Lefty Specialist

Nicer play David!

Nice play Murph.

Clippard dancing between the raindrops.

Two out, none on, I would have let deGrom bat.

Soler's ball looked like it was going out. Whew.

That's the kind of inning that usually happens TO the Mets, not FOR them.

Need a Cuban Missile Crisis here.

Holy shit, ground rule robbery. One run, maybe two. Fuckin ivy.

DeGrom keeps nibbling, falling behind, and getting burned when he has to come in with the fastball. Hendricks out. Don't know if that's good or bad.

Lotta pitches, though. There may be a Bartolo sighting tonight.

Stupid Schwarber reminds me of Stupid John Kruk.

They'll get to this guy. Now Jacob needs to be on point.

I'd like to get a bunch of early runs so deGrom can cruise. But the Mets are occasionally guilty of playing down to the level of the opposition. Let's hope they come out sharp.

I still wince a little when I see the replay. I jumped a split-second after Scully said, "here comes Knight and the Mets Win it!!!!!!" (CONK!)

Game 6 is a painful memory for me, quite literally. I'd actually seen game two in Shea, where Gooden got hammered by the Sox 9-2. My girlfriend (she wouldn't become my wife until 3 1/2 years later), who worked for Doubleday Publishing at the time, had tickets to games 2 and 6. My nephew was being christened in Toronto on October 25th, so I went to game 2 and she took her Dad to game 6. That Saturday evening found me in the basement of my sister's house in Toronto. It was a very old house, all wood and stucco. My sister had no interest, so my brother-in-law (a big Jays fan) and I went down to the basement to watch. He was mildly on the side of the American League, and as the game progressed he started teasing me with portents of doom. After the Sox went up 5-3, he asked me if I wanted to turn it off. I said no, I'm gonna stick it out to the end. After two out in the bottom of the 10th, I told him to click it off the minute they lost because I didn't want to see the Red Sox celebrating. His finger was on the button, ready to press. But then a single, and another and another, and his finger eased away from the off button. When the ball went through Buckner's legs I leaped up high off the couch...... .....and cracked my skull on one of the foot-wide basement crossbeams. [u:croilowr]Hard.[/u:croilowr] So hard that my sister came downstairs to see what had happened, and hard enough that my brother-in-law thought he'd have to take me to the hospital. I fell back on the couch, looking at the celebration through one eye, my head throbbing. I iced it the whole night. Meanwhile, back at Shea, in the bottom of the 10th, my wife started crying with two outs. Her father said she shouldn't give up so easily. And damned if he wasn't right. It happened so fast, and it was so loud, that she couldn't fully appreciate it until she saw the videotape of it later. So a weird night all around for us. We watched game 7 in her apartment that Monday night, with a whole lot less drama.

Wow, missed that first time around. I can confirm- Franco's approachable. He's apparently got a son about my son's age and he spent two minutes on his knees in a hotel lobby talking about Winnie-the-Pooh with a three-year-old while my wife and I were going 'holy shit'. We never got a picture because we didn't want to mess up the moment. When he said good bye, we told him it was a Mets player. He wasn't impressed by that, but he said, "He knows [u:3qnmkvlv]ALL[/u:3qnmkvlv] about Winnie-the-Pooh!"

Yeah, time flies. Saw Carl Everett hit a grand slam the first game he watched at 2 days old. He talked with John Franco about Winnie-the-Pooh at the Mets hotel in Boston in 1998 (he was actually very nice). Held him in my arms and nearly dropped him at Shea when Todd Pratt walked off against the Diamondbacks in 1999. Shook him awake on the couch when Endy made The Catch in '06. He ate too much stale Shea Stadium popcorn during the three-hit shutout that Johan pitched on one knee to stave off elimination in '08. He's bravely worn the blue & orange in Chicago, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Atlanta, Miami, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Washington. I have a picture of him at 6 sticking out his tongue and giving the thumbs-down at the Yankee Stadium Subway stop. So he's well and truly indoctrinated. But the Mets last won a World Series nearly 9 years before he was born. He's never known what it's like to be on top. Hoping he gets that chance this year, so he can tell HIS kids about what it was like in the magical year of 2015.

dgwphotography wrote: Mets � Willets Point wrote: I'm an optimist and the Mets being up 2-0 with deGrom starting against an average pitcher is about as good as it gets. So why do I feel so anxious about this game? As long time Mets fans, we've been conditioned to expect the other anvil to drop Fixed that for you.

The Mets might win the National League pennant some time in the next 36 hours. I can't even visualize this. The last time it happened, we were at Shea when Mike Hampton beat the Cards in 2000. My son was 5 and singing along to 'Who Let the Dogs Out?'. Now he's a junior in college, texting us Daniel Murphy memes like:

Let's make them fly this flag.

I'd actually heard the clips on Mike & Mike in the morning of all places, so I didn't hear the whole thing in context. But the point remains. Gary isn't convinced Murph is the best fit going forward. Easy to jump on him now, but during the season, Murph was a slightly above-average hitter with a modest amount of pop who was a below average fielder prone to gaffes in the field and on the bases. And Dilson Herrera and Wilmer Flores are going to need places to play.

My wife noticed the same thing. She thought the Mets ski caps looked red instead of orange. I agree that the color seems just a bit off on TBS. I also hate that the TBS center field camera is a little too far to the third-base side of things, so that pitches that look like strikes are balls, and pitches that look like balls are strikes. It's very annoying. Add to that the black hole of vacuous suck that it Cal Ripken, and it detracts from the overall experience. I wish Gary and Keith could do a simulcast.

Some clips of him on Fatcessa saying the Mets have so many options at second (Flores/Herrera, et al.) that Murph might not be their best use of funds. He said his game has holes which is absolutely correct. He pointed out the fielding problems and brain farts. He was rather blunt about it and the sportsyakkers are going off because there's nothing else to complain about. Murphy's playing like Babe Ruth's older brother and Ryne Sandberg rolled together this postseason, so it's instantly a scandal because everybody knows Daniel will sustain this HR pace for the life of a long-term contract. I mean, at this pace he'd hit 115 home runs a year.

Edgy MD wrote: Wonder what happened to the promise to work Matz in for an inning. Not complaining, but I'm curious. He got some work done in the bullpen. I think Terry saw the game in front of him and played it as he saw fit. Very, very happy that he got Reed and Clippard in for an inning apiece so they didn't get too stale. And even happier that they performed. Even Jon Niese worked out, getting Rizzo in a critical spot. It's kind of scary that it's all working right now. To beat Arietta and go up 2-0 with DeGrom in game three versus Hendricks, a generic pitcher at best, gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Boy, they're really wearing their big boy pants now. They beat Arietta, and convincingly.