Paul Articulates – Revenge on the fish

I wrote this very late last night, as I had to wait a long time to see if 15 runs were enough to win a ball game.  It was, by one run, and the Mets finally got a measure of revenge against the Miami Marlins.  

If you are a Mets fan, then you have nightmares about the 2007 season when a very strong Mets team blew a seven game lead with 17 to play with an 8-1 loss to the Marlins in game 162.  You also remember the déjà vu moment on the final game of the 2008 season, when the Marlins once again beat the Mets to knock them out of the playoffs.  To add insult to injury, that was the team’s final game in Shea Stadium.  

One would hope that those bad memories were buried with the remains of the stadium in the Citi Field parking lot, but it happened again just last year.  A Mets team that was the best in baseball in mid-June completed their slow-motion collapse by once again losing to Miami on the final day of the season.  In none of those seasons were the Marlins a contender.  They were just hungry spoilers.

So this year, with the Marlins clinging to playoff hopes and badly needing wins to make up ground on the Padres and Pirates, the Mets came into town and swept the series.  Although it was not the final nail in Miami’s coffin, it left them 6.5 games out with 15 to play and three teams to pass.  Sayonara, fish.  We owed you.

I must say that the Marlins put up a better fight as the team that needed to win.  They came back from an 8-0 deficit, then scored six more over the last three innings in an attempt to salvage a win.  Unfortunately for them, the guys in the New York uniforms are scoring runs like never before, totaling 60 runs in their last 7 games.  I guess it helps to play loose, because this team had not shown improvement over the first three quarters of the season.

Despite the poor season, I continue to enjoy watching the young players on the Mets develop.  Carson Benge almost made the highlight reel by going high over the fence to chase a home run – he was just inches from catching a ball that was well beyond most right fielders’ reach.  AJ Ewing has shown incredible resiliency by overcoming a late-season slump with a huge series in Miami.  Both of these guys play their hearts out every game regardless of the standings.  

Now the team heads back to New York to play their brothers from another borough.  Let’s see if they can spoil some Yankee plans, too.