Darling: Mets took pills, chugged beer during games in '86

Ron Darling, the former All-Star who was a major part of the New York Mets' 1986 World Series run, said teammates routinely popped amphetamines and drank beer during games throughout his tenure in Queens to mask the pain of a grueling schedule and/or "take the edge off."

In an excerpt of his upcoming book released Monday, the 55-year-old expounds on the drug culture within the clubhouse during the 1986 campaign, explaining that the use of these substances were "part of the landscape" and had "been around the game for generations." Darling, who finished fifth in NL Cy Young voting in 1986, also said low-dose amphetamines were "passed around like candy" as part of the "care and feeding of the professional athlete."

You'd see guys toward the end of a game, maybe getting ready for their final at bat, double-back into the locker room to chug a beer to "re-kick the bean" (so they could step to the plate completely wired and focused and dialed in. They had it down to a science, with precision timing. They'd do that thing where you poke a hole in the can so the beer would flow shotgun-style. They'd time it so that they were due to hit third or fourth that inning, and in their minds that rush of beer would kind of jump-start the amphetamines and get back to how they were feeling early on in the game - pumped, jacked, good to go. How they came up with this recipe, this ritual, I'll never know, but it seemed to do the trick; they'd get this rush of confidence that was through the roof and step to the plate like the world-beaters they were born to be.

Darling, now one of the Mets' television analysts, stressed that these cocktails weren't consumed for recreational purposes, though, but the perception back then was that no player could survive an entire season "without some carefully timed fistfuls of pills, and a shotgun blast of beer to wash them all down."