Whacking The Scoreboard

Watching TV is typically a sedentary activity. Watching baseball on TV, especially a baseball game like tonight's, is far from that. As the innings go by with the score unchanged, the tension mounts and the viewer feels her heart leaping into her throat with every baserunner, every close play, every deep count, breathing a sigh of relief with every key out and sinking into despair with every wasted opportunity. After such a game is over, it takes a while for the adrenaline to dissipate, for the heart rate to return to normal, for the joy or bitterness to subside.

The long fly ball pulled just foul is almost always a cruel tease, leaving fans of the team on the field trying to tell themselves it was just another strike and fans of the team at bat harboring an image of what could have been that is likely to be replayed in their minds at the conclusion of the at-bat. To see a foul "home run" followed by one that stays fair in the same at-bat is nearly unheard-of. Yet tonight the Mets got two of them, one by a rookie who entered the night with 4 career extra-base hits and the other a massive walkoff blast off the center-field scoreboard that was the first Mets hit since the home run 8 innings earlier.

Had the Mets lost tonight, it would have been a painful reminder of the events of last October (as it was, there were constant reminders of Games 2 and 7 throughout the evening), a frustrating setback after a great weekend, and a game lost in the standings to the Braves. Instead, it was a thrilling victory, one that provided little moments of redemption (forget Green's walk-off for a second if you can - how about that diving catch?) and cause for celebration. The emotional roller-coaster provided a wild and thrilling ride. Now can we have a nice, easy win tomorrow?

Observations/Odds & Ends:

• As much as the late-inning heroics were reminiscent of last year, the temporary transformation of a mediocre slop-throwing lefty into Cy Young was a less pleasant repetition of the past.
• As much as Pujols is one of the best hitters in baseball and so on and so forth, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who got really, really nervous when he was intentionally walked in the 7th to load the bases for Spiezio.
• You know Keith is back in the booth when a box of Tootsie Pops is brought out and players are compared to field mice.
• What was Valentin doing with that bat during the victory celebration?b