Jun
9
Shea Memories – July 28 and August 12, 2000
June 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I was bound to go to a couple of games the Mets actually won, but only when they were playing non-rivals. Such was the case when I travelled to Shea for a couple of mid-summer games. And both games were against teams they wound up playing against in the month of October, though I am getting ahead of myself.
Their showdown with the Cards took place with the Cards down a player by the name of McGwire. Ole Mac was suffering the effects of some injury or another, and pretty much was a non-factor down the stretch. At any rate, on this fine Friday evening in Flushing, the Mets sent their ace Al Leiter to the mound to square off against Pat Hentgen. Leiter was as good as usual, and the Mets would get all the offense they needed in the second inning. Piazza and Zeile reached to lead off the inning, and Benny Agbayani doubled home Piazza with the first run. Jay Payton grounded out to second to drive in the second run, and then Kurt Abbott (filling in for the injured Rey Ordonez, and soon to be replaced – the very next day, in fact – by Mike Bordick) hit a sacrifice fly to drive in Agbayani with what turned out to be the Mets final run of the game.
It would be just enough. Leiter gave up only one run in seven innings of work. In the 8th inning, the Cards got an unearned run thanks to an error on a grounder hit by . . . Fernando Tatis (now playing LF for the Mets in 2008). Benitez closed it out in the ninth, and the Mets scored an uneventful 3-2 win.
A couple of weeks later I returned to Shea for my second consecutive Irish Night. Once again they were playing a former tenant of New York, only this time it was the San Francisco Giants. This one turned out to be a little more interesting. Hampton took the hill for this one in a game that was interupted by rain early on. It was my first opportunity to see Hampton pitch in person, and it would be one of my last before he took his kids off to the promised land of the Colorado school system.
Mike Bordick got the Mets on the board first with one of his last moments of competence in a Mets uniform by homering in the third. In the fourth the Giants rallied, and in the process Benny Agbayani had a senior moment.
With the bases loaded, Bobby Estallela hit a flay ball to the left field corner which Agbayani caught. It being the final out, Agbayani performed a gracious act and gave the ball to a fan sitting in the front row.
Unfortunately for Benny and the Mets there were in fact actually only two outs. So not only did Jeff Kent score, but Ellis Burks managed to score from second. Luckily Benny recognized his error and grabbed the ball from the fan to prevent J.T. Snow from scoring and completing a bases clearing sac fly. Of all the people in the world at that moment, the last one I would have wanted to trade places with was Benny Agbayani. (All right, maybe there were worse off people, but you get the idea.)
I can only imagine what Hampton was thinking as he came off the field, other than perhaps “I wonder how much money I can fleece from some unfortunate suckers this off-season while the Mets can use the picks they receive from my signing elsewhere to select David Wright and Aaron Heilman.”
In the bottom of the fourth, Benny was the recipient of a rare act of fan generosity, as the crowd actually gave Benny a nice round of applause to boost him up. Benny wound up striking out in that at bat, but he would get a measure of redemption against the Giants, if a little later in the year.
The game dragged on until the bottom of the seventh, when Bubba (I still love that name) Trammell led off with a walk. He wound up in second with two out, and an Alfonzo walk put runners on first and second with two out. Felix Rodriguez uncorked a wild pitch to put both runners in scoring position, and then Zeile doubled to right to give the Mets a 3-2 lead.
Wendell pitched a 1-2-3 8th, and then Benitez had little trouble in the 9th (this being the middle of the season and all), and the Mets had themselves a 3-2 win, grabbing a 6-game lead in the loss-column on the Diamondbacks for the Wild Card.
But the night was not yet done. Once again Black 47 rocked Shea Stadium to close out Irish Night. I’m pretty sure they played the same exactt set list as they did a year earlier. In fact, I think Black 47 played the exact same playlist all three times I saw them live (the final time being at Connelly’s Pub in 2001). But they were still awesome.
It would be another month before I made it back to Shea, and it was Mike Hampton on the hill once again. But more on that painful experience next time.