Boy, if Moises Alou had just pushed the ball a little bit more to the left of second base, we'd have had a walk-off for the ages, or at least one that would have matched that of the comeback against the Cardinals a year and a day prior (Carlos Beltran's walk-off HR off Jason Isringhausen, for those who forget).
It got me thinking about "Almosts." When I reference an "almost," I'm thinking back to a game most probably forgotten by most, by now, but one that would have made for a heck of a memory had the Mets pulled out the victory.
I don't have a lot of time and this is certainly a subject on which we could pontificate for an extended period (let's save our lamenting about Kevin McReynolds/Orel Hershiser in Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS for another time, shall we?). I'll toss out one of prominence to me and those who wish to add can do so in the comments section.
For some reason, September 7, 1987 comes to mind first, and I don't know why that is, other than that it's a game nearly 20 years to the day, which would have been a great win had the Mets prevailed. It was a particularly odd outing for Dwight Gooden, one in which he struck out 10 but allowed four runs, and put the Mets on the short end of a deficit.
You know how you've probably said a few times this year: "The 2006 team would have won that game." Well, this was a game that the 1986 Mets would have thrived on. The 1987 edition didn't. Yes, they managed a nifty comeback effort, down 5-3 against Steve Bedrosian in the 9th inning and Darryl Strawberry fooled the cameraman with a monstrous fly to deep right, one that surely looked gone off the swing. I remember my dad and I practically jumping off the couch on contact, because it had all the makings of something amazing. Had the ball left the park, it would have been a walk-off three-run homer. Instead, it landed harmlessly in rightfielder Glenn Wilson's glove, about 10 feet shy of the fence, if I recall right. Kevin McReynolds and Gary Carter followed with popouts and the Mets had a rather nasty, important-to-the-pennant-race defeat.
True Metlous know...Moises Alou has had three career regular season bases-loaded walk-off hits, the last coming off Billy Wagner, on August 5, 1997. In that instance, Alou's team was down a run when he won the game with a two-run single to centerfield.
It got me thinking about "Almosts." When I reference an "almost," I'm thinking back to a game most probably forgotten by most, by now, but one that would have made for a heck of a memory had the Mets pulled out the victory.
I don't have a lot of time and this is certainly a subject on which we could pontificate for an extended period (let's save our lamenting about Kevin McReynolds/Orel Hershiser in Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS for another time, shall we?). I'll toss out one of prominence to me and those who wish to add can do so in the comments section.
For some reason, September 7, 1987 comes to mind first, and I don't know why that is, other than that it's a game nearly 20 years to the day, which would have been a great win had the Mets prevailed. It was a particularly odd outing for Dwight Gooden, one in which he struck out 10 but allowed four runs, and put the Mets on the short end of a deficit.
You know how you've probably said a few times this year: "The 2006 team would have won that game." Well, this was a game that the 1986 Mets would have thrived on. The 1987 edition didn't. Yes, they managed a nifty comeback effort, down 5-3 against Steve Bedrosian in the 9th inning and Darryl Strawberry fooled the cameraman with a monstrous fly to deep right, one that surely looked gone off the swing. I remember my dad and I practically jumping off the couch on contact, because it had all the makings of something amazing. Had the ball left the park, it would have been a walk-off three-run homer. Instead, it landed harmlessly in rightfielder Glenn Wilson's glove, about 10 feet shy of the fence, if I recall right. Kevin McReynolds and Gary Carter followed with popouts and the Mets had a rather nasty, important-to-the-pennant-race defeat.
True Metlous know...Moises Alou has had three career regular season bases-loaded walk-off hits, the last coming off Billy Wagner, on August 5, 1997. In that instance, Alou's team was down a run when he won the game with a two-run single to centerfield.
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