CRESTVIEW — Bob Sikes easily recalls the 1986 New York Mets' players.
Gary Carter, Ray Knight, Mookie Wilson, Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry — Sikes knew them all.
And more than knowing these famous players, he was a part of the team.
The Okaloosa County native — a 1977 Choctawhatchee High School graduate and a distant cousin of the congressman with the same name — has been teaching science at Crestview High School for almost 15 years.
But from 1985-1991, he lived in New York City and was the Mets' athletic trainer.
BIRTH OF THE DREAM
“I learned early on that I wasn’t going to be a Major League player,” Sikes said. “Originally, I wanted to be a sports writer.
"Sometime, when I was in high school, the athletic training option came up for me."
Sikes realized that being an athletic trainer was his ticket to a career in professional sports.
"All the sudden, a light bulb went off," he said. “It was one of those epiphany moments that this is the way I can go to the Big Leagues: as an athletic trainer. So many people want this — and I was able to do it.
"But I was good at what I did, and I was very fortunate to get there at a young age and to be a part of that great story.”
A SUMMER START
Sikes got his first training job in the minor leagues while attending Florida State University.
“After my junior year, the Mets called my head trainer, the late Don Fauls, and asked him if he could recommend somebody to work in their minor league organization,” Sikes said. “At that time, baseball hired a lot of college kids like me to work those short (summer minor league) seasons. So I started my career with the Mets in the summer of 1980 in the New York Penn League in Little Falls, NY.
“I got promoted, I guess you could say, the next year to Double A (Jackson, Miss., in the Texas League) and I spent two years in Double A and two years in Triple A (the Tidewater Tides in Norfolk, Va.).
"Davey Johnson was the Mets manager when we won the World Series in 1986 and I was Davey’s trainer in both AA and AAA.”
BUS OR PLANE
Life in the minor leagues often meant long bus rides from one town to the next, Sikes said.
“I did my bus rides,” he said. “You want to do those while you are young and not 56.
"You’ve not lived until you’ve been on an 11-hour bus ride between Shreveport (La.) and Tulsa, Okla., on a bus with no lavatory, no plumbing on it.
“We had to pull over frequently. That was back in the day when we still put beer on the bus after the game. We went through a couple of cases of beer on the bus ride.”
There were some trips in AA that the Jackson team flew to rather than ride a bus across the state of Texas.
By the time Sikes reached AAA ball, the team mostly flew.
LIFE IN THE BIG LEAGUES
Sikes made it to the Big Leagues and the New York Mets in 1985, and stayed with them until the end of the 1991 season, when he was told his services were no longer need.
His first weeks in the Big Apple were a bit overwhelming, he said.
“New York was bigger than I thought it was. It was very intimidating,” Sikes said. “I had never been to New York except to fly in briefly for a couple of days. When I first went to New York in 1985, we had a couple or three days at the hotel, and after that you were kind of on your own.
“So I was kind of holed up in the clubhouse for a couple of days because I was going to move in with a player, Doug Sisk. The first couple of days, I didn’t want to leave. I locked myself in the clubhouse and slept on the couch in Davey Johnson’s office.
“I was frightened to death to drive someplace because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to get back to Shea Stadium (where the Mets played home games). It was really scary.”
'I WANT TO DOMINATE IT'
Sikes arrived about the time big things were beginning to take place for the Mets.
New York narrowly missed the 1985 playoffs, but the 1986 season would go down as one of the best.
“I think the run in '86 really began in '85,” Sikes said. “(In) '85, a lot of people thought we would get to the playoffs. That was the year in the offseason that we acquired (Hall of Fame catcher) Gary Carter for four players from Montreal. He kind of seemed like the missing link. In the middle of the lineup you had Hernandez, Carter, Strawberry, Ray Knight, and we traded for Howard Johnson so we had the two-platoon going at third base. We really kind of thought we would get there.”
Although the Mets fell short in 1985, all the pieces were in place for the 1986 season in which they won a team-record 108 games.
“The '86 season was a continuation of '85, and most of the guys would probably tell you the same thing,” Sikes said. “Eighty-six was unfinished business.
“I remember that Davey Johnson said in spring training — Davey had a swashbuckling style back then — … ‘I don’t want to just win it, I want to dominate it.’ And we ended up doing just that.”
An early-season sweep of St. Louis started the Mets' march to glory. It didn’t take long for New York to open up a six-game lead that would eventually swell to 15 or 20 games.
New York beat the Houston Astros four games to two in the National League Championship series. The pennant winner turned out to be a 16-inning marathon the Mets won 7-6.
1986 WORLD SERIES, GAME SIX
Sikes was there for game six of the 1986 World Series — one of the most famous in Major League Baseball history.
New York trailed the Boston Red Sox three games to two. Boston was up 5-3, heading into the bottom of the 10th inning of Game Six. All looked lost for the Mets.
“That moment in game six (Mookie Wilson’s ground ball going through Bill Buckner’s legs) was one of the most famous moments, I think, in baseball history,” Sikes said. “And rightfully so, because we were down two runs and we had two outs with nobody on. We got three straight base hits from Gary Carter, Kevin Mitchell and Ray Knight and ended up putting the pressure on the Red Sox defensively.
“A lot of people just think the ground ball just went through Bill Buckner’s legs and the game was over. But we were down and had to get three straight base hits.”
Wilson was at the plate when a wild pitch by Red Sox pitcher Bob Stanley allowed Kevin Mitchell to score and tie the game.
“And then we won; Mookie hit the ball to Buckner at first base (and Knight scored on the Buckner error)," Sikes said. “Mookie still swears to this day that he was going to beat Bob Stanley to first base. He was going to be safe anyway.”
BASEBALL'S LIFELONG LESSONS
Sikes has countless stories of games and players that he could tell for hours on end.
And he believes being a Major League trainer helped prepare him for teaching.
“I think in sports, as in anything, one of the key ways to be successful is to have a relationship with the people you work with,” he said. “I’ve taken some of those lessons I’ve learned from athletics and being in Major League Baseball and put them in the classroom.
"I found that is one of the ways you can be effective with your students: have a relationship with them.One of the things I try to do (is) one of the things I learned from Al Jackson (a former Mets pitcher and pitching coach). We were talking and I asked him, ‘What do you do as a pitching coach?’ And he said, ‘I make sure to talk to all my pitchers every day. That’s my first mission is to go and talk to them.”
Sikes took that lesson to heart and uses it every day in the classroom. He likes to call a student by name every day.
“Those are some of the lessons you learn about being successful,” he said.
'ALWAYS VERY JOYFUL' DREAMS
Sikes still thinks about his days with the Mets.
“I still dream about being there every night,” he said. "There is something about being a part of those teams that starts coming back, and it’s always very happy. It’s always very joyful.
“I’m lucky to have good dreams like that. I feel extremely blessed and fortunate to have experienced that.”
Sikes has no regrets about his climb to the Big Leagues or his time spent with the Mets.
“As it has worked out now, I am very happy,” he said. “I’m very happy to be a teacher. It’s an extremely rewarding experience.
“A day doesn’t go by that I don’t know I have not somehow benefited from the experience of being in the Major Leagues.”
EmailNews Bulletin Sports Editor Randy Dickson, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview teacher recalls life in the Big Leagues (VIDEO)