wizards and transcendent icons.
But that’s not what we wanted to know. We wanted to know who were the 17 Mets and Red Sox who saw action in the ’86 World Series who never made an All-Star team. Mathias and William were quickest to find and submit the correct answers and thus earned the 1986 World Series DVD set from MLB Productions. (Honorable mention to TJ O’Neill, who was just a shade behind those two in delivering the right responses.) Those answers are:
Roger McDowell, Bobby Ojeda, Doug Sisk (three Mets pitchers);
Oil Can Boyd, Steve Crawford, Al Nipper, Calvin Schiraldi (four Red Sox pitchers);
Marty Barrett, Spike Owen, Ed Romero, Dave Stapleton (four Red Sox position players);
Wally Backman, Kevin Elster, Danny Heep, Rafael Santana, Tim Teufel, Mookie Wilson (six Mets position players).
For the record, Backman, McDowell and Ojeda were all plausible All-Star candidates in 1986. But then again, what Met wasn’t? They were all All-Galaxy that summer.
Thank you to everybody who gave this quiz and/or the two preceding it a shot. Thanks to MLB Productions for again providing such terrific prizes for us to give away. Check out MLB on iTunes for all the baseball you can download there.
Comments closed | | 
