When the ’86 Mets come to the mind of any hardcore baseball fan, calm, cool and collected are simply not what they think. Chaotic, charismatic and cocky, that championship team may not have ever been if not for a wold inning in the NLCS against the Astros that got them to their first World Series in over a decade.
What ensued after the win, in the clubhouse, bus and then infamous plane ride is the subject of James Blagden’s “Best Last Best Plane Ride Ever†and without holding any punches, it tells a wild story that would have been a scandal if it happened today. In the ‘80s though, it was just damn cool.
Narrated by Dwight Gooden, Lenny Dykstra, Kevin Mitchell, and Darryl Strawberry, the ten-minute animated short has it all, good baseball stories, fun animation, a solid score and the type of pacing that keeps everything moving at an awesome pace. Hearing Mitchell talk about drinking champagne in the whirlpool (with his uniform still on) after Game Six against the Astros and Dykstra talk about groupies is the type of stuff that’ll make any long-time baseball fan want to watch this over and over again. These are tales of baseball’s past, before steroids, before sex scandals, before social media. As a result, you get a look behind the curtain that is impossible to escape from.
Where it thrives the most however is the small “side†stories from Mets manager Davey Johnson’s insistence that his players not be held responsible for their action because they just won a pennant, to Roger McDowell making and eating a salad off a drunk Barry Lyons’ bald head on that crazy plane ride. Add in some debauchery between players’ wives and you’ve got a tale for the ages.
This film is much more than few cool baseball war stories though. In the end, it’s Blagden’s animation that makes this film so much better than the sum of its parts. Known for his work on the Sundance classic “Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No,†Blagden’s realistic, but distorted “Beavis and Butthead†looking animation is the perfect accompaniment for the rude and crude Mets, making this short something truly special.
Leave a Reply