Skip to main content

Tom Terrific Comeback

As he approaches 300 wins, Mets pitcher Tom Glavine should be thankful for a handful of instances in which his team really helped him out. Of Glavine's 292 victories, four came in games in which his team won via walk-off and twice, his teams turned a potential Glavine defeat into victory in that final turn.

The first of those instances was on May 7, 1994, against the Expos, a contest in which Glavine carried a two-hit shutout into the ninth inning. The problem was that as well as Glavine pitched, Jeff Fassero was just as good and he matched Glavine's zeroes into the 9th inning.

With two outs and nobody on in the Montreal ninth, Glavine finally ran into trouble from which he could not escape successfully. A double by Larry Walker preceded an intentional walk to Moises Alou and an unintentional pass to Randy Milligan (aka the scout who signed David Wright). With the bases loaded and two outs, Glavine got ahead of Lenny Webster, 1-2, but Webster reached on an infield single. Walker scored and the Braves trailed 1-0. Glavine got Wil Cordero out to end the inning, but his team still trailed by a run.

Turnabout turned out to be fair play though. The first two hitters in the Braves ninth went down, but then Fassero walked David Justice. The next hitter, Mark Lemke, bailed Glavine out in a big way. On a 1-0 pitch, he homered over the left field fence, giving the Braves and Glavine a 2-1 victory.

Glavine was the beneficiary of an even bigger Braves rally against the Pirates on April 28, 1999. In this contest, he allowed four runs in the second inning, but in a manner typical of the Braves, they came through for him in a big way. Atlanta cut the Pittsburgh lead to 4-2 and Glavine was left in to pitch all nine frames, as he was looking for his first victory of the season. The Braves provided it with a nice rally. In the last of the ninth, the Pirates coughed up the game. Chipper Jones tied the score with a one-out double and Andruw Jones won it with a two-out single.

True Metvines know...Tom Glavine has not earned a win in a walk-off won by the Mets.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...

The 'Duca of Earl (and walk-offs)

If I told you that the Mets had just obtained a guy who is a career .316 hitter with runners in scoring position? How about if I told you that the Mets just traded for a hitter who has consistently ranked among the toughest in baseball to strike out? Or if I mentioned that the Mets just dealt for a player who was selected to the NL All-Star team the last three seasons, with the last honor coming via a vote by his peers? So, although he's on the down side age wise, his throwing arm isn't as good as it used to be, and he doesn't provide much power, there are a lot of good things that Paul Lo Duca brings to the New York Mets. For example: He'll sacrifice his body for the good of the team The Dodgers and Braves squared off on August 23, 2002 and Lo Duca made an impact both on the start and finish of this game. Three pitches after being dusted by Greg Maddux, Lo Duca made him pay with a first-inning home run. The Braves rallied to tie the game, 3-3 in the ninth, but their bu...

Been There, Won That

The Dodgers had 19 hits in their loss to the Mets on Thursday night in a game that, no offense (pardon the ironic pun), was excruciating to watch for many, many reasons, none of which I feel like getting into at this hour. Willie Randolph summed it up in his press conference afterwards, saying simply "It's not fun!" I wonder if Tom Hanks, Alyssa Milano, Ray Romano and Kareeem Abdul-Jabaar (all in attendance) stuck around for the finish? I do wish to note briefly, again with the aid of Baseball-Reference, that the last time the Dodgers had 19 hits and lost a game, it was to the Mets. The difference between that game and this one was that this contest, of May 24, 1973, lasted an interminable 19 innings., with the Mets winning, 7-3. Rusty Staub's fifth hit of the game drove in the go-ahead run. Ken Boswell added an RBI single and Ed Kranepool salted the game away with a two-run double. Some other noteworthy anecdotes from a quick box score gleaning: * Like Thursday's...