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In a photo series at SI.com, the 1986 Mets are listed among the 16 most 
‘Unsportsmanlike’ teams of all time, a list which also includes other New York notables such as the 1994 Knicks and the Bronx Zoo.
According to the SI write up…
“[The 1986 Mets] boozed, brawled and pranced their way to the World Series championship. No curtain call was too superfluous to pass up, and no slight was too small to get worked up over. As Jeff Pearlman noted in his book, The Bad Guys Won, the Mets were so rowdy they trashed the team plane on the way back from winning the NLCS in Houston. In fact, he reports that one of the reasons the team was dismantled over the next several years was to get rid of the bad apples - of which there were many.”
Meanwhile, in the Contra Costa Times, the 1973 Mets are listed among the hottest teams to ever enter a World Series, having won 29 of their final 42 games.
There are a TON of wins on the list…
Way to go SI – we needed Jeff Pearlman’s god-awful book, replete with exclusive insider quotes from Randy Niemann and doug Sisk, to recound the tale of the Houston flight when we’ve all known about it for decades? Way to plug one of your own.
Never mind any attention given the 86ers being good attention, but how do you call this team ‘unsportsmanlike.’ Whatever their off-field behavior, they played the game the way it was meant to be played. Some over-enthusiastic curtain calls hardly negate stellar defense, situational hitting, a perfectly constructed lineup with L-R balance and prototypical hitters in every spot, and day-in-day-out balls-to-the-wall aggressive play. If that’s ‘unsportsmanlike’ I’ll take it every time.
Pretty sure Pearlman is with espn.com now.
Well put, dave27. Unsportsmanlike?! Give me a break.
amen, i wish the 07 mets were as unsportsmanlike as th e86 mets. anyone else for bringing back the excessive curtain calls in 08?
seriously… is that a list of most unsportsmanlike or a list of the best teams?
“The Bad gus won” Was one of the best books I ever Read. You should give it a whirl… and no i am not Pearlman
Pearlman’s book is a good one and in no way a put down of a tremedous team that just happened to be incredibly dysfunctional. I always knew they were a wild crew but I had no idea just how wild until I read the book. A must read for any Mets fan.
I think that whoever compiled that list needs his medications readjusted. It seems that any display of emotion by an athlete is in danger of pushing him to the edge. I suspect that golf is his favorite sport, but, very soon, it is to be replaced by chess.