Jason is glad the Mets are back — and hoping he feels the same way after tonight's game.
That was my Facebook message late this afternoon — happiness at baseball being back, eagerness to see if the Mets could continue their Lazarus act, and yes, worry that tonight would prove the beginning of the cruelest possible tease from a team that's specialized in them. As the Mets go, I'm what financial types (and dorks channeling them) would call a lagging indicator — whether it's distrust or just being slow on the uptake, I felt myself slide into Watch This With One Eye mode after the Reds battered Johan around their park. (Which was curiously muted on SNY — did anyone else notice that? You could hear Gary and Keith just fine, and the sound off the bat, but the crowd was a faraway, tinny buzz. It was like a really crappy 80s console game.)
But then all of a sudden Wright singled in two, it was 5-4 and my dim brain remembered that hey, we'd reeled off nine in a row. And then Fernando Tatis lofted a fly ball over that too-close fence in right-center (we'll take it) and it was 6-5 and Johnny Cueto was trudging off with that look you see on the faces of fireballing rookies whose brains need to catch up with their arms — anger and embarrassment and the disbelief of the youthful who really had no idea that what just befell them was even possible. And so when Scott Schoeneweis missed Schneider's glove and hit all of Javier Valentin's bat, I kept both eyes on the proceedings. We'd already shown the kind of fight rarely imagined in the June '07-June '08 Year of Famine; who would be so low and vile a nonbeliever as to say there wasn't more where that had come from?
And indeed, WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM! Argenis Reyes got us started in the ninth, despite the fact that he's done something ill-advised to his head and now looks like a butterscotch sundae. Wright got us even, Delgado got us out in front, and Tatis got us insured. And Billy Wagner decided there'd been quite enough drama, thank you. 10-8 Mets.
And now what's this? There appears to be somebody in our seat.
You — the guy dressed in red, with the fans who are even meaner than ours and the cheesesteaks. Yeah, you. Out. What's that you say? We're 52-44, so git. Really? Lemme see. Huh. How about that. So what do we do now?
Ninety-six games turned out to settle nothing. Here we are, Mets and Phillies, tied atop the NL East with 66 games to settle it. It's marvelous. It's unexpected. It's baseball, in other words. God how I've missed it.
Marc: “Any time i have ever watched the mets outside of 1999, i would have counted them out…. the way they have been playing, they're still in this thing.”
Marc IM'ed that to me as soon as Javier Valentin settled into second base, and I couldn't believe I found myself nodding in agreement. Not putting my head down in annoyance that the second half started with a loss like this. How much has this season's narrative changed that I expected them to come back? That I expected Delgado to come through? That I expected Wagner to… well, I wouldn't go that far just yet.
10 in a row? Tied for 1st? One month to the day this team was labeled by everyone, critics and faithful alike, as a bunch of clowns? Amazin.
Streak trivia — the last 11 game win streak was in June 1990. They got their 10th win on a Thursday night, in the first of 4 against Cincinnati. (Being there made that my best night as a 9-year old.) They got their 11th on a Friday night in the second of 4 against Cincinnati…
I'm with you Jace, something just told me that this game wasn't over. Even after stranding two in the 8th to David Weathers, who I was surprised to see is still around, I decided to keep on watching. I guess 9, excuse me, 10 game winning streaks have a way of doing things like that. I forgot how much fun winning every night is, let's not lose anymore the rest of the way. Whadaya say?
Before the streak, before Jerry, before whatever it was or is that has us rollin', rollin', rollin' on the Ohio River, that bunt David Ross laid down with two out in the ninth eludes Wright's grip, Ross is on first, Wagner fumes, the next batter ties it. Not the default mode at the moment.
Have you noticed the past three wins have ended on balls hit to David?
Have you noticed the past three wins have ended on balls hit to David?
Some reruns are worth re-watching over and over again :)
I had a dream last night (more like this morning before I woke up) that Met fans were out in droves everywhere wearing Met shirts and Met pins. Finally, we are all proud again to be Met fans. I told someone that today is truly “Mets Day.”
And then I woke up. And I realize, it isn't a dream! Let's Go Mets!!!!!!!!