Goats to Heroes

It was beginning to look like the same old script for the Mets yesterday afternoon. There was another great start by Johan Santana. But in the eighth inning, with the score 3-1 in favor of the Mets, Santana gave up two consecutive singles and Mets manager Jerry Manuel decided Santana had had enough. He had to go to the bullpen, a pen that had been producing more horrors than an Alfred Hitchcock flick. Surely the Mets would lose another.

But it was not to be on this day. Not this day. On this day, the Mets would FIGHT. On this day, Jerry Manuel would manage his behind off, Mets fielders would sparkle, and David Wright would finish off those tough Padres with a two-out walk-off home run.

Manuel was brilliant. Sometimes the things that work the best are the simplest. What Manuel did in those eighth and ninth innings was to simply remove his pitcher every time that hurler failed to produce...which was quite often, really, about as often as you might expect from a bullpen that had been rapidly becoming one of the worst in Major League Baseball.

The first pitcher Manuel called on was Duaner Sanchez, which made perfect sense to me at the time. After all, Sanchez, when he's on, can be brilliant and he probably has the best stuff of them all. He's used to pitching with men on base. But Duaner let Jerry down again, hitting the first batter he faced. Bases loaded. Jerry came out and immediately removed him from the game, a move not only simple but just.

Next he called on Pedro Feliciano, the lefty who had been relatively decent lately. Good move. Pedro induced a fielder's choice grounder out of the very dangerous Brian Giles; the Mets got the force at home. (They also got a totally unnecessary throw to second from the catcher on the play but why not be magnanimous today).

With one out now and the bases still loaded, Feliciano managed to get another ground ball to Jose Reyes's right that just managed to get by a diving Jose. The hard single produced just one run though, so the Mets retained the lead. But a hit is a hit, and Manuel removed Feliciano for Joe Smith, a right-hander who can get the double play on occasion.

And Joe did the job perfectly. What came next was the play of the day, and maybe a play that will live forever in my mind, the kind of play that showed how badly each Met wanted that win, wanted to get out of that inning. And get out of it they did.

Smith got the ground ball, but it was hit hard and well to second baseman Argenis Reyes's right. Argenis was beautiful, diving to snare the ball, quickly flipping to Jose, who had to hurry his throw to first. Jose's throw was in the dirt and to the outfield side of first. But Nick Evans stretched way to his right, grabbed that hard throw on the short hop, and hung on. Picture-perfect double play. The Mets survived the eighth, still holding on to the one run lead. One inning down, one to go.

The Mets would do nothing in their half of the eighth, a harbinger of worse things to come for Mets fans only too aware of what adventure this pen could dream up. And it was a sign of another failure of these Mets, their inability to add to a lead in the late innings. They would have to make that one run lead stand up.

Manuel went to lefty Scott Schoeneweis for the ninth. Schoeneweis had teamed with Smith to successfully close out the Padres in the series opener. In addition, although the first batter would be a switch-hitter, the second man up would be left-handed batter Jody Gerut, who had homered earlier off Santana.

Schoeneweis got the dangerous Headley to pop out but he would leave a ball right over the plate for Gerut and he complied by knocking the ball over the right field wall for the game-tying home run. It was a shocker, although for this sorry bullpen, that statement is kind of difficult to defend. What it did was seemingly stop any momentum and erase any benefit the Mets had gained from that terrific double play they'd managed to eke out in the eighth.

Manuel stuck with his game plan for the night though, immediately coming out to take the ball from the grumbling Schoeneweis and hand it to Aaron Heilman, Heilman of the hard luck, Heilman, who had given up a 3-run homer two days earlier to these very same Padres.

But Heilman would not let Manuel down. Not this time. Heilman would calmly retire the next two batters in order, the first on a strikeout and the second on a harmless ground ball. Although somewhat sullied, the pen had managed to at least keep the game tied and give the locals a chance to take the game in the ninth.

Which is what they ultimately did, of course, but not without a little more angst. Former Met Heath Bell would pitch the ninth for the Padres and it seemed to me that he’d done more than his share against his former team in the past.

But Endy Chavez gave the Mets high hopes by singling to center, putting the winning run on first base with nobody out. But then things started looking bleak again. Jose Reyes failed in his bunt attempt, popping out to the pitcher. Then his namesake Argenis Reyes hit the ball solidly but lined out to left. Two outs.

So it was all up to David Wright, Wright who had made a critical error on a ground ball to help lose Tuesday’s game, Wright who had made bonehead mistakes on the bases, Wright who had insisted to Manuel that he wasn’t tired, that he didn’t need a break.

And he didn’t. Wright hit the ball over the left field wall.