Once in a while, particularly if it's early and you've been reasonably successful lately (and you didn't spend all day there), you have to chalk up a game like Sunday's as a mama-said.
Mama said there'd be days like this. There'd be days when a promising first-inning rally would be short-circuited by a crafty veteran pitcher — a crafty right-hander, yet — and even though you've scored three runs, you can sense they won't be enough because you had the bases loaded and nobody out and you have Victor Zambrano who was lucky to give up only three runs in his half of the inning. Everything that followed, while disappointing, didn't seem surprising.
I don't have a particular game in mind, but I know I've seen yesterday's scenario unfold at least a couple of times a year every year for the past 36 years. They say if you watch baseball enough, you'll see something you've never seen before, but I'm pretty sure I'd seen that first inning end with a strikeout and a double play and I know I've seen the inevitable tail-off between the second and the ninth that made the whole thing seem futile to start with.
But I don't think I'd ever seen what I saw as the bottom of the first played out. First and second, nobody out, and Carlos, the third-place hitter, bunts for a base hit. It goes foul. He bunts again and this time gets on.
Your designated RBI man bunting in that spot is unusual enough. I was listening on the radio and neither Gary nor Howie questioned it. Since neither Ralph Kiner nor Tim McCarver, men who believe No. 3 hitters should act like it, was doing the game, I figure it's unlikely anybody on TV made a big deal out of it. Yet I'm sure Beltran was doing something unprecedented in these parts.
No, not passing off the opportunity to drive in a run. Beltran's fast enough to beat out a bunt. The third baseman was giving it to him. Loading the bases with nobody out in the first is a fine thing. What I don't think I've seen — and I don't even know that it occurred — is the reasoning I believe Carlos employed.
Click back to Saturday, the game marked as the signal of the Piazza decline. That was when Beltran was intentionally walked so Mike could be faced. And Mike didn't produce. Click back to Sunday and what Carlos Beltran did.
I didn't hear it commented upon. I haven't read anything today. And I haven't spoken to Mr. Beltran (who for some reason hasn't sent me his cell number). But I got the very strong sense that Carlos was saying to his cleanup hitter, “Yo, Mike: you got this…you the man.” In much the same way that he took the kids to Gold's Gym in spring training, Carlos was being the leader of the New Mets by pumping up the old lion, the guy we're going to need if we're going to do anything at all in 2005. And Mike, in his own mind and my imagination, said, “dude…” and stroked that three-run double.
If that's what happened, especially if it's something that can be fingered from the vantage point of October, then yesterday was a day like few others.
It's a nice thought. Who knows if that was the message, if Mike got it, and if Mike could actually do it again. I guess we'll only know in the fullness of time.
Well that's a nice gesture by Carlos but I was convinced Piazza would hit into a triple play and it seems like it set a bad precedent when Matsui retardedly tried bunting both Sunday and Monday in situations where, say, a double off the wall would have been the better strategy.
PS I tried to post under the name “Paul Rueter's Eyeball” but they wouldn't let me