Hello Fans,
We’ve finally seen it. After fifty years of playing games, the New York Mets have finally pitched a no-hitter. Johan Santana, just one year after major shoulder surgery, completed that daunting task that the likes of Dwight “Dr. K” Gooden, the Nolan “Ryan Express”, Tom “Terrific” Seaver, Ron Darling, David “Coney” Cone, Jerry Koosman, nor Al Leiter could do in their due times in a Mets uniform. AND it was an impressive outing in front of the home town fans that featured a career-high 134 pitches from Santana against the best hitting team in the senior circuit, the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards are tops in homers, total bases, batting average, and OPS. He couldn’t have picked a tougher team to go oh-no-you-don’t on nor could he have done it at a better time for the relief of Mets fans, considering that their rival is the defending World Series Champion. And the game was completed by a swinging strikeout of Fall Classic MVP, David Freese. While I’m at it, I should mention the complete game shutout thrown at the Cards the very next day by knuckleballer R. A. Dickey just for fun. Impressive as well!
The game included a ridiculous catch in left-field by Mike Baxter, who probably took some years off of his career after ramming shoulder first into the wall. He’s now on the DL for up to six weeks with torn rib cartilage and collarbone damage. I’m sure he’d do it again for a no-hitter, especially considering the fact that he played high school baseball in Queens, New York! Go figure. Him and Dewayne Wise, among others, are now linked together on the list of guys who made THAT defensive play during a historical pitching gem (see Mark Buerhle, perfect game, 2009).
Here are one or two not-so-quick thoughts on the controversial swing by Cardinal, and former Met, Carlos Beltran in the sixth inning that was called foul despite that the ball went over the bag and grabbed a small chunk of chalk upon landing. I didn’t even want to address this, but now feel it’s necessary due to some unrealistic commentary out there. All I hear is replay, replay, replay! And why? Because just like I did, we always want to try and re-play sports in a perfect world on d.v.r. where nothing is missed. Well, I have news for ya, that ain’t reality. This isn’t fantasy baseball, and no one should be betting the farm on the results of any games. And we don’t have time to make real world sports completely free of human error on judgement calls by umps on split-second plays. And I’m not afraid of three hour baseball games either. I’m just getting at the point of there being hundreds of replayable items to be reviewed if we wanted to live in a vacuum. Can’t and won’t happen.
Anyway, that ball on this play was CRUSHED! It wasn’t a bad call. It was more simply just a wrong call as unbelievably advanced camera work shows. Yes, a 50-50 call went in favor of Santana and that would have made it a one-hitter. BUT, this wasn’t a video game, and Beltran, one of the game’s best hitters this year (and in others in the past) still wasn’t out. That’s right, Santana had to pitch to him again, and he made good on it. Just as commisioner Bud Selig did not award Armando Galarraga his perfect game after a missed call on the 27th out at first base last year, we have to acknowledge Santana’s feat as being just as great as the other 269 MLB no-hitters. No need for an un-original asterisk like some St. Louis papers resorted to in headlines or any mention of the over-used word, tainted. Johan Santana=No-No. Forever. Period.
O.K., now that that is addressed, let’s move on to the fun part of the game. Some stats. After watching Santana lock it down in the 9th inning on my d.v.r. on MLB Channel, (a different game was on, but I fell asleep late on a Friday evening before waking to the trumping action at Citi Field) I could not help but notice what are to me some eye-popping numbers about the game. I think this game stands out in that aspect. Let’s see if you agree. Sadly, the Mets (and all of baseball) recently lost their legendary signal-caller Gary Carter, who we all recognized as a Hall of Fame catcher and person. We also know he wore jersey number 8. So here you go: The Mets’ first no-hitter was thrown just 20 games after their 8 thousandth contest, Santana’s aforementioned 134th pitch was good for his 8th strikeout of the game in which the Mets had 8 hits and won by a score of 8 to nothing. AND, the digits of 134 add up to, of course, 8! I’m not saying the game was meant to be, but it sure seems like somebody put their personal touch on it. Only in baseball. Great stuff, congrats Johan.
Later Fans.