Saturday April 17th, 2010 turned out to be a great day of baseball.
After coaching my son's team in their final scrimmage before our season starts on the 19th, (Anthony Cappetta: 2-for-3, with two steals) my son and I sat down at 4pm eastern time, to watch the Mets take on the St. Louis Cardinals.
Despite the fact that the Mets have been a disappointment so far in this young season, even after their own manager proclaimed that the team needed to get off to a fast start, something about yesterday seemed different.
Maybe it was the fact that the day before, Oliver Perez finally had a solid outing, his first in more than a year, even if the Mets did lose the game. Maybe it was the fact that Mike Pelfrey has been excellent in his first two starts, after having a terrible Spring. Maybe it was the fact that Johan Santana was on the mound. Maybe it was none of that, but something was different. For the first time in the 2010 baseball season, I was an optimistic Mets fan.
Santana looked to be on his game from the get-go. As the innings went on, and the strikeouts piled up, the memories of Santana's terrible last outing against the Nationals faded, proving that it really was nothing to worry about.
The Mets offense, on the other hand, continued to struggle.
Unable to muster a single base hit until the fifth inning, New York not only failed to give their ace any run support, but also made young Cardinals' starter Jaime Garcia look like the next Dizzy Dean.
Both starters would leave the game with the score still tied at zero.
The rest is now baseball history. The game went 20 innings. St. Louis loaded the bases twice in the extra frames and still couldn't score. The Mets hitters continued to struggle, as the team sported three players, Jose Reyes, Jeff Francoeur and Jason Bay, who went 0-for-7. Neither team could score through 18 innings or two entire games, and then both squads scored in the 19th.
Two position players pitched for the Cardinals, while a pitcher played left field. Finally, closer Fransisco Rodriguez was credited with the win, while starter Mike Pelfrey was awarded the save.
Crazy stuff, indeed, and through all that craziness, I remained optimistic that the Mets would pull out the victory.
Maybe I was crazy, or maybe I was punch drunk from watching a seven hour baseball game but I believed.
And now, I believe this victory could help the Mets turn there season around.
Is it too early in the season for a "turning point" game?
For most teams, probably, but when it comes to the Mets, a team that has seemingly been cursed since losing the 2006 National League Championship Series, convention goes right out the window.
Bottom line, the Mets don't win this game last year. Last year, the Mets would have found a way to lose, even if the Cardinals seemingly tried to hand them the game, as they did in the final innings yesterday.
Last year's Mets would have slept walked through the later innings, rather than battled. They would have committed silly errors on routine plays, made base-running blunders and played themselves out of innings. There would have been a sense of doom to this team and there fans, that would have only grown as the game went on.
Call me crazy, but yesterday seemed different. Even as the Mets offense struggled, and the bullpen got into jam after jam in extra innings.
I may be in the minority on this, but I truly believed yesterday that this team would find a way to win, and that is a feeling I haven't had with this team in quite some time.
Could this be a turning point for the Amazin's in 2010? Maybe, but it also could just end up being win number four in another 72-win season. Whatever happens, the Mets were able to prove one thing during yesterday's 20 inning win. If they are going to go down, it won't be without a fight.
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