My whole life October meant watching the World Series whether we were in it or not, but after the NLCS collapse, I just couldn't. The immortal Fred Bunz and I treated Game 1 as just another Saturday night of aimless late-'80s cruising the highways and byways of Long Island. I couldn't help myself, though, from flipping the car radio from Johnny Hates Jazz to Jack Buck's broadcast from Los Angeles for the ninth. When Eckersley walked Mike Davis, I felt the same kind of "uh-oh," albeit a far more benign version, that I had when John Shelby's fricking bases on balls quietly harbingered doom a week prior. And sure enough, Gibson won Game 1, a moment that was pretty dramatic but dramatically overrated in all those Greatest Moments surveys. It was the first game, not, say, the sixth game with his team about to be eliminated with two out in the tenth and down by two. Plus, I'm still sore that hothead won the MVP over Strawberry.
When ninth-inning do-or-die situations arise this season, I hope Braden Looper is up for them. He was the most dependable Met all of last year and yet I still don't quite trust him -- maybe he was waiting for this year to start blowing games in earnest because he knew doing so last year would be a waste of time, what with nobody watching. I read his save percentage in 2004 was 85%, which pales in comparison to his predecessor's rate. That was thrown around by Armando apologists when we handed him to the Yankees in July 2003 in exchange for a tube of eyeblack and Jason Anderson.
Remember that whole delightful midsummer purge and all the "prospects" it wrought? Have you noticed that except for Victor Diaz, none of those guys have made the slightest impression or figured into anybody's pretend rosters? Not that dumping Benitez, Alomar, Sanchez, Lloyd and Burnitz wasn't worth it for the cheap composite thrill alone, but the eventual return on those trades probably tells us bulk veteran dross doesn't magically transform itself into future gold.
Diaz I'm looking forward to when the exhibitions start. A couple homers and it could start a Huskey-type tease and they'll have to take him north. Maybe then he starts in right if Cameron isn't healed or doesn't make peace with Willie's ways. Anything to get him on the team is fine. Once he's here, he's going to play, right or left (eerie that Bill Iannicello's plea to buy New Mets tickets arrived in the mail Saturday and didn't mention Cammy or Floyd; for that matter, Tom Glavine was demoted from star attraction to "control specialist"). One more young guy to join Reyes and Wright and Pope Carlos I would make me believe this is a team on a true upward trajectory, not just the same lousy Mets plus a couple of better players.
Yes, yes, I'm a touch overinfluenced by what he did against the Cubs last September. Don't believe what you see from a rookie in the final month -- unless it suits your worldview. With one two-out, ninth-inning swing, this Diaz kid rescued his team from certain defeat, shut up Chicago's vast traveling party (which comprised half of Shea that afternoon, ugh, ugh, ugh) and derailed a pennant contender's hopes. After failing miserably against everybody with an agenda the previous September, the Mets actually did what fourth-place teams are supposed to do when they face their betters. To the spoilers belonged the Victor.