Skip to main content

Alomar of the Same

Watching the Dan Uggla stonehands exhibition during the All-Star Game the other day, I couldn't help but be reminded of Roberto Alomar.

The Roberto Alomar is a Good Met era lasted maybe 5 minutes longer than our love for Bill Pecota. He became a shell of the player he previously was, both offensively and defensively as his career evaporated before our eyes.

The Roberto Alomar lasted about 100 plate appearances from July 4-28, 2002. In that 21-game span, Alomar hit .371, scored 18 runs and drove in 12.

Within that stretch were six games against the Reds, four of which the Mets won. In those four wins, Alomar was the ultimate pest, with 10 hits in 17 at-bats, along with five RBI.

The best of those games was a walk-off win on July 26 (a game witnessed in person by none other than Bill Buckner), a game that began with Alomar getting his 2,500th career hit in the first inning, as Merengue Night began on a happy note, with the Mets taking a 2-0 lead. Alomar drove in the second run with his next hit, a fourth-inning single.

In all, Alomar would reach base five times, via three hits and two walks, and though the Reds tied the game with two runs in the sixth, that would pose no problem for the Mets on this day.

Alomar wasn't given a chance to cap his perfect day with a walk-off hit, as he was intentionally passed in the ninth inning. Instead a fellow Mets struggler would do that, as Mo Vaughn brought home Rey Ordonez with the game-finishing run.

"It's about time," Vaughn said to the media of his success and he could have easily been speaking of Alomar as well.

For his part, Alomar had this to say, and the advice would have been good for Uggla too: ''Sometimes, you try to impress right away when you come here. It's not going to happen. You have to relax.''

It would have been nice if Alomar could have followed his own suggestion. Shortly thereafter, he went into the useless mode for which he'd become best known, scoring three runs and driving in only three, as the Mets went into a prolonged funk, from which they and Alomar wouldn't recover.

True Metomars know...Roberto Alomar's lone walk-off home run came with the Blue Jays against the White Sox on May 2, 1995. Alomar batted sixth that day, sandwiched between future Mets John Olerud and Shawn Green.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Best Games I Know: Phillies (Updated)

  The best wins against the Phillies in Mets history …   May 5, 2022 – Mets 8, Phillies 7 The Mets score 7 runs in the 9 th inning to overcome a 7-1 deficit and win in Philadelphia.   April 29, 2022 – Mets 3, Phillies 0 Tylor Megill and 4 Mets relievers combine on the second no-hitter in franchise history.   September 22, 2016 – Mets 9, Phillies 8 (11) The Mets tie it in the 9 th on a Jose Reyes home run and win it in the 11 th on a 3-run home run by Asdrubal Cabrera.   July 17, 2016 - Mets 5, Phillies 0 Jacob deGrom pitches a one-hitter. Only hit is a single by Zach Eflin in the 5 th inning.   August 24, 2015 – Mets 16, Phillies 7 David Wright homers in his first at-bat in more than 4 months. The Mets hit a team-record 8 home runs.   July 5, 2012 – Mets 6, Phillies 5 The Mets score 2 runs with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9 th to beat Jonathan Papelbon. The winning run scores on David Wright’s bloop down the right field line.   August 13

The best Mets ejections I know

When you think of the Mets and famous ejections, I'm guessing you first think of the famous Bobby Valentine mustache game, when after Valentine got tossed, he returned to the dugout in disguise. You know it. You love it. I remember being amused when I asked Bobby V about it while we were working on Baseball Tonight, how he simply said "It worked. We won the game." (true) But the Bobby V mustache game of June 9, 1999 is one of many, many memorable Mets ejection stories. And now thanks to Retrosheet and the magic of Newspapers.com , we have a convenient means for being able to share them. Ever since Retrosheet's David Smith recently announced that the Retrosheet ejection database was posted online , I've been a kid in a candy store. I've organized the data and done some lookups of media coverage around the games that interested me post. Those newspaper accounts fill in a lot of blanks. Without further ado (and with more work to do), here are some of my findings

Walk-Offs in Movies, TV, and Other Places

Note: I'm leaving this post up through the end of the week, a) because I don't have time to pump out something new and b)because I was hoping to build a really good list of entertainment industry walk-offs...so if you're looking for something new, check back on Monday or so... Of course, if there's a major trade or move, I'll adjust and try to post something... In the meantime, click on the "Table of Contents" link as well. It has been updated. SPOILER ALERT: Read at your own risk Caught the ending of "A League of Their Own" on one of the movie channels the other day and it got me to thinking that it would be fun to compile a list of walk-offs from movies, television, and other forms of entertainment. Here's the start, and only the start, as I spent about 30 minutes or so thinking it over Help me fill in the blanks by filling out the comments section. "A League of Their Own"-- Racine beats Rockford for the All-American Girls Profess