Tuesday night, the Mets' 162-game gully of godawfulness dried up on a winning note. The oft-cited record from May 30, 2007 forward concluded at 79-83.
Old news. New season from here on out.
The Mets are 1-0 as of Wednesday, May 28. Yeah, officially we have to graft it onto the 24-26 start and we have to make up some serious ground and we have to hustle and scrap and ignore our immediate past and forget the suffocating, invalidated hype and, in best Metlike fashion, hope for the best. But we know how to do that.
We're off to a wonderful start where that's concerned.
Right through the limp loss of Monday night, defeats in progress this season were numbing me, as in, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles, and the Mets' cookie was half-baked anyway. Not tonight. Tonight I would have been very sorry to have seen the Mets lose. More sorry than usual. Actually hurt by it because, gosh darn it, these boys deserved to win this one.
And they did! They did!
Ollie pitched better than three homers allowed would indicate. The bullpen was magnificent, even if Alfredo Amezaga, wearing No. 4, channeled Yadier Molina and eerily silenced Shea in the top of the twelfth. But the Mets, these Version '08.2 Mets, they punch back. Endy punches back with a homer of his own. Duaner never stops punching, whether bunting or pitching. And my main man Fernando Tatis punches most effectively of all, doubling home the tying run, doubling home the winning run. Tell me he's not happy to be here.
Castillo contributed. Reyes contributed. Beltran contributed. They're supposed to contribute, that's their job, but why does it suddenly all look so…contributory now? Why does this feel like a team in a way it hasn't until the very end of May? I don't know. Can't all be Tatis, Easley and Castro. Can't all be the return to Major League status of Schoeneweis and Heilman. Can't all be the 24 hours it took for whatever whoever said to Willie to kick in. Or maybe it could be all that and more.
Will it last? A couple of weeks ago, I skipped giddily from the first Subway Series scattering tales of 1985 and all the momentum that was there for the reaping. None of it was garnered. We'll see. That's all we can do. The Mets, it seems, will play. That's all they can do.
I'll watch. That's what I always do.
I'd be remiss in my own heart if I didn't mention Tuesday was the third anniversary of the passing of my beloved Bernie The Cat. For the fourth consecutive year, we found ourselves playing the Marlins on May 27. For the fourth consecutive year, the Mets beat the Marlins on May 27. For the fourth consecutive year, the Mets took the May 27 series against the Marlins. Never doubt, regardless of whatever Florida's got going on this season, that if it's Bernie versus the Marlins, the Fish don't stand a chance when a hungry cat is prowling about.
Kaddish for Bernie.
My only disappointment from last night: Johan didn't get to pinch-hit. He has four doubles in 23 at-bats; Moises Alou, by comparison, had half as many in twice as many at-bats. Johan also has two more doubles than Marlon Anderson, Ramon Castro, Endy Chavez and Raul Casanova, if only one more than Nick Evans.
Then again, Fernando Tatis didn't double until the bottom of the twelfth last night.
For those of you who enjoy symmetry (in the vein of our or at least my retiring of the “since May 30, 2007…” metric), it was one year ago tonight that the Mets fell behind in the top of the twelfth and fought back in the bottom of the twelfth to tie and win a game they didn't deserve to lose. No Armando this time, no balk and, hopefully, no mysterious and disturbing death spiral is about to ensue.
First time we've won a Shea series of three or more games from the Marlins since late 2005 when Delgado and Lo Duca were part of the Fish, when Mike Jacobs and Miguel Cairo were the walkoff heroes and when Dontrelle Willis batted seventh and outdueled Pedro Martinez.
We've come a long way, baby?
Since Bernies' passing I have lost two lovely lady kitties that are hopefully keeping him amused and entertained.
“The New York Mets have tendered their resignation from the competitive rigors of the baseball season. They gave their notice in Atlanta last week. I accepted it last night. ”
Hi Greg,
That was a quote from your Tuesday morning entry. Since then the Mets have gone 2-0 and have played with pasion, desire and a 100% effort.
Guess being written off by America's biggest Met fan was the kick in the rear-end they needed.
Quite a cheering section in the Upper Tank for this series.
Happy to be of service.
I was totally thinking Johan to pinch-hit if nobody got on for Sanchez in the 11th.
As I recall, that walk-off win against the Marlins in late '05, when we essentially crushed the Marlins play-off hopes, had a kind of symmetry of its own. Mike Jacobs grounded one beyond the reach of Carlos Delgado down the first-base line to beat the Fish and help enhance his status as trade-bait. It's hard to say really who got the better end of that deal at this point. But I remember that game as one of those strange, portentous occurrences in baseball, when two players, who will be linked in the future, encounter each other in passing between the lines.
That was a weird and desperate series for the Marlins, the last time they'd see daylight in a competitive sense that late in a season until, well, maybe until this year. Almost everybody on their side was hurting, which was why Jack McKeon was juggling the lineup so crazily. The man we'd come to know as Paulie couldn't do a thing behind the plate, his aches and pains so great. Reyes stole three bases off of him, giving birth to the advertising slogan:
AMERICA RUNS ON LO DUCA
Fernando Tatis […] Tell me he's not happy to be here.
That made me laugh. I now wish that every time Tatis comes to the plate, they'd show the clip from Coming to America on Diamond Vision where Eddiy Murphy yells out “I'M VERY HAPPY TO BE HERE!”