Dwight/Darryl/Tyson

As anyone who attended or visited Fordham University up until the end of the school year 1999 can tell you (and we're talking the real Fordham in the Boogie Down BX, not that Lincoln Center b.s.) the place to be on Thursday nights was Clarke's on the corner of Fordham and Webster. Five dollars for all you can drink Scheiffer's (sp) draft from 10-1 in a bar that was colossal by NYC standards. Where the concept of ID's was a complete joke in the mid 90's, bowl-smoking didn't need to be hidden at all, and anyone drinking out of anything but a plastic cup was considered a pompous prick. Where the beers give you gas and the Bundy's kick ass.......

If you're still reading and didn't go to Fordham; God bless you. But I'm sure you had a similar bar at your school. The one completely unique thing at Clarke's (to me at least) was a 4x6 picture hanging on the wall that only regular Locals (read: raging alcoholic Irish immigrants) and hard-drinking students (read: sons of raging alcholic Irish immigrants) knew intimately. A photo of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry in full Mets regalia bookending Mike Tyson. The three ultimate symbols of drugs gone bad, lost potential, and the dark side of 1980's New York in one tiny wooden photo frame. And they were all my hero's.

I look back now and wonder who was to blame for that era, if anyone. I know for sure many people were full of shiznit. I love Ronald Reagan, he is undoubtedly the greatest president of my lifetime and the 20th century. But Nancy's "Just Say No" campaign was not only an absurd waste of taxpayer money, it was inherently stupid. I don't really smoke weed anymore but lumping marijuana in with real drugs like crack and heroin was incredibly uninformed and irresponsible. Not the same ballpark, not even the same sport.

Which brings me back to the title/point of this post. The 1986 Mets are considered by some (read: me and other screwballs from Long Island) to be the greatest baseball team of the modern era. I couldn't care less that they were by and large boozehounds, womanizers, pill-poppers and dope-smokers. They provided me, at the age of 10, the single most enjoyable season of any sports team I have followed in my lifetime. Mike Tyson was the most electrifying man in sports entertainment (from Crooklyn!) when The Rock was still hoping a pube or two had shown up. Mark Gastineau was the leader of the New York Sack Exchange. Three/fourths of the Final Four in 1985 (well before the boring football schools took over the current commercialized snoozefest), the Big East ballers were blowing rails before games, winning and then hanging banners/carrying belts.

And I'm left to wonder why this was all bad........