Good night to be a Kaz. Ishii was good and Matsui was better, writing a storybook finish [1].
I shouldn't feel so confident so soon after losing five of seven, but I went about various household chores waiting more or less calmly for us to come back and grab this one. Maybe it was just not believing in Ramon Ortiz (who possibly had his Paul Wilson In Wrigley moment), or figuring the Reds would find a way to screw it up. I choose to believe it was remembering that among its quirks good bad and infuriating, our little team has a penchant for drama. But Matsui? In front of his tormentors? That's asking for a lot of drama.
(Additional tip of the cap to Looper, who came in looking PO'ed, threw bullets, and then offered Ed Coleman an uncharacteristically blunt and therefore interesting postgame interview. Yes, he hears fans boo and no, he wasn't too happy with Willie starting the inning with Nameless Koo. Him and several hundred thousand other Met fans.)
Oh, and the Mike DiFelice era began. This man has a ridiculous career [2], to which he can now add a one-assumes-brief tenure as a Met backup catcher. We've sure specialized in those over the last 10 years: Charlie Greene? Jorge Fabregas? Rick Wilkins? Gary Bennett? Joe DePastino? Tom Wilson? I'd half-suspect these guys are all the same guy, except that Gary Bennett did become a real catcher, Jorge Fabregas gave the most-irritating interview in the history of WFAN (he answered every question put to him with “No doubt about it…”), and Joe DePastino was tearing it up as a Long Island Duck before getting signed by the Blue Jays earlier this month. Amazingly enough, as a Duck he was a teammate of … Kevin Baez [3]. Now that's love of the game.