Endy! Endy! Endy!

Game 41: Yankees 2, Mets 3

27-14 for the season

sometimes, sportscasters use phrases like "Fan Favorite" and it sounds trite. but when they call Endy Chavez a Fan Favorite, they are speaking the absolute truth. if the fans had our way, we'd probably build a statue for Endy, lest we forget what miracles can come in long-overlooked packages.

He's a bench player, but whenever he's on the field, good things happen. I used Endy's unbelievable catch in what turned out to be the Mets last game of the '06 season in some powerful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on myself after the crushing loss-- every time I got sad thinking of how the season ended, I replaced that thought in my head with the image of Endy leaping up, reaching his wrist back over the fence, and landing with the ball in his glove. it worked every time. this year, he's already been instrumental in a number of Mets wins, but none more so than last night in the opener against the Yankees at Shea. the Mets were behind 2-1 in the bottom of the 5th when no less of a pitcher than Andy Pettite (I love how he's convinced everyone to pronounce his name as "pet-it" rather than it's actual pronunciation as a synonym for "short") lobbed one over the plate that Endy hit out of the park. that's right-- a two-run home run, to give the Mets the one-run lead they'd hold for the rest of the game.

The badly slumping team from the Bronx actually played decently last night, but they just aren't as good a team this year as the Mets are. The margin of the final score was prescient-- the Yanks have lost the vast majority of one-run games they've played this year-- the Mets have won the vast majority of the same kind of game. They just look kind of sad out there-- what with the clubhouse dissent over Clemens' contract (and the need to pay him more than a million dollars a game created by a pronounced lack of starting pitching), Torre looking old, sick, and disinterested, and ARod back to his unpredictable self, it seems like the Yanks might finally be learning what it is to lose. I hope for them that their fans can handle it.