Ladies and gentlemen, the blog is not burning.
I was sitting in my office shortly after 8 AM preparing just the right words to describe the thrill of being at last night's glorious victory when I happened to notice the smell of smoke and the sound of an alarm and, wiz that I am, eventually put the two together. In short, there was a fire in another apartment in our building. So, in honor of the man whose name is on the shirt I'm still wearing after having fallen asleep in it, I ran like Jose Reyes…or as much as I can run like Jose Reyes. After a lot of standing around in the parking lot and witnessing some everyday heroics from our local FD, everything is essentially fine. Nobody was hurt, the cats have been accounted for and we're able to close and lock our door (those rescue guys wield a heavy axe).
The air is a little crispy, but that 12-inning balkoff/blastoff still rates a few “hot damn!”s. They'll be en route soon enough.
When you smell and hear something, don't think it's something else. Just get moving. A public service announcement from the only Mets blog endorsed by Smoky Burgess.
Happy to hear you didn't balk at leaving your premises (snort!) and came out unscathed.
I kept coming to the site…looking for your post(you are nothing if not timely)….
Glad all worked out well for you.
It surely worked out well for our guys last night
Glad all is well Greg.
I too kept stopping by to see your take on things.
It was a crazy night all over baseball.
That flying circus of a rally/meltdown, a steal of home costing the Yanks their game…was there a full moon or something? Not that you need a full moon for Armando Benitez to creatively blow a save.
Greg, you were there, can you please explain to me what Armando actually did to balk twice? SNY did a terrible job showing it to us because I think they pretty much missed it. The first time they had a close up and I didn't see much balk-worthy and the next time they just had this towering and unhelpful overhead shot. What'd he do? I've been waiting for Reyes to do just that since he appeared on the scene but it was somewhat spoiled by the fact that I never got to see the flinch or whatever it was that El Profesor provoked from the most volatile closer in baseball.
I think ESPN nudged SNY's cameras out of the way for last night's game and they had the better view. I was flipping back and forth between the two. Both balks were blink-and-you-missed-them shoulder shrugs so far as I could tell.
Having also been there myself, I can safely say that barring the obvious mid-delivery balk (see: Speier, Ryan) it's virtually impossible to answer that question from Upper Reserved Section 4. From what I've read the first balk was because of “starting and stopping” and the second was some kind of flinch. One of the many great things about being there is seeing Reyes dash down the line to cause that balk, something impossible to catch live on TV. Much like stealing home, I guess.
Jose doing his Steve Bieser impression to rattle ol' Armando was the funniest thing I've seen in years. I laughed myself sick. I had to be physically lifted up to cheer because I'd practically collapsed with laughter.
If only Bochy had brought in Armando in the 9th, like I was screaming for, we would have been home a good hour and a half earlier. I wish someone had offered me odds on Armando doing what Armando does… I'd be one rich woman right now.
Jake, I couldn't tell from where I was. In fact, I thought Jose was merely being spunky, being chased back to third and then dancing around a second later as if to tell Armando, come and get me, sucka.
Actually, based on his postgame comments, that's pretty much what he did. “Oh, I wasn't going to steal, I just wanted him to balk.” Pretty ballsy statement. But he backed it up.
By the way:
Perez
Lincecum
Franco
Frandsen
Heilman
Winn
Wagner
Ortmeier
Lo Duca
Bonds
Wright
And Omar Vizquel
Didn't seem right not to mention them right along with Reyes, Benitez and Carlos “He's Back” Delgado.
What a game. What an absolute baseball game that was.
Agreed. Too bad the following game, which I attended, was abosultely not a game.