This game was one of those games that makes you question whether baseball really exists. Hell, it makes you question who was actually playing left field today and what goggled righty took the hill for the eighth. It makes you wonder which Italian backstop came up bigtime, and which closer's head was actually bobbled during tonight's game.
It makes you wonder which thumping third baseman hit a three-run homer. And which lefty first baseman whipped one out on a blown call.
It's an ugly win. No doubt about it. The Mets' pen imploded, something that is a theme so scary, especially on the breaking news that Jon Lieber regained his form against on of the NL's top teams, throwing perfect baseball for almost seven frames, and having Adam Dunn's perfection-ending hit glance off a diving Jimmy Rollins.
It comes as a scare that the Braves got to Chad Cordero, in a game where the much-maligned Alfonso Soriano whipped his 11th homer over the fence at Turner Field, a total more than double that of David Wright.
It hurts to think about all of this.
But tonight, we can sleep soundly, with Victori Gonzalez's name replacing LimaTime in that rotation, even after a somewhat unimpressive debut.
All because of the Duck.
Yes, the Duck did it tonight, ladies and gents. He waddles up to the plate against flamethrowing Derrick Turnbow, the toast of the National League's reclamation project closers. The hero of all suspended Andro users. And the Duck hit one out. It immediately made me recall the one game that turned me against Willie Randolph.
You may call it the walkoff walk game. You may call it the Mike Cameron hit one really far off of Turnbow game. You might call it the Victor Zambrano is terrible game (but aren't they all like that?) or hell, you could call it that game where he pitched Looper and Hernandez for two innings apiece, burned them out for the series to the point where each of them was responsible for a loss on consecutive days. But where was Willie this time when the bullpen burned down? He was fighting for his pitcher, the Sanchez-man, on a night when he wasn't perfect. Corey Koskie, while watching the pride of Ottawa get smoked by Chris Drury, Henrik Tallinder and Jason Pominville, hit one that turned the game around. And sure, so did Damian Miller. And even when ChadBrad got the outs, it wasn't the same.
"Here we go again," I said.
Here we go down the path of games where Willie burns everyone in extra(neous) innings knowing full well it is suicide for the next few games.
But instead, the Duck had something to say.
BOOM.
And when Alpaca Farm came in, it just felt over.
Not like Life With Loopy. Just over.
And it was. And so it was.
The Mets stave off the Phillies for another day.
And after a Victori, there's always a Pedro.
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