Give 'Em A Spankin' Sticky

Well, I'm just dumbfounded.

After I thought the Mets were basically handing Thursday's game to Milwaukee by throwing the journeyman Brian Lawrence out there yesterday, the Mets shut me up. First, Lawrence held the line, allowing 3 runs in 5 innings. Then, the Mets bats throughly beat the Brewers into submission, pounding out a season's high 18 hits in a 12-4 drubbing in the rubber game of a 3-game series the Mets really needed to take.

It's not so much that Lawrence was overpowering, because he wasn't. His fastball barely touched 90, and he lived with his 80 MPH breaking balls that somehow managed to keep the Brewers off balance, save for some poor fielding behind him in the second inning.

A note on that—On WFAN, Howie Rose was busy recapping the history of how the Mets have been spoiled by slick fielding 1Bmen since the days of Keith, recounting such names as Magadan, Segui, Brogna, Olerud, et al, and he mentioned that Mo Vaughn had better range at 1B than Delgado seems to have now.

If I were Delgado, I would have walked upstairs and whacked Howie Rose in the Puss. But that's just me.

Wright's 5th inning HR started the slow, painful death for the Brews, who, by the end of the game were too busy bickering with each other than being concerned with saving face. The Mets basically hammered Milwaukee off the field on Thursday. Even my infamous colleague was impressed.

"How the hell did they manage to score 12 runs?" was his quote. This after about an hour of being berated about why the hell I write a blog about this team.

But somehow, someway, the Mets managed to find a way to make me look foolish once again for expecting imminent doom, and came away with a resounding victory as they head into Chicago, where the Cubs have had a string of success that was just about as unprecedented as the Mets have been over the last couple of days, to the point where the Cubs have taken over 1st Place in the schizophrenic NL Central. Go figure. This afternoon, we have to go up against Carlos Zambrano, who thoroughly shoved the bats up the Mets asses back in May. No easy task.

But then, what the hell makes any sort of sense with this team anymore?