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Danny Heep

Danny Heep
Ultimate Mets Database popularity ranking: 69 of 1218 players
Heep
Daniel William Heep
Born: July 3, 1957 at San Antonio, Tex.
Throws: Left Bats: Left
Height: 5.11 Weight: 185

Danny Heep has been the most popular Ultimate Mets Database daily lookup 15 times, most recently on March 28, 2020.

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First Mets game: April 7, 1983
Last Mets game: October 25, 1986

Share your memories of Danny Heep

HERE IS WHAT OTHER METS FANS HAVE TO SAY:

Janet
Danny Heep was never given a chance by the Mets. I thought he was the best outfielder. I love that video clip on the Let's Go Mets Video. He is soooo cute.

Steve
Danny Heep was not given a chance. He was the type of player that was mainly used for a pinch hitter. Davey should have given him a chance. Danny also wanted to play every day.

Mr. Sparkle
December 13, 2000
Good player off the bench and a good spot starter but he wasn't an every day player. He never started for anyone else. A good freind of mine used to call him Danny Heep of s***.

Anthony V
September 3, 2001
Danny Heep is FOUND. He is baseball head coach at University of Incarnate Word in Texas.

Danny Erickson
November 24, 2001
I always thought the Mets got the better of the deal with the Astros. Mike Scott did absolutely nothing with the Mets. Danny was a solid platoon player who walked away with a World Series ring.

Larry Burns
May 22, 2002
For all you lame fans who cry because Danny Heep did not "get his chance", my only question is who should he have started over? Strawberry, Dykstra, Mookie, or George Foster? Even with the decline of Foster, he was better than Danny. Don't get me wrong, I liked the role he played on the team---great off the bench and as a pinch hitter, but that does not mean he was a quality everyday player. Let us not forget that we gave up splitter master Mike Scott to acquire him. Look at the stats, he never was a go-to guy. Appreciate him for what he was, but do not over value his talent.

Larry Burns
January 6, 2003
Whenever someone mentions that Danny was their favorite player, I know they know jack squat abour baseball. Yeah, he was the key to the 1986 team and would have started on any team----who was supposed to sit---Mookie, Dykstra or Strawberry. He went on to enjoy such Hall of Fame success with teams that recognized his talent once he left the inept scouting and talent evaluation of the Mets. Let's get past this obvious sarcasm and realize that Danny was a great 4th outfielder and an excellent pinch-hitter. He filled a role with excellence but was not capable of being a true everyday player. I actually liked him ---- it was his cadre of fawning acolytes that made me insane!

Joe FIgliola
January 17, 2003
What I remember most about Danny from 1983 was him hitting four pinch-hit home runs. I think he hit one of them when I went to see the Mets play (and, unfortunately, lose 2-1) against the Expos on an August afternoon that year. Thanks for the reminder that he led the league in batting for the first six weeks of the season. That was exciting talk among my Met fan friends in college.

My friend Jimmy and I would refer to him as "Daningo" when we watched him on TV. Don't ask me why or what it means; it was just a silly play on words that stuck whenever he was playing. And if I remember correctly, he did pretty good when we called him that!

Greg Stangland
May 2, 2003
Great Pinch hitter, 4 ph hrs in '83. One of my favorite players! I have a Heep Jersey circa 1983. Get lots of positive feedback, Danny "Uriah" Heep, made famous by ESPN's Chris "Boomer" Berman. I saw Heep have a great series at Dodger Stadium in 85. A couple of HRs, Met him at Candlestick and he did a bizarre pose for my snapshot, Hilarious, should have been a guest on Letterman. I had a honorary T-shirt made for him for my all of my lunatic baseball friends. Nice work Danny.

Ken D.
May 16, 2003
The only thing I can still remember clearly about his career is that he was Nolan Ryan's 4000th strikeout.

LenDog
July 10, 2003
An unsung hero of 1986. Does anyone remember his HUGE 2-run single in Game 3 at Boston?

Mets were up 2-0 in the top of the first. Sox had just bungled the rundown play allowing Carter and Hernandez to get back to 2nd and 3rd. Danny hit a rope to center to score 2, making the rundown play very costly and therefore more demoralizing for Boston. Four zip hurts much more than two zip.

That hit gets lost on the highlight tape, but I can still picture it. He really lined it hard!

Susan
June 16, 2005
Remember when Danny Heep pitched? He was an all around player and I think that if he had been given the chance to play every day he would have been great. At least he wasn't a cry baby like Strawberry or a complainer like Foster. He did whatever he was called upon to do. And he looked good doing it too. I had a gold charm of number 25 just because of Danny Heep. For a long time that was my favorite number until Howard Johnson came along.

Jonathan Stern
July 5, 2005
According to the recent book on the 1986 Mets, Danny Heep was a member of the back-of-the-bus, gross-out gang known as the Scum Bunch. If that was true, some of you ladies might not have thought that he was so cute. And then again, some of you might have loved him more. Who knows what floats someone's boat? One thing's for sure. His membership in the Scum Bunch probably triggered his trade as much as anything else.

Boy, did it hurt seeing him on the 1988 Dodgers.

Hot Foot
November 23, 2021
I remember when I first became a baseball fan, my dad bought two copies of the 1986 Mets Yearbook at Shoprite. One copy was for me and the other was his. By the end of the '86 season, his copy was pristine and mine was falling apart from overuse. When I got it, I went through it and chose my favorite players. Darryl Strawberry was my main man based on his stats and his powerful arms. Gary Carter was number two, and also my mom's favorite Met. Dwight Gooden and Keith Hernandez were high on my list of favorites at the beginning of the year.

And then there was Danny Heep. Even as an 8 year old who had seen minimum baseball up to that point, I knew Danny was an underdog, and that made him one of my favorites. I also remember seeing his minor league stats with over 20 home runs per year and thinking he could be a star if he could just get a chance. The yearbook talked about what a great pinch hitter he was and so I thought of him as clutch. An invaluable piece of the puzzle. Looking back to his play during 1986 I can only remember one at bat in the post season against the Astros in game 6 of the NLCS. He came to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning, pinch hitting with the score tied 3-3 and the bases loaded. He took the count full and then struck out swinging at ball four, an eyeball-level fastball that if taken, would have given the Mets the lead. The Mets still won that game, but that strikeout was still huge because it led to 6 more innings of baseball. Danny could have been the hero just by taking a walk but I guess as a Houston resident, he really wanted to sock it to the Astros with his bat.

Danny wasn't around in '87 and at the time I didn't understand why, but now I realize he was made redundant by Lee Mazzilli, which is too bad, because I'm pretty sure my main man hated Lee "Meatball" Mazzilli (as I imagine Darryl called him behind his back).

Looking back at Darryl's struggles after 1986, it might be argued that replacing Danny with Mazzilli contributed to the hardships the Mets had after '86.

As for Danny, after starting the year as one of my favorite 1986 Mets, Danny was replaced in my heart by Kevin Mitchell because Kevin hit a home run in the first game I went to at Shea. As luck would have it, neither of my "underdog" Mets favorites from 1986 were around to start 1987.

At least they got something for Mitchell, but letting Danny Heep (as well as World Series MVP Ray Knight) walk away for nothing was just asking for a 30+ year World Series Championship curse.

The curse of Danny Heep.

That said, Mets should seriously think about bringing him (and Kevin Mitchell) back into the organization in order to bring a long-overdue championship back to Queens.








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