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Showing posts from February 8, 2009

This Rose Had Thorns

What was the best performance against the Mets by someone who cheated the game of baseball in some way? I'm not picking the two-homer, seven-RBI game from Alex Rodriguez on July 2, 2006, though that would certainly be timely, worthy and appropriate. Instead, I'm going to choose one from a game I stumbled across inadvertently, while reading about Joe Torre's Mets managerial career. I'm referring to that by then-Red Pete Rose on April 29, 1978. In that game, Rose, who was on the verge of reaching 3,000 career hits (the stories the next day were about his desire to do so at home), went 5-for-6 with three home runs against three different Mets pitchers. I must admit that this is one of the oddest box scores I've come across. This was a game that the Mets led 6-1 after three innings, with the key hit being Bobby Valentine's two-run single to cap a four-run first frame. Over the next six innings, the Mets were outscored, 13-1. Rose homered in the fourth to cut the Met