Mets Walk-Offs And Minutiae

Regular reader Eric Orns wrote me after Thursday's one-of-a-kind Mets victory (one very reminiscent of those in 2006 with the aggressive baserunning and stellar bullpen work) wanting to know some more about first-batter Mets home runs. While I couldn't answer his exact question, some quick work with Baseball-Reference.com did wonders for my knowledge, and so I'll share. *It was well publicized that Thursday was the first time in which the Mets first two batters of a game homered (and that Jose Reyes set the Mets first-batter home run record). By my count, if you include two postseason first-batter homers, Jose Reyes' home run was the 103rd first-batter home run in Mets history. So in other words, the Mets were 0-for-their-previous 102 (exactly!) in getting their first two batters of a game to homer, with the last before Thursday being Reyes' first-batter home run in Game 6 of the 2006 NLCS. * Of those 101, 45 came at Shea Stadium and 8 occurred at the Polo Grounds. ...

So I fell asleep a few hours earlier than usual and when I woke up, was greeted with news that made me feel like I'd just entered bizarro-world. Look for a Rickey Henderson "Our Special Bonds" quiz in the near future, which won't be easy to generate because the volume of material to work with is so great. And the one good thing about replacing Rick Down. The MLB walk-off RBI count reads: Rickey Henderson: 21, Rick Down 0. That tally seems like a pretty appropriate number in this case. After all, we know Rickey Henderson is quite familiar with playing cards. Twenty one walk-offs is a lot. In fact, according to MikeMav.com , which tracks such things, it's the third-most walk-off RBI by anyone since 1957 (aka, the Retrosheet era). Though Rickey trails Frank Robinson (27) and Dusty Baker(25), he's done something that neither of them could- he had a walk-off RBI in four different decades, and perhaps he's waiting to make his next comeback in 2,010, to give him...

How funny, that once again, an important moment comes down to a centerfielder coming up, against a pitcher with a nasty curveball, with the bases loaded and two outs, and the home team trailing, but within reach, in the bottom of the 9th. Except that this time, the fates conspired against Tony La Russa and his allegedly brilliant decision-making. In the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I was wrong in my assessment that Billy Wagner should close out the 9th inning for the National League. Unlike the 3 Mets batsmen, who all did something significant, Wagner did a lousy job with what he was assigned to do. But so did La Russa, who may have forgotten that this time, it counts. His neighbor in Kansas City, Herman Edwards, would do well to remind him: You play to win the game. If you had taken a poll of the entire NL roster, or maybe even the whole National League, as to which hitter you'd want up with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the 9th, down by one run,...

I wasn't going to post this until Monday morning, but given what Mets fans went through on Saturday night (the first 17+ inning win since September 29, 1993 vs the Cardinals and the first 17+ inning road win since the 16-13 19-inning mess against the Braves on July 4, 1985) it seemed like a good idea to put this out now. You've heard a lot about the Summer of '77 from a Yankees perspective these last few days but probably haven't heard much about it from a Mets standpoint. That's because, in 1977, being a Mets fan sucked. The team went 64-98. The manager got fired. The best players got traded. There weren't many good days to be a Mets fan this season. A rare exception was July 9. It was Camera Day at Shea and the Mets won in a photo finish. The fun began in the 5th inning with the Mets trailing Steve Rogers 3-0 in danger of losing their 10th straight game. With the bases loaded, pinch-hitter Bruce Boisclair bashed a three-run game-tying triple, than scored the g...