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B-I-N-G-O

It seems that everyone these days is winning via the walk-off E1. The tradition has even seeped down to the minor league level.

In between the Mets both winning and losing by walk-off pitcher miscues, their Double-A affiliate, the Binghamton Mets took advantage of a mound miscue to beat the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

The May 5th contest was a 1-0 10th inning thriller that snapped a four-game losing streak. With the bases loaded and one out in the final frame, Michael Abreu's 20-foot chopper was barehanded, than dropped by pitcher Tracy Thorpe, allowing speedy Carlos Gomez to race home with the winning run.

That's one of a couple of walk-off parallels between the Mets and the "Baby Mets." Both teams got off to hot starts (the Binghamton Mets were 7-1 and winners of six straight before slumping a bit) and both had a marathon walk-off triumph. The Binghamton Mets version on April 9 lasted one inning longer than the 14-inning classic the Mets played last week. Jorge Padilla's two-out two-run home run in the last of the 15th allowed Binghamton to beat Akron in the first of two games the B-Mets played this season that lasted exactly 5 hours and 49 minutes (or 3 minutes longer than the "Grand Slam Single" Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS). The game would have ended sooner had Binghamton cashed in on scoring opportunities in each of the four preceding innings.

Likewise, the Binghamton squad has also had a clutch walk-off moment from its third baseman in a come-from-behind win this season. On April 11, the B-Mets rallied from five runs down to beat the Reading Phillies on a walk-off single by corner man Jay Caligiuri. So maybe yesterday's crushing defeat was payback for that.

True Metsochists know...As David Smith of Retrosheet does: That Tuesday marked the 3rd time in team history that the Mets lost on a walk-off E1. Both of the other occurrences took place in 1974- on June 11 against the Braves (Bob Apodaca uncorked a Heilmanesque throw to first on a sacrifice attempt, allowing the winning run to score) and on August 6 against the Pirates (Tug McGraw overthrew third base on a bunt, allowing the winning run to score)

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