Late Scores from the West Coast

Sometimes these West Coast games are a blur for a lot of us. Many don't even bother to stay up late enough to find out the outcome. I stay up, but listen on the radio, and often my attention drifts so that I'm only listening with half, or in last night's case, a quarter of an ear. The game is sort of some background noise to whatever else I might be doing.

I remember the first inning because it seemed like John Maine was about 2 more pitches away from unraveling into Scott Erickson. The Giants were just sort of pinging him to death, and there were some Wild Pitches mixed in there. By the end of the inning, I thought the Giants had only scored one run, but apparently they had two.

I seem to have a vague memory of the Mets tying the game later on. By time my attention drifted back to the game, I was under the impression that it was 2-2, and was kind of surprised to hear that it was actually 4-2 Mets.

This was, of course, just in time for Bobby Parnell to get himself into all sorts of trouble in the bottom of the 8th. With Putz unavailable, Maine was clearly pushed into starting the 7th, which you have to consider a moral victory considering how poorly he started out. But there were a couple of hits, or maybe a walk, I can't quite recall (again, drifting attention), and the Giants had a run home with the tying run on 3rd. But Howie Rose wouldn't tell me how many outs there were. All I knew was that Rich Aurilia was batting. Parnell struck him out, and by the tone of Rose's voice, you would have thought the inning was over. But it wasn't. And Edgar Renteria slapped one of those annoying infield singles to tie the game.

So, the Mets just went out and won the game again in the 9th, doing it in a manner similar to their 9th inning on Tuesday. Beltran doubled, stole 3rd and scored on a Wright single. Meanwhile, the Mets were just running all over the place against Bengie Molina. I thought he was better at throwing runners out than this? The Mets had already stolen 4 bases, 3 by David Wright, by time the 9th inning rolled around, and they swiped 3 more in the 9th. Not surprisingly, all 3 runners scored, providing the difference by game's end.

The game finished up just around 1am Eastern time, so most sane people were probably long asleep. Not me. And I'm suffering the consequences of that this morning. Nonetheless, I've done it before and I'm sure I'll do it again. It's easier to get away with it on a Friday night.