Jump Around

Game 72: Athletics 0, Mets 1
40-32 for the season

it was a great pitchers duel tonight-- El Duque for the Mets, coming back after two bad outings and keeping the A's scoreless on six hits in seven innings, and Joe Blanton pitching for Oakland, holding the Mets to five hits in eight shutout innings in a row. it ultimately came down to the closers, and Wagner is one of the best in the game. Santiago Casilla, bless his heart, is not.

tonight was important for a lot of reasons. one, it was rather important that the Mets win two in a row again, since it hadn't happened since May. two, it was pretty important that the Mets win a series, since that hadn't happened in six straight series. three, Duque had two bad starts in a row, and that had to stop. all of that happened, and every other team in the NL East lost today. oh, and the Yankees did, too.

my favorite moment came toward the end of the 7th, when Duque let two men on base and Willie came out to bring Feliciano in. Orlando convinced Willie to let him pitch, and then delivered with an inning-ending K. when El Duque says "Si, yo puedo," you'd better believe he can do it.

of course, Paul LoDuca lost his shit at the umpire tonight, but that ended up well, too-- it got Ramon Castro in the game, and in the top of the 9th, Shrek hit his second double of the year. two batters later, David Wright drove him in with a walk-off double to win the game. it was in many ways a perfect day.

and when it was all over, the Powers That Be at Shea played the House of Pain classic "Jump Around," a much more fitting tribute for a win from this Mets team than anything Bob Seeger ever sang.

there's my team

Game 69: Athletics 1, Mets 9
39-32 for the season

tonight, the Mets played the way they did in April and June-- not only scoring first, but piling it on, and keeping the opposition to just one run. Glavine pitched like he did at the beginning of the season, going into the 9th inning and holding the A's to just one run. when Willie came out of the dugout after Glavine gave up a single on his first pitch in the top of the 9th, the crowd let him know they weren't happy to be robbed of the opportunity to see a Mets pitcher throw a complete game. Tom didn't mind, though-- I'm sure he quite enjoyed watching the last three outs from the dugout.

Marty Noble had some good coverage of the mood in the dugout after the game was done over at MLB.com:

Glavine had the misfortune of being thrown out at the plate in the sixth inning after his second hit, a single, had produced the final two runs in a five-run rally that all but determined the outcome. He was thrown out while trying to score from first base on a double by Jose Reyes. And he heard about it.

"I think that parachute went out as he came around third," manager Willie Randolph said, "and he started to moonwalk."

Wright was wondering whether Glavine had been carrying Baldwin or a Steinway. (What does a Steinway, anyway?)

And someone compared Glavine's speed to that of backup catcher Ramon Castro, but then suggested that the pitcher would have been thrown out at third if he ran like the thick-legged catcher.

"C'mon," Mets closer Billy Wagner said. "You can't get on him. He's 110 years old."