ok, i’m breathing a little easier. the mets got it done last night, with a combination of brilliant pitching (from glavine, the one pitcher you expected to get brilliant pitching from) and one timely hit (from beltran, the one guy that you hoped to get a key hit from). it wasn’t an offensive onslaught, but beltran’s home run, the only meaningful hit all night, got the job done.
i’m breathing a little easier. but just a little.
tonight is the test. the mets are battling the cardinals’ chris carpenter, this year’s likely nl cy young winner, with john maine on the mound. maine needs to step up and shut down albert pujols, and especially the hitters in front of him, like glavine and company did last night. pujols never came to bat with anyone on base, and that’s what needs to continue to happen on a regular basis.
if john maine steps up, and the mets can somehow win tonight’s game, then i’ll nearly totally relax, because that means the mets will, barring a historic collapse, go to the world series. with a win tonight, they’d only need to win two out of five against a depleted cardinals team. they could even ice it, and not have to face carpenter again.
which would be wonderful.
and i’m very happy that it appears that detroit is going to the world series as well. i love it when small market teams with miniscule salary totals do well, and detroit’s success is a feel-good triumph, what with their losing 119 games a couple of years ago. coming so close to the mets record of 120 losses in a season, and not that long ago.
detroit is the one team in the playoffs that the mets could lose to, and i’d still be somewhat ok with it. i love jim leyland, from back in the day when he managed the pirates and i was a braves fan. classic playoff games between those teams. he, along with bobby cox and larry bowa, is the prototypical manager-type for me. grumpy, irascible, cranky, demonstrative, and unfraid to throw the book of research away and go with gut instinct. wille randolph, for all of his recent brilliant managerial moves, could be a bit more like that, for me.
and you gotta love detroit’s young pitchers.
anyway, i shouldn’t be looking ahead. first things first.
maine beats carpenter. let’s hope it happens, and this thing gets a bit easier.
