WASHINGTON – For once, there was a game-long bounce to their step and a postgame lightness to their moods. The Mets have made a big deal about wanting it known that they do not feel pressure, are not feeling pressure, that the idea that they are at all affected by pressure is ludicrous.
And it’s all so silly, if you think about it.
Of course they’re feeling pressure, and it has nothing to do with how they played in 2007 or 2006 or 1974 or 1967. It has to do with a pennant race, with knowing that every game is not only played before television cameras but under microscopes, too.
“They’d better be feeling the pressure!” Jerry Manuel said with a wink and a grin, and he wasn’t completely kidding, because he’s right. September is a cakewalk for a select few. The Angels get that honor this year. It was the Mets’ turn a few years ago.
Now? Listen, pal, this is September. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to fill stomachs with butterflies and legs with lead. It’s supposed to separate contender and pretender, the ultimate Darwinian exam.
“This is what it’s supposed to be all about,” Johan Santana said after pitching seven splendid innings in a 7-2 Mets win over the Nationals that, coupled with the Brewers’ spectacular ninth-inning meltdown in Chicago, pushed the Amazin’s wild-card lead to 1½ games while staying even in the loss column with Philadelphia. “You’re looking at how other teams do but also caring more about what you do, and knowing how important it all is. It’s why you play.”
So how badly did they need a game like this? How badly did they need to finally muscle up on the last-place Nationals, throwing their platinum-plated ace at them, watching him cruise, watching their own bats make an early ruckus and build a 7-0 lead after five innings? Good Lord: How much did they need a ninth inning blessedly devoid of drama (even if there were a few sweat droplets forming on a few brows)?
This was the game that they needed all across the final two weeks of 2007 and never got until it was too late, until the lead was already gone and the hopelessness already pervasive. We talk a lot about the 12 losses the Mets suffered in the final 17 games last year, but the fact is that of the five wins, three of them were positively gut-wrenching.
There was a comeback win in Washington, and a rain-delayed win in Miami, and then an extra-inning win over the Marlins necessitated when Billy Wagner served up a ninth-inning home run. In those 17 games, there were exactly two breathers – a 7-2 win in Florida behind Ollie Perez, and the 13-0 game in which John Maine took a no-hitter into the eighth inning on the penultimate day of the season – after the Phillies had already passed them the first time.
When you have to suffer and bleed just to scratch out a win here and there, you can only imagine what the losses do to you. They needed a game just like this one last year, and maybe that is the basic difference: Last year, there wasn’t near enough stick to rake as they did last night.
And there wasn’t a Johan Santana taking the mound once every five days.
“It makes things different,” David Wright admitted, “when you’re out there and playing behind one of the best in the business.”
Santana will get two more starts from here -Tuesday against the Cubs, then against the Marlins the following Sunday, on the last day of the season, the last regular-season game ever at Shea, which is almost certain to have meaning attached to it. The Mets play the NCAA Tournament game now – survive and advance – and aren’t likely to get many more laughers along the way.
They’ll savor the ones they get. They’ll savor this one for sure. At least until they step into Turner Field, looking to survive. And looking to advance.