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1-2 Punch

One run and two hits is the minimum required for the Mets to win a baseball game.

The Mets have never won a baseball game with no runs. And they've never won a baseball game in which they had one hit.

Wednesday marked the seventh time the Mets won a game with what we'll call "The 1-2 Punch."
The other 6:

June 14, 1965: Mets 1, Reds 0 (11)
This is the game in which 20-game winner Jim Maloney no-hit the Mets for 10 innings, and finished with 18 strikeouts, but lost. Johnny Lewis led off the top of the 11th with a home run and the Mets would manage one other hit in the inning, by future skipper Roy McMillan, and prevail against a Cincinnati lineup that included Pete Rose and Frank Robinson.

True Metophiles know...The Mets hit .181 in the 31 times they faced Jim Maloney, but somehow beat him eight times (and lost to him 19 times). Maloney, if he lost, was often a hard-luck victim. The Reds scored eight runs in those eight Maloney losses.

June 21, 1965: Mets 1, Dodgers 0
Somehow the Mets won two "1-2 punch games" in a week. They prevailed in this one when their second hit of the game happened to be Billy Cowan's ninth-inning homer against Claude Osteen. The Mets only other hit was Joe Christopher's seventh-inning bunt (a bunt to break up a no-no!). Al Jackson struck out future skipper Jeff Torborg to finish the shutout. The Dodgers went on to win the World Series.

True Metophiles know...Billy Cowan hit .179 in a Mets career that spanned 156 at-bats.

September 30, 1966: Mets 1, Astros 0
We've written about this one before, a game in which future Astros manager Larry Dierker took a perfect game into the ninth, only to lose it on consecutive hits by Eddie Bressoud (the Astros thought it should have been ruled an error) and Ron Hunt.

True Metophiles know...Larry Dierker no-hit the Expos in 1976. Among those who pitched for the Expos that day: current Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen (two shutout innings).

October 1, 1982: Mets 1, Phillies 0 (10)
If you were going to title this one, it would be known as "The Terry Leach Game." It's one in which the Mets submariner held the Phillies to just one hit on a day in which the winning team managed just two. Hubie Brooks had a 10th-inning sacrifice fly to bring home the only run of the day.

True Metophiles know...Future Mets coach Luis Aguayo had the Phillies only hit, a fifth-inning triple, but was stranded on third base to keep the game scoreless.

April 14, 1988: Mets 1, Expos 0
Bob Ojeda might want to reminisce on SNY's pre-game tonight about his toe-to-toe battle with future perfect-game thrower Dennis Martinez. Each team managed only two hits, but the good fortune for the Mets was that Len Dykstra's sixth-inning home run was one of them. Ojeda was left in the game to face Tim Raines with the bases loaded in the eighth, got a groundout to end the trouble, and pitched a scorless ninth. Apparently there was no concern about Ojeda's pitch count.

True Metophiles know...Johan Santana has two 1-0 wins this season. Bob Ojeda had three in 1988, against the Expos, Pirates, and Padres. He also had a 1-0 win against the Phillies in 1989, accounting for his four 1-0 wins as a Mets starter.

June 6, 1998: Mets 1, Red Sox 0
The last of the 1-2 punch wins before Wednesday required beating knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. Bobby Jones made one run hold up, displaying the form that would lead to a postseason one-hitter, though he permitted three hits over eight innings in this one (two hits came in the opening inning). The only run of this game came in on a Wakefield balk in the sixth inning.

True Metophiles know...The Mets have twice managed consecutive wins at Fenway Park, a future stop this season. The first was in Game 3 and 4 of the 1986 World Series. The other was in 1998, and this game was the second of those victories.

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