IT’S on days like these when you want to hop on a Greyhound bus and go find Pete Rose in whatever Main Street card shop he happens to be hawking his signature, and you want to grab him by the shoulders and ask him a very simple, very direct question:
Were you out of your mind betting on baseball?
Because if you think trying to predict the future nine innings at a time is any less random, or any less arbitrary, than trying to figure out a roulette wheel, a Keno board or any kind of policy-slip number, I’ve got an empty hallway in Cooperstown ready to sell you.
“The great thing about this game,” Luis Castillo said quietly, “is that you always have a chance to make things up to your teammates.”
The better part, as the Mets proved yesterday, is that your teammates always have a chance to line up as foxhole guys, one after the other, whether it is a no-name pitcher throwing 62/3 innings of four-hit ball at the Yankees, or the erstwhile ninth-string catcher clobbering a key home run, or the closer whose first save you helped blow not 17 hours earlier zooming through a 1-2-3 ninth inning, clinching a 6-2 win.
You want to bet on baseball? Then you were never going to find an easier pick than this one, the Mets dragging their bloodied selves to Yankee Stadium, which was still shaking with disbelief from Friday night’s Alcoa Finish. You would have bet your house, your car and what’s left of your stock portfolio on the Yankees.
And by the end, you would’ve looked as broken as Castillo did Friday.
“I sensed an urgency on our part to play well,” Mets manager Jerry Manuel said. “It was no different for us than for Luis. We needed this game, it was a big game and this is a big series and I think we all felt that same urgency.”
Of course, it helped that
Fernando Nieve, making his seventh start in the big leagues and his first since 2006, looked as good and as poised as any Mets starter not named Santana has looked all year.
Nieve threw strikes, he showed a lively 93-mph fastball, he worked quickly, and he allowed only one loud ball all day, Alex Rodriguez’ second-inning homer that barely cleared the fence in left.
“We needed a lift,” Omir Santos said, “and he gave us one.”
So, for that matter, did Santos, who has not only developed into a shockingly reliable and productive hitter for the Mets (21 RBIs in 111 at-bats, or only 15 fewer than David Wright has in exactly twice the ABs) but has also become something of a big-moment showman.
He now has four home runs. One was the first grand slam in Citi Field history; one was a ninth-inning shot off Jonathan Papelbon; and now this one, off a struggling Andy Pettitte, that got the Mets on the board.
Which moved him to say, in all modesty: “I think that home run really set the tone for us today.”
Well, he happens to be right. The last thing the Mets needed on a day like this one (after a night like that one) was to allow the Yankees to jump on them quick and early, at a time when, despite their insistence to the contrary, they were most vulnerable. Santos and Nieve were the unlikely pair that made certain that wouldn’t happen.
And who would have had that parlay in Vegas, Pete?
Castillo had no legal tender resting on the game’s outcome, just his reputation and his slumber patterns. Before the game he admitted he hadn’t slept well, if at all, and so he joined a couple of battalions of Mets fans staring at ceilings all over the tri-state area Friday night and Saturday morning. Yankees fans were ready with raucous cheers when he was introduced and individual greetings of thanks before the game.
“Fans are funny,” he said.
And so is this crazy game. You figure it out. Crushed at night, resurrected by day. Running the nervous system gamut, all within 17 hours.
“But this,” Luis Castillo conceded, “feels better.”