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The day began in earnest at 10:39 a.m., when a man on the press level at old Shea Stadium flicked a button and in an instant the enormous scoreboard in right-center field crackled to life. The remnants of the previous night’s out-of-town scoreboard were still listed, notably the one atop the left side, where the American League scores were posted: MIL 13, NYY 10.

That snapped an 11-game winning streak for the Yankees. The Mets had suffered a similarly excruciating loss, and the evidence was still there in detail across the bottom of the scoreboard, a 10-inning linescore with a “1” in the top of the 10th, a reminder that 12 hours earlier César Cedeño of the Cardinals had taken Jesse Orosco deep and St. Louis had won, 1-0.

“Oh, great,” Keith Hernandez said with a smile to the gaggle of writers who greeted him on the field. “Like any of us have forgotten the score.”

This was now the morning of Thursday, Sept. 12, 1985, and it had dawned brilliantly, a bright, last-gasp summer sun dominating a crystal-blue sky. For weeks, the newspapers had targeted this day, had dubbed it “Baseball Thursday,” because even then it was clear that this would be the first New York day of its kind since Oct. 10, 1956.