Damn Thing III

In Mets-Phillies lore, you win the Damn Thing when you go to Philadelphia, you build a huge lead, you hold on for dear life and you come away thanking your lucky 10-9 stars that you didn’t blow the Damn Thing. It was the formula for broacast immortality on July 25, 1990 and it echoed clear through to July 7, 2008.

Mets 10
Phillies 9

It remains the official score of sweet relief, no matter what route the Mets take to arrive there.

This Saturday afternoon in South Philly, it wasn’t Mets 10 Phillies 3 as it was nineteen years ago when Bob Murphy and Mario Diaz teamed to hold off unfathomable disaster. And it wasn’t Mets 10 Phillies 1 as it was last year when Pedro Martinez, Tony Armas and Aaron Heilman couldn’t stand prosperity and Billy Wagner could barely handle it. Those were 10-9 wins whose last chapters were written by Terry McMillan, when we found ourselves crossing our fingers, clutching our totems, beseeching our deities and waiting to exhale.

This Saturday afternoon in South Philly was different…but similar enough.

We needed to win 10-9 in 1990 to move within a half-game of first-place Pittsburgh. We needed to win 10-9 in 2008 to pull within 2½ of the Phillies. We also needed to not lose those games, too, because to surrender leads of six and eight runs, respectively, is to tell the baseball gods, “No, no thanks. We’re not interested in succeeding this or any other season.” You lead 10-3 or you lead 10-1, you have one job: you win. You win because you lead by a lot and you win because you rarely lead by that much. It’s one of those “in the course of a season, there’s a third you win” games — you don’t toss those back lightly.

Nor, come to think of it, do you charge out of the gate with five hits, four runs and stick the whole package in a Hefty Bag as precursor to kicking it to the curb. That, however, is what the Mets did today. They disrespected elderly Jamie Moyer by slapping the cane from his left hand and making off with his Social Security check. Young whippersnappers nearly got away with it, too, but don’t mess with the Gray Panther because he carries mace to the mound and, before we knew it, he had subdued those smart-alecky Mets with fifteen consecutive outs.

Well, that’ll happen. The Mets blitzed Jim Rooker with six consecutive hits to score four runs in the first at Shea in 1979 and then stopped scoring altogether. That was all right, because Pete Falcone subdued the Pirates that night and we won 4-0.

I never thought I’d say this in an unflattering context, but Mike Pelfrey is no Pete Falcone.

Pelf couldn’t gift-wrap runs to the Phillies fast enough. Citizens Bank Park, as we know, was built on an abandoned air hockey table, so balls do tend to fly out of there. But did Mike really need to act as air traffic controller and guide them to their destination? Feliz, you’re clear for takeoff…Utley, use the right-center runaway…Ibañez, there are some clouds with your name on them…

Moyer settling down, Pelfrey coughing it up. That would seem to be a 2009-style script, wouldn’t it? The Phillies turned that 4-0 deficit into an 6-4 lead by the time Moyer got around to permitting another baserunner. It was 8-4 not long after that.

Yup, this was Pelfrey. These were the Mets. This is 2009. Sigh… Not the exhaling we’d want to do. So what if Beltran homered earlier? So what if Wright had driven in two right before that? So what if Wilson Valdez managed to get Daniel Murphy in on a fielder’s choice in the seventh? It was 8-5. Big whoop. And here comes Ken Takahashi to whoop it up even more, allowing a double to Utley and an RBI single to Ibañez to make it 9-5 in the bottom of the seventh. Takahashi exits, Sean Green, master of the Citizens Bank bases-loaded walk, enters. What’s going to go wrong now?

Surprisingly, nothing, at least not for us. Jamie Moyer, realizing it was now or never for the early bird special, exited and gave way to that paragon of humanity Brett Myers. On Fox, Tim McCarver and Howie Rose (how strange to type that combo) were framing Myers as some sort of secret weapon for Charlie Manuel heading to the postseason given the Phillies’ continued case of bullpen hiccups. Oh, he was a secret weapon for Manuel all right, except for the other Manuel in the other dugout. A double to Tatis, a homer to Wright — Phillies 9 Mets 7 — a single to Beltran, and off Myers goes, presumably to counseling.

In comes Chan Ho Park, who still owes the Mets the money he stole from them on April 30, 2007. Park wants to settle out of court. We’ll take restitution in a pair of two-out base hits, one from Santos, another from Murphy to make it Phillies 9 Mets 8.

Hey, is this really happening? Are we really within a run after not answering eight consecutive scores by the Hated Rivals? Pelfrey’s gone (6 IP 10 H 8 ER — he’s way gone), Moyer’s gone, Takahashi’s gone even. Everything that wasn’t working for us is no longer a factor. This is the definition of a Whole New Ballgame.

Except that Sean Green is still pitching in Philadelphia, which can’t possibly be good. True, he gets two quick outs in the eighth, but two is not all Green needs. Green needs a third. That doesn’t seem to be his thing. Sure enough, a walk to Rollins. Then a wild pitch. Then a walk to Victorino. Christ, it’s Sean Green vs. the Phillies. It’s the Mets’ bullpen vs. the Phillies. It’s Mets karma vs. the Phillies. It’s that fucking game from two years ago (I’m thinking of the 11-10 debacle, but I could be referring to any of about fifty). It’s that fucking game with the triple play from last month. It’s not going to be good, is it?

Oh wait, we have one bullet in our chamber. We have Pedro Feliciano, whose entire purpose is to retire Phillie lefties. Chase Utley is one of those, so Jerry Manuel replaces Green with Pedro and…oh, great. He walked Utley. Well, coulda been worse. He could have not walked Utley and all that implies. So it’s bases loaded, and it’s two out and it’s one of the most dangerous hitters in the world, Ryan Howard, coming to bat.

Which is fine, because Pedro Feliciano lives to strike out Ryan Howard. Which he does.

Now it gets a little hazy because I’m out running errands. I left the house after Cory Sullivan didn’t tie the game in the top of the eighth, partly because errands needed running, mostly out of conviction that if I sat here and depended upon a miracle, I’d be left staring at no such thing. If I go out and don’t watch and don’t listen, I reasoned, maybe I’ll miss something worth missing.

Nice to know at the tail-end of a miserable season I’m still capable of instinctively thinking in those terms.

Thus, I followed the Green-Feliciano untangling on my squinty Palm Centro while standing in line at Pathmark. I picked up the play-by-play in the car with two out and none on in the top of the ninth. It’s all up to Tatis, Wayne Hagin said. Tatis seems to have done something well, lashing a single to right, but even that is fairly unsatisfactory, according to Hagin, because Fernando should really be on second. All the bounces, he notes, are going the Phillies’ way.

But Fernando Tatis is on first. There are two outs. David Wright is coming up. And I’m parked in front of the house with bundles to remove from the trunk. If I sit here and listen, David will probably…

I turn off the radio, get out of the car, gather up my bundles, fumble with various doors, get in and out of the elevator, work my keys, enter the living room and see the game is on. Beltran is batting. The baserunner diagram is empty. Damn, I think, Wright didn’t get on.

Then I rewind my thought process.

Hold on…if Beltran is up and there’s nobody on base…it says there are two out…and Beltran is definitely batting after Wright…it says 10-9…wait, the 10 is on top of the 9 and the Mets are the visiting team, which means…

“HEY! DAVID MUST HAVE HIT A TWO-RUN HOMER!”

Yes, I figured it out. Somewhere between getting out of the car and coming into the house, David Wright blasted a two-run home run off Ryan Madson and now we were winning in the ninth. In a matter of minutes, Frankie Rodriguez, albeit with less relish than his bobblegänger would indicate, retires the Phillies 1-2-3 to end it most happily.

For one day, the 2009 Mets got their heads out of their collective morass. For one day, the 2009 Mets reversed their Pelf-inflicted wounds and self-inflicted embarrassment. For one day, the 2009 Mets rose up and punched that arrogant foreman at the plant square on his fat nose, kicking him square in the nuts on the way up. For one day, the 2009 Mets didn’t lose.

The Mets won the Damn Thing 10-9. They didn’t take the classic route to arrive at that most sacred score, but the relief feels as sweet as ever.

Help us keep this damn winning feeling alive at Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side when we convene our final AMAZIN’ TUESDAY of the season — September 15 at 7:00 PM. Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers and I welcome special guests The Bad Guys Won author Jeff Pearlman and Metstradamus mastermind John Coppinger. There will be great pizza, cold beer (the first of which is free if you bring Two Boots owner Phil Hartman a Mets baseball card) and more Met bonhomie than you thought could possibly be scraped together at the end of a year like this. It’s sort of like beating the Phillies in the ninth, except with words.