Game 3: Mets 6 Indians 4
Dickey vs Westbrook
7 wins in a row now for the AMAZINS, WHOA! And R.A. Dickey is 5-0 in his first 6 starts. Ron Darling is pretty sure no Metsie has ever done this, again I say WHOA!
Tonight the Mets proved once again they are just hot as hell in Cleveland! The Indians are poor old Abe Vigoda and the Mets are Betty White after she's downed 10 Snickers bars and it has been delightful to watch. Yep I was a fan of that superbowl commercial, and yep it still cracks me up. But enough about Betty and Abe let's get to this game! And the booth shenanigans!
Mets starting lineup:
Reyes
Pagan
Wright
Davis
Frenchy
Carter (DH)
Blanco
Feliciano (LF, The day to day Canadian Bay fought with Jerry to play tonight but Manuel said NO you must rest up)
Tejada
Top of the 1st:
Reyes led off this inning with a single! It was the Reyes show tonight and you'll see why very very soon. With this base hit Jose Jose Jose now has a 9 game hitting streak, boom boom pow! Crazy Horse then singled and with 2 men on and nobody out David Wright was up. Reyes during this at bat was almost picked off but he made it back to second safely but he got hurt. He called out the trainer and things looked grim. Please not another Jason Bay-like scare! But all was fine, Jose just had a cut on his hand, possibly it was bleeding a bit, and most importantly nothing was broken! Time to exhale.
Unfortunately Wright then struck out but it was okie dokie because Ike was up next. And Isaac Benjamin Davis RBI singled, Reyes scored, Pagan advanced to third and the Mets took a 1-0 lead over the Indians. That rib eye steak of Ike's, his 24th of the season! With 1st and 3rd and nobody out Frenchy sac flied and Pagan scored. The Metsies were up 2-0 over Cleveland and Jeff got his 37th RBI, yay! Next, Carter singled and Davis advanced to third base. Then with men on the corners and 2 outs Hank Blanco rbi singled, Isaac scored and the Mets were now leading the Indians 3-0! Feliciano was up next. Tonight was his 3rd career start and he singled! Carter tried to score but he didn't slide and Duncan made a pretty great throw to Santana and Carter was OUT at home. Boo to that Duncan assist and what's up with the no slide The Animal? That was very uncharacteristic of him indeed.
Bottom of the 1st:
R.A. Dickey pitched a 1, 2 3 inning! Donald and Choo both struck out and then Santana grounded out and the side was retired!
Bottom of the 2nd:
The DH Travis Hafner led this inning off with a single. Kearns then grounded out but Travis advanced to 2nd. So with one out and one on, Branyan was up. And then a catching woe like the last Dickey start made a repeat performance tonight and a pass ball was called against Blanco and Hafner was now at third with one out. BUT Branyan was useless and he struck out. YAY! But Jhonny Peralta even though he spells his first name very oddly is not useless, he rbi singled, Hafner scored and the Mets lead was just 3-1. Then Duncan continued to kill the Metsies and he 2 out pop fly singled, boo! However, Valbuena wanted to be useless like Branyan and he grounded out and the inning was over!
Top of the 3rd:
Westbrook retired the side in order this inning but during Carter's at bat Ron and Gary mocked his 1st inning mistake at the plate. Ron said he was, "More like a poodle than THE ANIMAL." This would not be the only time Ron, Gary or Kevin would josh around about Carter. OH it is going to get real good very soon!
Bottom of the 3rd:
With one out Choo singled, boo, ooh that rhymes! But yay Santana grounded out to Davis and there were 2 outs. So with 2 outs and a man on, Hafner grounded the ball, it looked like an easy play for Tejada but nope he earned his first error, Choo scored, Hafner was safe at first and the Metsies lead was just 3-2, AHHHHH. And then to make matters worse Kearns singled. But it's okay because Branyan was useless once again and he grounded out to end the inning!
Top of the 4th:
Westbrook walked Feliciano to start this inning off, yay! Then Tejada sac bunted and Feliciano was now on second with 1 out for Jose Jose Jose! Before I get to what Reyes did I must note that during this inning Kevin Burkhardt interviewed Chris Carter's legally blind grandfather BILL.
Seated next to Bill was his buddy Edwin who does the play by play for him.
Bill told Kevin that there is nothing as wonderful as hearing your grandson's name being announced at the ballpark and he also loves the sound of the crack of the bat. He just hopes when he hears that crack it means Chris got a hit!
Okay back to Jose. So with Felciano on at 2nd Reyes pop fly singled (well it appeared to be that) but because he is speedy as can be Jose hustled his way to 2nd and he had a double. With 1 out and men on 2nd and 3rd, the Indians intentionally walked Angel Pagan to face the National League leader in rib eye steaks, David Wright with the bases loaded, hmmmmmmm. Yeah this shocked me, oh it did. So Davey grounded into what could have been a double play but Wright's too fast for that to happen DUH Cleveland and the force out was made at 2nd, Feliciano scored, Wright was safe at 1st, Davey got his 53rd rib eye steak of the season and the Mets lead was now 4-2 over the Indians! Then with 1st and 3rd and 2 outs Isaac Benjamin Davis singled! Reyes scored, Wright advanced to 3rd, the Metsies took a 5-2 lead over Cleveland and oh yeah baseball is fun. Sadly Frenchy popped up to end the inning.
Top of the 5th:
The Mets didn't score this inning but it's an important Chris Carter inning.
Carter was the lead off batter in the top of the 5th and well Burkhardt's pretty much obsessed, yeah he's smitten with Chris so that meant it was time for a getting to know The Animal segment! Kevin said that Chris has a very specific routine he does before each game. First off he arrives to the ballpark at 12:30pm. It's important to know that every other player pretty much doesn't arrive until 2pm. Besides being an early bird gets the worm, Carter does a lot of exercises to loosen his body on up and as of very recently to do this he has taken up YOGA. Yes yoga, I'm not joking. It has made him very flexible, yowsas. During this segment Carter actually hit a ball that then hit his knee and he was in a lot of pain. The camera man then got a good shot of Grandpa Bill Carter in the stands and Gary said, "Did Bill's play by play man desert him?" Yeah I don't know what happened to Edwin but Gary then went on to say, "There's no way he's (Chris) coming out. He'll limp back to the plate if he has to." And yeah The Animal did just that and he singled! So yeah that yoga is paying off! Then Ron continued his ribbing of Carter tonight, "Kevin if his nickname is THE ANIMAL you can't talk about him doing yoga." Yeah Burkhardt way to ruin his reputation you meanie! But Gary justified the yoga business because he commented that although he is no yoga aficionado he does know that there are many yoga positions named after animals (something with a crab, downward dog). Thus, the nickname is still a good one and Kevin didn't eff up. Then Kevin talked about when he took a pilates class. He said how he assumed it was going to be sooooo easy and instead women twice his age were crushing him in the class and he felt like a fool. Poor Kevin.
Bottom of the 5th:
Choo led off this inning with a single. Santana then doubled. So with 2nd and 3rd and nobody out Hafner grounded out but Choo scored, Santana advanced to 3rd and the Metsies lead was just 5-3. But then Dickey got out of this jam like a champ and he struck out Kearns and Branyan (useless again) and the side was retired!
Bottom of the 6th:
The pitcher's mound was a pain in the ass again tonight. Dickey joined Stephen Strasburg and Jonathan Niese in telling the mound to go eff itself. With 2 outs, Dickey stubbed his toe on the mound and he almost did or maybe he did do a pratfall. I don't remember exactly. After this mound woe, Dickey gave up a 2 out walk to Valbuena but he then struck out Donald to end the inning. This was the last batter R.A. would face and again he pitched a pretty great game! Here are his stats tonight:
6IP 3R 7H 7K 2BB 102 pitches thrown
Btw also in this inning the Toyota Text Poll was a hoot, check it out:
Who is your favorite fictional Indians player from the movie "Major League?"
A. Jake Taylor
B. Ricky Vaughn
C. Pedro Cerrano
D. Willy Mays Hays
Ron was upset Bob Uecker was not a choice as was I! Kevin then was like what about Roger Dorn, Corbin Bernsen is my guy! I'll get to the poll results very shortly!
Bottom of the 7th:
Pedro Feliciano was now in the game to well only sort of suck. This appearance tonight was his league leading 39th appearance! With 1 out Santana hit a long double off the fence, Pagan bobbled the ball majorly and Santana made it easily to 3rd base. Hafner then hit a chopper over the mound, Jose bare handed it to Ike, Hafner was out at first but Santana scored and the Mets lead was just 5-4, OH NOOOOOO. So with 2 outs and no one on Kearns singled, ugh. But yay Branyan was useless once again and he grounded out and the inning was over.
Top of the 8th:
Perez was now pitching for Cleveland and with 2 outs he gave up a bloop single to Tejada, yay! And then Jose added a friend to join the double and single he had already hit tonight. This friend was called his 5th triple of the season! I told you the Reyes show was good tonight. Tejada scored, Reyes got his 24th rib eye steak of the season and the Mets had a 6-4 lead over the Indians! Pagan then grounded out and the side was retired.
Bottom of the 8th:
Dessens pitched great! He got Paralta to ground out to Reyes, then Duncan lined one to short, Reyes caught that bad boy and Valbuena grounded out. Yay Elmer!
Top of the 9th:
Kerry Wood came in to do some relief work and although he gave up a lead off single to Wright he proved he still has his stuff and he didn't give up any runs, BOO.
Bottom of the 9th:
Gary Cohen said the truest thing I think I've heard anyone say about KRod this season, "Drama is part of his repertoire" and his goggle/glasses thingies suck! Okay he left out that goggle/glasses thing but yeah Frankie once again made Mets fans sweat. KRod started out great, he K'd the pinch hitter Trevor Crowe but then he gave up a 1 out single to CHOO. Boo to that. With Santana up, Choo stole second, ahhhhhhh. But Frankie threw what Ron said was the hardest fastball (94mph) he's thrown all season and he struck Carlos out! And then he struck out Hafner! Ball game over! Yay! So it was just a little bit of perspiring for us fans but still KRod really needs to go back to thinking 1, 2, 3 ninth innings are cool because they are and I miss them.
So with this sweeping of the Indians, the Mets have won 7 games in a row, they have won 11 of their last 12 games, they are 10 games over .500, KRod got his 15th save and Dickey is 5-0 in his first 6 starts!
Sadly the Tampa Bay Rays were useless yet again and the Braves beat them 3-1. And the Yankees obviously don't want to help us out either and the Phils beat them 7-1. Sheesh.
Oh I almost forgot here are the poll results and the favorite fictional Indian from the movie "Major League" was Ricky Vaughn! Pedro Cerrano was a close 2nd.
Tomorrow starts the subway series at Yankee Stadium and it will be Takahashi vs Vazquez! And I think Keith will be back, hooray! And hopefully Jay Bay too!
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