Wow…I haven’t written anything in quite a long time.  I’ve been extremely busy working and just haven’t been able to get on here and post.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching & listening!

Well, with an uneven start, the Mets have been unable to wipe that crappy feeling we’ve all had resting in the back of our minds, just waiting for the opportunity to jump back into the front.  The Boys in Queens have had some struggles, both on the field and in the clubhouse.  I’m sure you’ve all heard the latest flap with Billy Wagner calling out the other guys, who were apparently not in front of their lockers after a loss.  Billy said, “Can somebody tell me why the closer’s being interviewed and I didn’t even play?” after that brutal 1-0 loss to the Nats where Beltran got doubled off third, and didn’t even try to get back, in the 9th.  Let’s face it, if you can’t beat the Nats who were coming of an awful series with the Marlins, you’re not going to go far.  Those are the teams you need to beat.  The Mets had a closed door meeting, on Friday.  There were about 9 players who spoke and cleared the air.  Delgado also had a one-on-one meeting with Billy, to sort out their differences.  Some people say that a good clubhouse atmosphere breeds winning.  Others say that winning breeds a good clubhouse atmosphere.  What do you guys think?

Well, with the rainout and a chance for the Mets to marinate after their closed door meetings, they had their ace, Johan Santana, go out and throw a good game where he kept the Mets in the ballgame.  If the offense showed up, you knew the Mets had a better than average chance of winning.  Granted, Johan was bitten by the long ball — something he’s had trouble with all year, but he still got the job done.  I am tired of people talking about how Johan hasn’t been that great.  Think about it — has there been one game where he hasn’t given the Mets a shot to win?  Nope.  Yeah, his Shea debut was probably his worst outing of the year, but the Mets still had a shot to win when he left.  More than a few times, the pen coughed it up on games where he left with slim leads.  He should have a better record than does.  Let’s see how he ends the year before we boo him, or call up sports talk stations with talk of how he’s not going to be good, OK?  Let’s see how he is in his second year, too.  Playing in NY takes a bit of an adjustment.  He’s human, just like everyone else on that field and he feels pressure, I’m sure.  He knows how much he’s being paid, he knows what the fans expect and he’ll probably need a little time to resolve that in his mind.  See Carlos Beltran as an example…

Well, all in all, it was a good win.  Nice to see that the Shea faithful made their way over into Yankee Stadium as it was pretty loud with Mets chants.  I heard a nice ‘Jose’ chant during the AB where he hit a homer to right.  The Let’s go Mets chants were also particularly loud.

Ollie goes tonight against the Yankee ace, Wang.  That gives the Yankees a decided advantage.  If Ollie can go back to the Ollie of old and keep these guys off balance, it could be the start of the Mets roll.  They need to rattle of an 8 of 10 record and leave the .500’s behind.  We’ll see!  Hey — on the bright side, with the DH in effect, he won’t be able to give up a hit to the pitcher and then totally implode

LET’S GO METS!

Well, that was a winable game…

Jose had a shot at finishing off Clippard with two outs, 3-1 count and the bases loaded but he looked to be too amped up.  Popped up.  Great.  The clear turning point of the game.  It was a little disappointing to see Johnny Maine have his third rough start in a row.  He looks like he did last year, constantly falling behind batters.

It would’ve been nice to sweep, not because of the Yanks were in, but more because of the fact that the Braves lost today.  Ok…it would’ve been nice to sweep the Yanks, but I am more concerned about the Braves.  They look to be slowing down a little and I hope the Mets can come into town and put some distance between themselves and the second place Braves.

OK guys, take this next day off to get rested and go whoop those Braves!

(Photo Daily News 5/20)

OK…round two is over and I am sure you all know what happened.

I arrived at Shea at a little after 1 PM.  I was anxious to hear the opening of the Mike and the Mad Dog show, live from Shea.  I knew it would be good as Ollie Perez pitched well enough to shut up both Mike and Chris.  It was an overcast day, to start (rained a lot on the way down) and I came prepared for a flood.  We made our way into Shea and grabbed our window clings after being frisked and tickets scanned.  Having been at a Subway Series game before, I knew what it would be like — or so I thought…  The last Yankee-Met game I attended was the ‘02 game with Clemens having to bat in Shea.  That was wild, for obvious reasons.  It was cool, not just because of the game, but I also had better seats than both Adam Sandler (about 10 rows behind me) and Jordana Brewster (4 rows back)… She was dating Jeter at the time.  Hey, why not. 
Anyway, back to the game.  This had a different feel than the ‘02 series, for some obvious reasons — the Mets are the better TEAM — clearly.  In ‘02, you were just hoping that the Mets didn’t get blown out.  Now, you were hoping that Glavine could be OK, ’cause you know they’d get to Rasner.  They’d already won the game that had a slight edge to the Yanks, the opener with Pettitte v. Perez game, and not because of stuff, but more because of poise.  I knew that Perez would be pumped up with the crowd and the fact that he was pitching the opener of the Subway Series and you figure, as long as he gets through the first inning unscathed, he’d have a shot.  Pettitte has pitched a million big games but he doesn’t scare you as Perez has as good, if not better stuff – it’s just a matter of him harnessing it that particular day.  The weather was horrible for baseball, and that showed with Glavine’s 1st and 2nd innings of work.  He wasn’t really sharp, but I am sure the rain and temperature had something to do with it.  When they got out of it, only giving up one run, you knew the Mets would get it right back at the bottom of the inning.  Jose  lines one off of the glove of El Capitan, Derek Jeter.  That was the spark.  Jose will rattle veteran pitchers — Rasner is clearly not that, only having a few starts at the big league level.  Jose does what Jose does and steals 2nd.  Endy, who was the hero of game one, comes up and lines a ball right back through the box and gets Rasner’s pitching hand, beating it out for an infield hit.  I really didn’t want Rasner to be hurt, for two reasons.  First, I don’t want to see anyone get hurt — I don’t care what team they play for.   Second, I knew they’d get to Rasner.  They already had the pressure on, with Jose at 3rd and Super Endy at 1st…Rasner would’ve wilted under the pressure of the tying run at 3rd with no outs.  He knows that the Yanks probably won’t give him much run support and he would have been forced to focus on Reyes and Endy, 2 & 3 of the 3 fastest guys on the team being on base.  Rasner threw a couple of pitches and hopped off the mound.  Mike Meyers comes in and it was all Mets from then on….well, until the 7th.

D. Wright hits a 460 ft. bomb over the picnic area into the construction site that is Citifield.  Wow — it was an absolute NO DOUBTER.  Even the Yankee fan next to me knew it off of the bat.  He buried his head into his folded arms.  It was a rocket.  3-1 Mets.

I noticed a difference in the tone of the Yankee fan this year.  It’s something that is so different from anything I’ve heard in the past 12 years.  They’re ALMOST humble.  Almost.  Of course, I still received my yearly lesson on the 26 World Championships and the like, but when the game started and the Mets came to bat, I think even the Yankee fan could feel it would not be their day.  The Yankees are clearly not enjoying the game, and that is understandable as they’re losing.  Let’s face it, the Mets are winning and that promotes good feelings and smiles all around.  The Yankees are losing.  They’re long faced and disappointed with their season so far.  They see it could be slipping away from them and there’ll be hell to pay if they don’t make the playoffs with this payroll.  It’s tough to break the spell.  It could take a comeback win (like yesterday almost was) to snap them out of it.

Wright comes back up in the 3rd and pops another 2 run homer off of Johnny Damon’s glove.  He then scared the pants off of the Yankee pitching staff.  I had to rub my eyes — I thought maybe Pujols was up there, getting 3 IBB’s after that.  I mean come on, Joe — Myers was out after that…were you really that scared of DW?  The answer is, yes.  That was good to see.

Speaking of being scared, Schoeneweis is a horror show.  I mentioned to my fellow Met fans, when I saw him come in from the pen, that I was not happy to see him.  I guess it’s not news worthy as, if you’ve watched any of his innings ptiched, you’d know what I was feeling when I saw him jogging past us.

All in all, even though it was pouring rain from about 7PM on, and the game lasted about 3 and a hlaf hours, it was great!  Billy shut the door in the 9th, after opening and closing it a few times :)  He’s been pretty good — better than pretty good, he’s been great.  No, he’s been perfect.

I had a great time.  My Mets get to go for the sweep tonight with Johnny Maine on the mound against, yet another Yankee rookie, Tyler, the Yankee, Clippard.  It’s a crap shoot.  The Mets have an advantage on paper.  Maine hasn’t been sharp his last two outings, but he’s developed into a pitcher who is starting to look like he can give you a decent outing without his good stuff.  Tyler Clippard is an unknown to the Mets and they have, in the past, been shut down by pitchers that they haven’t seen before.  This is a different circumstance than those previous occasions.  This guy’s pitching for a team on a horrible slide, looking to him to be the stopper.  He’s making his FIRST ML appearance on national tv (ESPN), in enemy territory, and in the pressure cooker that is NY baseball.  Oh yeah, and there’s the hostile crowd with their brooms out.

Should be fun!
LET’S GO METS!

Pettitte pitched well, but didn’t get the support he needed, due to a great job by Perez.
Super Endy comes through with a homer to put the Mets on top for good.
Billy nails it down in the ninth to give Perez the W and place the Mets in first by 2 and a half games.

I’ll be there tomorrow! Glavine’s on the hill!
Let’s go Mets!

Well, there could be a window of opportunity to get the first game of the Subway Series ‘07 - Round 1 in tonight.  There is a 60% chance of rain tonight in Flushing.  The Weather Channel lists tonight’s weather as “Showers early, then cloudy overnight. Low of 49F.  Winds N at 10 to 20 MPH.  Chance of rain 60%.  Rainfall around a 1/4 of an inch.”

Tomorrow’s outlook is not a ton better, with intermittent showers.

More to follow.