Early in his Met managerial tenure, Bobby Valentine established a reputation of getting the most out of his younger players, particularly ones he’d already tutored at triple-A Norfolk. Edgardo Alfonzo, an infielder who blossomed under Valentine’s stewardship, was a prime example. Much as he had in Texas, however, he clashed with the team’s established players, and often walked the extra mile to do so.

Catcher Todd Hundley battled injuries and the burden of high expectations in the Mets’ miserable early 1990s. Pitchers raved about his skills behind the plate, but his hitting was another story. He was clearly a strong switch hitter, but struggled to maintain any sort of consistency with his hitting. Then Hundley came out of nowhere to belt 41 homers in 1996, setting a new high watermark for the franchise and shattering the single season home run record for catchers set by Roy Campanella. Sniffing their first home-grown slugger since Darryl Strawberry, the grateful Met front office gifted Hundley a four-year, $28 million contract in the ensuing offseason.

The Mets’ new manager should have been grateful to have such a weapon in his arsenal, but Bobby Valentine waged a proxy war with his catcher in the press instead. Hundley’s once-lauded catching skills deteriorated after he became a slugging superstar, an observation Mr. Baseball was happy to make to any member of the media who might have missed it. When Hundley suffered a dreadful slump toward the end of the 1997 season, Valentine dropped cryptic hints about the source of his struggles to the press. “I think he doesn’t sleep enough,” the manager said. “He’s a nocturnal person. He needs to get more rest. He has a real tough time getting to sleep after games. He needs to change his ways.”

For the few folks unable to read between these wide lines, the papers spelled out Valentine’s hint: The catcher partied too much. Hundley was forced to publicly account for his extracurricular activities and swear he liked the nightlife no more or less than any other young player.

Regardless of what Hundley did in his postgame life, the man had enough on his mind to induce a late season slide. As Valentine was lobbing his accusations, Hundley’s mother was battling cancer, while his wife was dealing with complications from her third pregnancy. Apart from these real-life issues, he was also experiencing severe elbow pain, but chose to play through it because the Mets remained surprise contenders deep into the 1997 season. For all the aches and Valentine-generated controversy, Hundley racked up 30 homers and 86 RBIs until a game against the Phillies on September 9, when his arm locked up during a follow-through swing. Torn ligaments forced Tommy John surgery, which would knock him out of action until halfway through 1998. Hundley had endured intense personal and physical trauma through gritted teeth to gut his through as much of the season as he could, and would never forgive Bobby Valentine for calling him out in public.

The Met skipper also made an enemy out of Pete Harnisch, a pitcher who missed a good portion of the 1997 season while seeking treatment for clinical depression. When Harnisch proved ineffective upon his return, Valentine insinuated it was because he was “afraid” to pitch. The skipper later insisted he was unaware of his condition, an excuse Harnisch considered neither plausible nor sufficient. After he was designated for assignment during an August road trip, Harnisch lashed out at Valentine in an obscenity-filled tirade shouted for all to hear in the lounge of a hotel where the Mets had been staying. The pitcher then sought out a larger audience by calling up WFAN, New York’s sports talk radio station. Live on the airwaves, Harnisch told listeners, among other choice tidbits, “There’s not really a guy on this team that respects Bobby Valentine.” Some teammates contradicted this assertion. Others retreated to the No Comment Zone. Within hours of airing his grievances, Harnisch was traded to Milwaukee.

While Valentine created enemies in his own clubhouse, the front office promoted the man who would prove to be his biggest internal nemesis. In July of 1997, Joe McIlvaine was demoted from the general manager position in deference to wunderkind Steve Phillips. The move made Phillips, age 34, the game’s second youngest GM. (Detroit’s Randy Smith edged him out by a month.) The Mets grabbed Phillips out of high school with their fifth pick in the 1981 draft, but his game never progressed beyond the double-A level. Phillips spent his initial post-baseball years earning a degree in psychology from the University of Michigan and delivering motivational speeches to corporations, work he found unfulfilling in the extreme. McIlvaine, who was the Met scouting director when the team drafted Phillips, rescued Phillips from this drudgery by offering him his first executive job in January of 1990.

The Met organization did everything in its power to groom Phillips as its executive of the future. In his first few years on the job, quotes from Phillips could be found throughout the city’s back pages with a frequency more befitting a high-level executive, not someone who held the obscure (if important) position of director of minor league operations. After the 1995 season, Phillips was elevated to assistant general manager. His name was soon being whispered as the imminent replacement for McIlvaine, whose relationship with team ownership had deteriorated beyond repair.

Joe McIlvaine attempted to rebuild the Mets on the Frank Cashen model of scouting and development. This slow and unglamorous process had already produced one major flameout in Generation K. Then, another debacle sealed McIlvaine’s fate. Ryan Jaroncyk, the team’s first round draft pick in 1995, was considered a can’t-miss prospect. The young shortstop found a way to miss anyway, quitting the game early in the 1997 season. Jaroncyk realized he never really liked baseball, and had come to this revelation several years too late to do the Mets much good. “I always thought it was boring,” he confessed upon retiring from the game at age 20.

Those who craved a change from McIlvaine’s course could not have devised a worse disaster. No one in the Met front office had bothered to find out if their hotshot prospect, the supposed future of their lineup and infield, even liked baseball. The ensuing blowback doomed McIlvaine’s prospects-first approach to team building, and McIlvaine’s job. Upon introducing his new general manager to the press, Fred Wilpon—in a line destined to be repeated back at him for years to come—insisted Phillips possessed executive “skills sets” that McIlvaine lacked.

In the late 1990s, there was an expectation that a general manager job never ended, that a GM would be always on the clock and always under the microscope. Phillips embraced this view fully. He could remember a time early in his executive career when he witnessed Frank Cashen and Al Harazin sitting in their Shea Stadium suite and reading, discussing not trades and free agents and the farm system but the world. Phillips recalled this scene as if it were a quaint relic of a bygone era. Imagine, he would recount with a shake of his head, a general manager who had time in his daily schedule to contemplate a world outside of baseball.

Bobby Valentine caused one of his periodic stirs in the press by discussing the front office move with reporters before any official announcement had been made. This was interpreted as a means to hasten Joe McIlvaine’s exit, and led to speculation that the old general manager was removed at Valentine’s request. These speculators had short memories, forgetting that McIlvaine was the man who welcomed Valentine back to the Mets after both his firing in Texas and his exile in Japan, who believed Valentine could manage at the big league level again when few others did. Those who forgot these facts would soon have reason enough to dismiss rumors that Valentine wanted Phillips to ascend to the throne. Before long, the idea of Valentine doing anything to benefit Phillips would be laughable.

Valentine and Phillips were like two notes a semitone apart, too close to ever form pleasant harmony. Like Valentine, Phillips relished the spotlight. Like Valentine, Phillips had a high opinion of his own baseball knowledge. He insisted on visiting his manager’s office before and after almost every game to discuss strategy and roster moves. Like Valentine, Phillips possessed a myriad of foibles that tended to get himself in trouble, though they were of a different stripe than Valentine’s.

As for their differences, Phillips had the advantage of possessing a more selective filter between his brain and mouth and was much more guarded with his public statements. (“Sometimes I wish I had the ‘no comment’ in me,” Valentine confessed in grudging admiration of his boss.) Whereas Valentine’s relationship with reporters was strained at best, Phillips played New York’s sports press corps like a fiddle, always willing to provide them with quotes, access, background, and availability. Phillips had spent most of his adult life working in baseball, either as a minor league player or a major league executive, yet his sartorial sense and articulation allowed him to adopt the part of the Young Go-Getter. Always dressed impeccably, always with a perfectly coiffed head of sandy hair, savvy enough to affect wire-rim glasses when he wished to adopt a serious look. He had the air of the spokesman an embattled corporation would send before the cameras to assure the public that their product was safe no matter what the folks at 60 Minutes said. Phillips’s image stood in such stark contrast to that of his predecessor. Joe McIlvaine’s oversized spectacles and overeager, pained smiles labeled him a nerd when the term was still the most damning of slurs in the sports world. It was as Phillips made an extra effort to be polished out of sheer cruelty to the man he replaced.

Joe McIlvaine had brought Bobby Valentine back into the Met organization for the ability he’d shown at triple-A to teach the game to young players. He considered Valentine “one of the best teachers of baseball there is” and had hired him to utilize those skills in molding a team full of raw talent. Such skills were not treasured by a front office headed by Steve Phillips, who wanted to remake the Mets into something more befitting his ambitions. He referred to the Mets he inherited as “a good little team with good little players,” with all the condescension those words implied. Taking the hint, McIlvaine moved on to the Minnesota Twins, a small-market team whose only hope at competing was to develop a good little team with good little players. McIlvaine’s handpicked manager was left behind to wonder how he fit into the Mets’ new equation.

Phillips began his first offseason by taking advantage of the Marlins, as did nearly every other team that winter. Florida loaded up on high-priced superstars in 1997 to fuel a stunning World Series victory, then dismantled itself before the victory parade confetti had even settled. Prior to spring training in 1998, Phillips shipped three minor leaguers to the Marlins in exchange for left-handed pitcher Al Leiter.

A New Jersey native, Leiter enjoyed some up-and-down years with the Yankees and Blue Jays before finding his form with Florida. He pitched to a 2.93 ERA with 200 strikeouts in 1996 and played a key role in the Marlins’ championship the following year by starting game seven of the World Series. Florida manager Jim Leyland chose Leiter to pitch the deciding game not because he had any real confidence in him, but as he told reporters, “Who the hell else am I going to start?” Leiter went on to limit a powerful Indians lineup featuring Manny Ramírez, Jim Thome, David Justice, and Roberto Alomar to two runs, enabling his teammates to rebound from an early deficit and win the game in extra innings. Leiter described the attitude he acquired from Leyland’s tough love thusly: “It was basically, ‘Fuck everybody.’”

Leiter possessed enough service time to be considered a veteran, yet rarely conducted himself as someone who had attained the wisdom or calm that comes with age. He more resembled a little league dad who took the game a bit too seriously, when he didn’t resemble that dad’s sugar-addled kid. He was prone to both losing his focus and criticizing himself to worrisome extremes. The former led to high walk totals, while the latter led to worn out paths in front of the mound as he paced and berated himself for his failures. He had idiosyncratic on-field habits that were baffling, if not ill-advised, such as his method clearing mud from his cleats during rainy games. Whereas most pitchers used a wire brush or a spiked pad to remove obstructions from their spikes, Leiter preferred to jump in the air and click his heels, à la Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, to clear out the muck. More troubling was Leiter’s tendency to argue with his managers to remain on the mound far beyond the point most pitchers would, which marked him either as a gritty gamer when it saved a call to the bullpen or a stubborn jock when his tired arm blew a lead.

These shortcomings could be tolerated because Leiter was a lefthanded starter, and a very good one who could often fight his way to being great. When he joined the Met starting rotation, he became its best member by a wide margin. He was thrilled to join the team he grew up rooting for as a kid from Toms River, even if he would have to play for a manager who once tried to psych him out from the opposing dugout by screaming, “You’ll never make it out of the fourth inning!”

As big as the Leiter trade was, Steve Phillips’s hugest deal was yet to come. Todd Hundley’s Tommy John surgery forced him to miss the first half of the 1998 season, robbing the Mets of their catcher, their primary source of power, and their biggest star. When he did return, there was no telling how much motivation he’d have to play well under Bobby Valentine’s yoke. Meanwhile, across the country, another star catcher was feeling mistreated by his own team and was looking for an escape plan. These factors conspired to produce a trade scenario too juicy for Phillips to pass up.

Out in Los Angeles, free agency loomed for Mike Piazza, who had already established himself as one of the best hitting catchers in baseball history. Before the 1997 season began, Piazza and his agent proposed a six-year, $60 million contract to the Dodgers’ front office. The Dodgers rejected Piazza’s offer and extended arbitration instead. At this point, the catcher’s feelings about staying in Los Angeles began to sour.

Those feelings curdled even more the following spring after Los Angeles Times writer Bill Plaschke conducted an interview with ex-Dodger Brett Butler, who painted the catcher as “a moody, self-centered ‘90s player” and insisted “you can’t build around Piazza because he’s not a leader.” Though the Dodgers made the playoffs in 1995 and 1996, they were swept in the division series both times. Piazza batted .250 in his postseason appearances, with only three RBIs and one lone home run. The Dodgers also suffered a September swoon in 1997, allowing the National League West title to slip from their hands in the season’s final weeks. Through Brett Butler, the Dodgers publicly declared their belief that Piazza—one the most potent offensive forces in franchise history—was more responsible for the team’s failures than its successes.

Early in the 1998 season, the Dodgers’ brain trust offered Piazza an $84 million extension. Piazza rejected it, still stinging from the Butler interview. Relations between the catcher and the team degenerated quickly, and a trade was executed on May 14 that shipped Piazza off to the Marlins for a large package of players, the most notable being mercurial slugger Gary Sheffield. Everyone knew Florida was a mere layover for the catcher. A team that had unloaded so many superstars had neither the ability nor the inclination to keep Piazza. The only question was where he would fly to next. On the back pages and sports talk radio airwaves in New York, the chatter screamed for him to land with the Mets. Mike Francesa, one half of WFAN’s drive-time duo Mike and the Mad Dog, was one of the loudest voices insisting that the Mets had to get Piazza, Hundley be damned.

Eight days after Piazza left L.A., Steve Phillips pulled the trigger. He acquired the catcher while giving up even less than he had for Leiter. (The most prominent player in the deal was minor leaguer Preston Wilson, stepson of former Mets outfielder and then-first base coach Mookie Wilson.) For a franchise whose brief periods of success relied on strong pitching, Piazza became the best hitter to ever put on a Mets uniform.

The trade simultaneously made the Mets a force to be reckoned with and increased tension in the clubhouse. Todd Hundley had been the team’s biggest star, but six months on the disabled list turned him into a forgotten man. As the “get Piazza!” chants grew louder and louder, Hundley was told point-blank by Met ownership that they had no interest in acquiring a new catcher. One day after Hundley received this assurance, the Piazza deal was made. With a sense of timing the Dodgers would have appreciated, rumors that Hundley had drinking problem bubbled anew within days of the trade. Unable to find a teammate who’d own up to spreading such gossip, Hundley naturally blamed Bobby Valentine.

Hopes that conditions would improve once Hundley returned to action after the All Star Break were short lived. Valentine had one spot for two home run-hitting catchers and was forced to be creative to squeeze both of them in the lineup. Piazza would catch, and Hundley—who’d logged all of two games at any position other than catcher in his professional career—would try his hand at left field. The gambit was destined to fail, but the inevitability of this failure didn’t make the results any easier to watch. Hundley was not made for an outfield position, to put it kindly, and his hitting suffered in the bargain. In 53 games, Hundley batted a miserable .161 while belting only 3 home runs.

Mike Piazza started slowly in New York before stepping on the gas, hitting .351 in the second half of the season and .378 in September. As soon as he took off, so did the rest of the Mets. John Olerud flirted with a batting title, hit 22 home runs, and drove in 98 runs to lead the team. In his second season as a full-time starter. Edgardo Alfonzo complemented his slick fielding at third base with production at the plate, collecting 17 homers and 78 RBIs of his own. Alfonzo and Rey Ordoñez, a human vacuum at shortstop, both robbed countless hits and together made up one of the best defensive left sides of the infield in the majors. Al Leiter was as good as advertised, winning 17 games and pitching to an ERA of 2.47. The Mets not only began winning again, but did so in ways reminiscent of the brash Mets teams of the 1980s, overcoming deficits and prevailing in their last at-bats. A torrid month of August—20 wins in total—launched them into playoff contention, and the winning continued as fall loomed. On September 20, they defeated the Marlins 5-0 behind eight shutout innings from Leiter and timely hitting from Olerud. At 88-69, they held a half-game lead in the wild card standings over the Chicago Cubs with five games left to play.

And then, as if someone flipped a switch, everything stopped working all at once.

Next Chapter: The First Fall