Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

I'm having a hard time reconciling the fact that Rickey Henderson is back in a Mets uniform, albeit as a "coach," with the memories of one of the most frustrating days of baseball I can remember- September 26, 1999. The second of what appeared to be annual Mets freefalls was in the midst of occurring that day. The team was in the process of gagging away a playoff spot having lost five straight, including three crushers to the Braves. Yet on this Sunday afternoon, my friend Barry Federovitch and I trekked to Veterans Stadium from Trenton to torture ourselves by watching the Mets take on the Phillies. I think the ticket sales windowperson sensed that we were not pro-Philadelphia people and decided to punish us, telling us the best available seats, on a day the ballpark was more than half empty, were buried out towards centerfield, with a mix of some rather grotesque townsfolk (no offense to the residents of that city). No offense was what the Mets had that day, as they were...

There are a number of things I like about Willie Randolph. I think one of them is that he's a guy who usually ends up on the right side of games like the one that took place between the White Sox and the Brewers on May 1, 1991. You may forget that Willie Randolph was a Brewer, but he was for one season and a pretty good one at that. He hit .327, played his usual steady second base and walked nearly twice as much as he struck out, which wasn't too bad for a guy who turned 37 in midyear. Speaking of which, this turned out to be a game for the ages, though no one seemed to know it when it began. It looked like it was going to be a White Sox runaway in the early going. Frank Thomas homered in the first inning and Chicago pounded out five runs in the first three frames. The Brewers rallied with a six-run fifth inning, capped by a go-ahead three-run home run by Franklin Stubbs. Randolph hit into what appeared to be a rally-killing double play in that frame, but was bailed out by a ba...