It was the summer of 1985 and my friends and I were sitting around a buddy’s apartment off York Avenue getting ready for a big 4th of July night out and watching the Mets play the Braves in Atlanta on television. When we rolled in bleary eyed at at around 3:30 the next morning, my friend goofed: “I wonder if the Mets game is still on” and turned on the television. In one of those surreal moments of wasted impossibility, there they were on television, the Mets and Braves still going at it as dawn neared, with 8,000 people still in the stands waiting for the promised post-game fireworks (which, indeed, were ignited after the Mets’ 16-13 victory resulting from a Met offensive outburst for 5 runs in the top of the 19th).
Last night’s Mettie epic–a 2-1 win over the Cards in St. Louis took about a hour ad 15 minutes less to play (because the 1985 game was interrupted by two rain delays) but went an inning longer, and featured the kind of good pitching you expect from Johann Santana and the poor pitching you have to worry about from Frankie Rodriguez. But Mets fans–who, like Red Sox fans of old, to borrow Bruce Springsteen’s phrase, have ended up like a dog beaten so often he flinches at everything–only seem to be able to dwell on the fact that LaRussa put infielders in to pitch the late innings, and the Mets still had trouble scoring.
… I feel dirty from the final three innings. I feel dirty because Tony LaRussa, know-it-all Artie Ziff to our squad of befuddled Ralph Wiggums, stopped using pitchers and started using fielders. Well, to be technically correct about it, he used a pitcher in left, but a shortstop and then a center fielder to pitch. That’s what you do when you’re losing 13-2 or it’s the last day of the season and you promised Jose Oquendo he could play all nine positions. But no, Tony LaRussa was serious as death. He sent out Felipe Lopez to pitch the 18th and Joe Mather to pitch the 19th and, when one materialized, the 20th.
It didn’t work, it wasn’t going to work, but it almost worked. And that’s why I feel dirty, because WHAT THE HELL WERE THE METS DOING SWINGING AT ANYTHING FELIPE LOPEZ AND JOE MATHER THREW AT THEM? They turned the farcical into the nearly tragicomic. It wasn’t surreal because nobody could have dreamed up the scenario of Lopez, the grand slam hitter from Friday, pitching to Raul Valdes, the grand slam pitcher from Friday. Valdes gets on and then gets thrown out trying to stretch an infield single that was thrown away into a double. I’m sitting on the couch yelling at Valdes for getting caught. It doesn’t even occur to me that this is Raul Valdes who probably hasn’t touched first base since he was six, and the whole irony of Lopez as the guy who slammed Valdes the night before is lost on me.
This isn’t supposed to happen quite this way. Marathon games are supposed to be wild, but they’re not supposed to be this…let’s say bogus. Forty-third inning? OK, pitch infielders when you have nobody left. Score is 28-28? Pitch the batboy. But it was nothing-nothing and LaRussa had pitchers left. He had Kyle Lohse (unless he pulled an Ankiel and changed his line of work when I wasn’t looking). He had Brad Penny. Are the Mets so not worth his time that he was just throwing whoever had a minimum of one arm out there?
This line of logic–that LaRussa must be thinking about lameness of the Mets in choosing to use infielders to pitch emergency innings–is revealing, charged as it is with the kind of self-centered, self-loathing you hear on Celebrity Rehab. It’s revealing too of the profound differences between the way a contending team approaches an April game and the way a team like the Mets, with a manager desperate for any win to save a job he’s doomed to lose, approaches an April game.
LaRussa didn’t need to worry about this win against the Mets or against anybody. He’d take the loss if he had to to save a couple of arms he needs for the next couple of days. He knows he’s going to be in this thing in the end, so why throw bodies on the pyre in April? Manuel, on the other hand, needs every win he can beg, borrow or steal, so he emptied the bullpen last night even using his best young starter and a pitcher he must have healthy and pitching well for the rest of the season, for an inning of relief.
Hey, Mets fans, it’s a win, enjoy it, there may not be that many more of them.
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