Yo, Philly! We can beat you with our best player tied behind our back!
I nearly spit when I heard Willie was resting Cliff. I'm sorry, do we have a lot of guys batting .391? Slugging .701? Being Death to Flying Things? How on earth are we supposed to win a game without Cliff Floyd?
Why, with everybody else. T-E-A-M! TEAM! TEAM! TEAM!
A little carried away I might be, but this was one of those games that would have been lost under the stewardship of Art Howe. I don't have any specific moves in mind that Willie made that Art never did, but a black cloud would've settled somewhere over Shea just in time for the demolition firm of Burrell, Abreu & Rollins to inflict fatal damage to our infrastructure. This had all the ingredients for the classic Phillies 8 Mets 7 type of game that has been absolute L on us since Bo Diaz was sticking it to Neil Allen.
Instead, a win. In the sun. With Cliff Floyd proving, for a day, irrelevant to Mets' success. Wow. First we tell the world we are so blessed with starting pitching that we take guys who throw seven innings of one-hit ball and ship them to Norfolk. Then we glue a 20-game hitting streak to the bench and what happens?
The heretofore missing Mets find themselves — not just Benson and Cameron, both looking like players and reminding us why we want them, but other heretofore lost souls. Piazza and Mientkiewicz came back from slumps; Wright recovered from a momentary lapse; Heilman conquered a new if temporary role; Diaz made himself at home in left for an afternoon; and Looper cleaned up somebody else's mess.
So who needs Cliff Floyd? Well, us, desperately…just not Thursday.
To be fair, Brrrrrl, who gives us chills, got jobbed on a called strike three to end the game. But good goes around. In the eighth, Jose followed a pinch-hit from Marlon Anderson (speaking of finds) with a deadly drag bunt. He beat the throw but was called out. Karma owed us one, so take a hike, Pat. It's good to see wrongdoing get righted.
Kudos, on that count, to Ted Robinson. With Anderson and Beltran on base, Mike launched a mighty blow over the left field fence. Three runs scored. Ted, whose brain must be rattled by all time he's forced to spend alongside Fran Healy, shouted “GRAND SLAM!” Within seconds, he apologized for being “giddy” and good-naturedly corrected the record in a way some pompous announcers (Thorne-choo!) never do. Maybe he was thinking that Reyes should've been on base.
Reyes should always be on base. Reyes swings. Reyes bunts. And now? (With deep apologies to Kanye West.)
Reyes Walks
Willie show him the way because his hamstring's tryin' ta break him down
Reyes Walks
The only thing that I pray is that his legs don't fail him now
Reyes Walks
And I don't think there's nothing they can do now to make him look screwy
Reyes Walks
Now can somebody somewhere please walk Matsui?
Finally, on to our most popular new feature…
NEW YORK YANKEE COLLAPSE-O-METER
WE FEEL YOUR PAIN, REALLY WE DO EDITION
Through 29 Games
1993 METS: 11-18 (Final Record: 59-103)
2005 THEM: 11-18 (Final Record: ??-???)
Remember: It's all about the rings, baby!
Headline seen on Yahoo MLB:
“Yankees enter Devil Ray territory”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
As Greg likes to say, “welcome to the rest of us.”
As I have said elsewhere, the cherry on top of the Yankee-misery schadenfreude sundae is Mad Dog Russo continuing to refer to Robinson Cano as “Canoooo.”
Two words where Russo's mastery of pronunciation and baseball is concerned:
Gag-Nay!