Sunday August 23^rd 2009. Citi Field, New York

Philadelphia Phillies @ New York Mets

Bottom of the ninth: Phillies 9 Mets 7

1^st batter: Angel Pagan: grounder to first, error on 1b Ryan Howard, Pagan reaches 3^rd. 0 outs.

2^nd batter: Luis Castillo: grounder to second, error on 2b Eric Bruntlett, Pagan Scores, Castillo on 1^st. 0 outs.

3^rd batter: Daniel Murphy: grounder to second, Castillo on 2^nd, Murphy reaches 1^st. 0 outs.

Jeff Francoeur at the plate.

My mind is a flip chart right now. On each of it's white pages is laid out an eventuality, a way this at-bat will end, a way this game might end. The first page is the page I cling to, the page I have sunk all my hopes into; this page has Jeff Francoeur hitting a three run homer and me celebrating a Mets walk-off win.

I find when I watch baseball my mind races with these scenarios all the time. The home run is certainly the most common, I skip forward a few batters and think 'if he could get on base and then the next guy hits a homer...'.

So this is where my mind goes first when Francoeur steps up. I'm a realist though. I've watched enough unsatisfactory sporting endings that the self-defence part of my mind now tries to set the rest of me up for disappointment. I've also watched enough of Jeff Francoeur to know that a strikeout is a distinct possibility. But still, page one of the flip-chart is at the forefront of my thoughts.

The rest of the pages are kind of a descending order of events based on my preference. Somewhere near the bottom, behind even Frenchy striking out, is Francoeur grounding into a double play and killing this little slice of fortune the Mets have serendipitously slipped into just at the right time.

Yesterday was the celebration of the 40^th anniversary of the 1969 miracle Mets, the unlikeliest of World Series winners. The mantra of everyone who experienced that seemed to be something along the lines of "nothing is impossible, look at the '69 Mets!". Compared to that, scoring three runs in one inning right here is nothing.

What would make a Mets win even sweeter is the fact that Brad Lidge is pitching for the Phillies. Every time someone tells me they think the Phillies are going to win the World Series again I say "no, of course they're not! Look at Lidge! How can you win the World Series with a closer who's ERA is around 7?!". I was also very begrudging towards Lidge's perfect season last year (converting every save opportunity that was presented to him), "well, yeah of course it looks impressive but really it's just luck, I mean, if you look at his home runs to fly balls ratio...". And here stands Brad Lidge right now on the field in front of me, the tying runs on base, facing down another blown save this year. I knew his luck couldn't last!

Right from the start this had seemed like a lost cause. The sporting pessimist inside me, what a strange guy he is! It almost feels like he wants things to go badly. The starting pitchers today were Oliver Perez for the Mets and Pedro Martinez for the Phillies. Pedro would surely be out to show the Mets what they were missing out on by not signing him again this year. Ollie would be terrible, I was sure.

Sure enough the first time we saw Pedro was not when he stepped onto the pitcher's mound but when he came out to bat with the score at 6-0 Philadelphia in the top of the first, 0 outs. Ollie got as far as a 3 balls 0 strikes count on the former Cy Young winner before, bizarrely, Jerry Manuel saw enough and removed Ollie mid at-bat. Oh yes, just as I expected, another embarrassing outing from the man the Mets will owe another $24m to over the next 2 years. 6-0 down before Pedro had even thrown a pitch. Well, there's clearly no way back from here.

Except, Pedro looked mortal today. All of a sudden I was reminded not of the myth of Pedro - perhaps the greatest pitcher who ever lived, but of the Pedro I knew as a Mets fan, the Pedro who can struggle, the Pedro who's lost velocity, the Pedro who relies on his changeup. And the Mets could handle him alright! If only Ollie had been just a bit bad in the first inning! If he could have just given up maybe 2 runs!

So maybe I should be just enjoying the fact that, right here in the bottom of the ninth, we even have an exciting ending. Except, as I'm sure you know, that's not the way it works. We're greedy by our very nature as sports fans. Very rarely, if ever, do we take stock and think "I don't care how this ends, I'm just glad to even be here at this point". Being competitive is our bare minimum expectation, winning is what we desire, no matter how unrealistic.

So here is Jeff Francoeur, and there was a brief summary of what I was thinking as I sat in the Sunday sun at Citi Field. The pitch comes in from Lidge, Francoeur makes solid contact, he lines it up the middle, the runners are in motion, Eric Bruntlett comes into focus, a blurry haze on the horizon of my conscience. I just sit there, speechless.

You know what happened, right?

Well, I won't be writing on here for a week or so as I'm making a trip to New York to see the Mets play three games against the Phillies. This isn't going to be the pennant race extravganza I had in mind when booking the tickets in February but it will be memorable for at least one reason - I finally get to see Pedro Martinez pitch! Only it's for the Phillies!
Oh well, it'll still be good to see one of the best pitchers who's ever lived take to the mound (against Oliver Perez, what a contrast).

See you next week, hopefully with photographs and tales of Citi Field's eateries.

In the meantime check out:
-wezen-ball opines that this could actually be one of the greatest baseball seasons ever.

-John Smoltz's next start and whether he can be better than Beyond the Boxscore's pessimistic prediction.

-The Wright Stache enjoys some burgers at Citi Field. Queueing for two innings though, is it really worth it? The answere is probably yes, with the current lineup.

-Cardboard Gods is still pretty much my favourite baseball blog.

Junichi Tazawa made his much-awaited starting debut for the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night against the Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park. Tazawa had a limited number of starts at AAA before being fast-tracked to the big leagues, due partly to John Smoltz being DFA'd.
The 23-year-old pitcher out of Japan's college system had his first taste of the show on Friday night, where he gave up a walk of home run, snapping a 0-0 tie in the 15th inning to the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez.
Pitchers from Japan usually come to the big leagues with a number of years pitching already under their belt. Tazawa was different in that he had opted out of Japan's amateur draft in order to be signed as a free agent in America. For these reasons Tazawa's debut as a starter was one of the more unique that we will see in baseball.
The young man had a rought start, giving up 3 runs in the first inning, mostly down to Nick Green and Dustin Pedroia's inability to turn a double play. Tazawa, however, did not seem to let this shake him, pitching with remarkable composure, even when he was sat on the bench for nearly half an hour after a bench clearing brawl in the bottom of the second inning, which resulted in Kevin Youkilis and Rick Porcello both being ejected from the game (which actually spoilt what would have been an excellent pitching match-up between the two rookies).
Brooksbaseball.net is a rather awesome resource for in-depth pitch f/x data, from which I have stolen this scattergraph thingy that shows the location of Tazawa's pitches in relation to the strikezone.

Mid-game post: Mets are 7-0 up on the Cardinals, all is well...or is it?



ONE - Last night Luis Castillo injures himself falling down the dugout steps. People will remember Luis Castillo's 2009 as the year he dropped a pop-up fly to lose a game and the year he injured himself falling down some steps. Rather than the year he had a .400+ OBP in the month of July. This is a shame.

TWO - Jonathon Niese injures himself in the second inning and then injures himself a bit more by trying to throw a warm-up pitch straight afterwards with Manuel and medical staff looking on. Torn hamstring.

THREE - This is probably my favourite, due to the back story. Nelson Figueroa hits Albert Pujols with a pitch. Cardinals reliever Brad Thompson then retaliates by throwing a pitch at David Wright's head which Wright narrowly avoids. The rights and wrongs of these actions are not for me to sum up - I'll leave that to Gary Sheffield.
Sheffield steps in after Wright, takes a couple of pitches then stands at the plate pointing to his head and shouting at Thompson. His point was presumably something along the lines of "you don't throw at a guys head". Sheffield then stands in to bat and hits a single into the gap in left-centre field. Sheffield then leaves the game with a tweaked hamstring. Rumours that he walked off the field saying "my work here is done" are yet to be confirmed.

I've been ill the last couple of days. This would be fine except mlb.tv has been at best unreliable, although it did work long enough for me to see one of my favourite things in baseball on Monday night - a Daniel Murphy home run.
You'd have thought more productive posts would have come out of spending most of my time indoors messing about on the internet, seemingly not so. I'll write this as a filler now before I post something bigger in the next couple of days.

- This is my new favourite baseball blog. Check out the entries on Dave Kingman, be prepared to get lost.
- I hold the honour of being the first person to comment on Prince Fielder's first ever blog post. Hours after my comment Fielder was hit by a fastball thrown by former Met Guillermo Mota. Fielder then tried to break into the Dodger's clubhouse to remonstrate with the opposing players. NTIG's influence was, once again, felt around the world.
- Wezen-ball bemoans these dog days of summer. August is an especially long month if your team is 9 games out of contention and that trip to Citi Field you planned to watch two games against the Phillies looks like being not such an important series anymore. I blame Adam Rubin.
- Neftali Feliz is here! My fantasy team finds a middle reliever to take over from Latroy Hawkins. Fangraphs is impressed.
- King of bling come to lay down the evidence - L-Millz is back! This time in black and yellow. I used to have such high hopes for Milledge, I still have his baseball card on my wall in fact. Witness this recreation of a Lastings 3-run blast (complete with brilliant call from Gary Cohen) and see how Millz is so good his home runs can make the apple levitate.
- Finally, non-baseball related, but have a read of this superb interview with British cyclist Bradley Wiggins. Mark Cavendish's 6 stage wins, Armstrong's comeback, Contador's dominence in the mountains were all amazing but Wiggo was the true hero of the Tour de France for me.

Right, more soon!