The Accidental Victory

I don't know if the Mets won last night's game out of any sort of skill or means of outplaying their opponent, rather it seems as though they may have won by accident, or by some cosmic alignment of stars and planets, because it certainly took some means of divine intervention to will the Mets on to victory.

Let's start with last night's starting pitcher. Oliver Perez hadn't pitched in the Majors in 2 months, following a lengthy DL stint for general suckitude. Our hopes were not high for his return. I predicted that he would give up 6 runs on 4 hits and 10 walks by the 3rd inning and that would be the end of that. Not that his numbers were anything noteworthy, but Perez did manage to get himself through 5 excruciating innings in which he only gave up 2 runs on 4 hits, but, in typical Oliver Perez fashion walked 7. Somehow, he won.

The Mets hadn't scored a run since Saturday and hadn't had an extra-base hit since Friday. These particular streaks don't last forever, but they both fell within the first two innings last night, first when Daniel Murphy doubled over the head of a befuddled Manny Ramirez, who clearly does not understand the intricacies of the Citi Field Left Field area, and plated a run when Luis Castillo barely beat out an infield hit, scoring Jeremy Reed. But the Mets didn't stop there. They even had an extended rally in the 3rd inning, scoring 3 runs to give them a bit of a cushion, and plated a 5th run in the 5th. Predictably, they also didn't get another hit after the 5th inning.

Then, there was the Murphy play, which I suppose has already cemented its place in Mets lore as "The Murphy Play," one of those plays where your supposedly defensively challenged 1Bman somehow makes a play that defies all logic. I heard it on the radio first, and when the normally milquetoast Wayne Hagin raised his voice to a near-squeal in his description, I figured something good had just happened. After examining the replay online later in the evening, I still don't know how Murphy managed to grab the ball and blindly fling it behind his back on target to Parnell in a singular motion. This, I suppose, is why athletes are athletes and why I'm sitting on my ass writing a dopey blog that nobody reads.

But I digress. When these sort of plays actually end up going in your team's favor, chances are they're going to win the game. No matter how many different ways they try to screw it up. Call it an accident, call it whatever. But whatever it was, it went the Mets way for once.