Arms and Feet.....and Inches

Every time I looked up, it was a Mets arm making a big play. Carlos Beltran cutting down a runner at the plate, Endy Chavez doing the same but to second baseman Damion Easley, David Wright diving to his right to snare a hard ground ball, springing to his feet and gunning to Delgado. And relievers....there were relievers everywhere, and all doing their job.

Yes, the Mets cemented their hold on first place in the NL East by edging the tough Brewers in Milwaukee last night by a score of 6-5 in ten innings. But it wasn't easy. And they didn't do it with starting pitching either, although rookie Jonathan Niese did just enough to keep his team in the game.

But Jonathan, who looked so very good in the first three innings, came apart in the fourth. Five straight hits sent him to the dugout without retiring a single batter. But no worries, out came Nelson Figueroa to put out the fire in the fourth. Just to show it wasn't a fluke, Nelson pitched a scoreless fifth as well.

Figueroa would be the first of a veritable parade of Mets relievers, six of them to be exact. Duaner Sanchez followed with a scoreless sixth, Brian Stokes gave up only one hit in the seventh and eighth. Then on came the specialists to pitch the ninth, Feliciano to handle the big guy, Prince Fielder and another lefty, and Smith to handle the right side.

Of course, the Mets weren't doing anything either against the Brewers relievers either. In fact, after the third inning, the Mets bats were virtually silenced by Manny Parra, the starter, and then Guillermo Mota, the slowest relief pitcher in the world, not his velocity, but the duration between one pitch and another. Then fireballing Eric Gagne retired the Mets in the eighth before Salomon Torres survived the ninth but not the tenth.

In the tenth, David Murphy came through once again with a pinch hit single to center, and he moved to third base on a very strange play. Jose Reyes's bunt was fielded nicely by catcher Jason Kendall but his hurried throw to first was to the inside of the bag and arrived at exactly the same time as Jose did, thus enabling Reyes to dislodge the ball from Fielder's mitt.

Endy Chavez then hit a sacrifice fly ball to right field that scored Murphy with what would become the deciding run. But not before some more cardiac arrest for Mets fans in the bottom of the tenth. Ayala looked brilliant in striking out former Met Mike Cameron and was somewhat less imposing when Bill Hall just got under one for a long fly ball out to Tatis in right.

Then the real fun started. The Brewers had still one more gigantic guy on their bench, a fellow named Nelson who creamed an Ayala delivery to right field for a 2-out double. The very scary Gabe Kapler then walked, making this reporter very happy indeed.

This brought up Rickie Weeks, who had homered in the first, had hit 3 more singles throughout the course of the game and who had scored two of the Brewers runs.

Rickie appeared to have done it one more time when he stroked a hard liner to Wright's right that was foul by about an inch. Big sigh for Mets fans. Rickie couldn’t come through one more time as Ayala struck him out on a ball that just dropped a foot into the dirt. The Mets had escaped once again.

Although the Mets made all the plays they had to last night, I have to say the Mets were lucky last night too. Lucky because of the baserunning blunders of the Brewers. Both runners thrown out didn’t use their feet to slide, opting for the ridiculous arm slide to the side of the bag. It may work sometimes but it didn’t last night, and, as Keith Hernandez pointed out, it should be put on the shelf.

So there were the arms the Mets threw at them all night long, the feet the Brewers could have used, and the inches by which the possible game-winning hit was foul. Taken together, it seems as if that’s quite a lot of good fortune to befall our locals on one night.

But the Mets keep rolling. They don’t hit half the night and come up roses. In the first game against the Brewers, Reyes made a silly attempt to steal third and was thrown out. That was the kind of play that signaled the end for the Mets under Willie Randolph.

Not so for Jerry Manuel. Not so far anyway. He keeps making all the right moves. It’s bordering on eerie already. He has nurtured and cajoled and made seemingly countless trips to the mound these past few weeks and somehow keeps coming up roses. But I’ll take it.

I’ll take the trips to the mound along with the miraculous fielding turnaround, and the hot hitting from Delgado and now Beltran. I’ll take the platoon in left of the kids Murphy and Evans too. And the defensive replacement of Chavez in left field. And the better pitching from Oliver Perez, and the same for Pelfrey and even Santana.

I’ll take it all because we Mets fans had to experience the excruciating losses under Willie. You’ll never convince me that this improved play in all aspects of the game by this Mets team is just good fortune finally finding its way into the Mets dugout. No, these successful moves are all too calculated. The will to win is right out there for everybody to see. Manuel will make the moves he has to.

Tomorrow, this passion play resumes with Perez going against a Brewer pitcher who has been “lights out” for the last month, a fellow named Dave Bush. It should be very interesting, but if there’s a rabbit waiting to be pulled out of a hat, I’ve got to think the hat’ll be blue.