RYAN Church hadn’t often heard the happy half of Shea Stadium’s schizophrenia – the part old players talk about with smiles on their faces, the part that emerges in prosperous times. A year ago, as a National, he heard how ugly terror sounds when it emerges from the grandstand.
And for much of this year, for much of the past few weeks, he has heard the same harsh chorus, only this time it arrives as friendly fire, the inevitable doom that descends when a late lead is lost or a rally is prematurely snuffed.
“This is, after all, a tough town,” Keith Hernandez said before today’s game.
But Church and the other Mets heard something else today, a splendid timbre that almost sounded suspiciously like hope, if you listened carefully enough.
“It was amazing to be out on the field today,” Church gushed after this season-saving 2-0 victory, which bought the Mets another day of baseball season, got them back to the last Sunday of September with a puncher’s chance at October. “It was more than a 10th man. Listening to these people . . . it wasn’t just that we didn’t want to let them down, we couldn’t let them down.”
It helped, of course, to have Johan Santana turn in one of the great pitching performances in the history of this pitching-rich franchise – a three-hit, 117-pitch masterpiece that immediately goes on the shelf with Tom Seaver’s 19-strikeout and Imperfect Game gems, with Al Leiter’s shutdown of the Reds in the 1999 play-in game, with anything from the Young Doc Gooden canon.
“I had no choice,” Santana said. “There was no tomorrow.”
There wasn’t. And now there is. Santana is the biggest reason, but as a team the Mets were sharp and precise, they played wonderful defense (gold stars all around to David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado in particular). And, yes, even the Shea crowd, which can be a bastion of negative vibes, stepped up during the Marlins’ lone threat, a bases-loaded jam in the fifth that ended when Santana coaxed John Baker to fly out to right.
So now the Mets have an opportunity to finally, and permanently, put some space and some distance between themselves and the ghosts and the goblins that have harassed them for exactly 52 weeks. They get a breakfast ball, a mulligan, another chance to turn the final Sunday of the season into something special, something spectacular.
“We’re walking on clouds right now,” manager Jerry Manuel said, “and I’d be surprised if we aren’t still walking on clouds tomorrow, as special a day as it’s going to be.”
All the old folk heroes have been filtering into Shea all weekend long. We saw Mike Piazza, Tom Seaver and Darryl Strawberry on Friday, and Jerry Koosman, Ron Swoboda and Cleon Jones today. Willie Mays will be here today. You may laugh at the Mets’ limited history, but it will all be in the house today, pressed between the pages of a National League city’s virtual scrapbook.
“I can’t even imagine how it will be in here tomorrow,” Wright said, “if things start to break right for us.”
Sure he can, because unlike Church, Wright has seen, and heard, how Shea can be the most exhilarating place in baseball and the most mentally exhausting, too – sometimes in the same game . . . or inning . . . or at bat. Wright was here last year on the last Sunday. He saw how loud Shea was at 1:10, just as Tom Glavine wound up for his first pitch to Hanley Ramirez.
And how relentlessly funereal it became about 20 minutes later, after the Marlins had slapped a seven-spot on the board, all but belly-bombed the Mets out of the playoffs.
“It’s the greatest day of my career so far,” Church said. “I’ve never played in a game that’s this important. I can’t wait to get to the ballpark. I can’t wait for the game to start.”
All around New York this morning, hope rises with the sun. The Mets have one more shot. They get one more day to maybe buy themselves at least another day, one more day to keep the wrecking ball away from Shea’s doomed walls another day. It may be a tough town. But if things break well today, it’ll show it can also be a grateful town, too.