Someone threw a no-hitter tonight. The NBA Playoffs began tonight. The Stanley Cup Playoffs continued this evening. The Mets however were first tonight on Sportscenter.
For a game in which the team did not score a single run in eighteen innings, the equivalent of two baseball games.
For a game in which they won.
They actually won this game. I still can't believe it. They had no right to. They actually struggled to score on Felipe Lopez and Joe Mather. I am rarely on the front lines in the "Fire Jerry Manuel" army brigade, but he actually made Luis Castillo bunt Reyes over with JOE MATHER PITCHING!*
* Look: Tony LaRussa totally screwed up more than Manuel: he double switched Matt Holliday out of the game in the 11th inning, enabling the Mets to have the option to pitch around Albert Pujols for nine innings, as well as managed to be forced to have two relief pitchers hit with the bases loaded in the 12th and 14th innings and still need to let position players pitch by the 18th. But he isn't our manager. I'll let a snarky and bitter St. Louis blogger rake him over the coals.
I didn't really ENJOY this game, because I was expecting the team to lose during the entire six hours and fifty-three minutes. I was not alone in this. After the game I went out to celebrate, and at the establishment I went to I saw a young man wearing a Mets hat. Oh, I had to talk to this guy. This was the beginning of the conversation:
"What a game huh?"
"What?'
"The game today..."
"Oh my god, I thought we were going to not win."
Do you realize this was the longest win in franchise history? Because it was. The longest win in franchise history. And I watched every second of it. But I didn't enjoy it while seeing it. And that totally sucks. But here are the things I will always remember about today:
- It reminded me of the greatest Met game I've ever seen, 1999 NLCS Game Five. That game was "only" 15 innings but it lasted six hours and ended with Robin Ventura's grand slam single.
- Jerry Manuel claimed after the game that Francoeur would have been the the first position player to pitch for the Mets and Francoeur petitioned for that very badly. It reminded me that Wright was due to pitch for the National League if that All-Star Game that ended in a tie kept going.
- Oh so close to a 21st inning stretch!
- It was the longest game not only in Mets history that I ever watched live on television, but the longest baseball game I've ever seen live on television the entire way through.
- The Cardinals starter, some nobody named Jamie Garcia, of course was no-hitting the Metropolitans through five innings. New York didn't get its second hit until the 12th.
- Jose Reyes went 0 for 7 for my fantasy team but it didn't matter.
2 comments:
I’m normally not a fan of low-scoring games, but this game was a classic! I didn’t think this game would ever end. I heard the announcers say that there was supposed to be a high school game taking place afterwards. I wonder if that game was actually played.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said you didn't enjoy seeing this win. I mean, had the Mets lost, it would have been the end of the world. We couldn't score on TWO position players? We couldn't score when we didn't even have to pitch to Albert Pujols? I mean, the offense tonight was just dreadful. Let's see how they react to it all tonight.
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