Mets 5 Phillies 2

Take THAT, Chase Utley! Now you know what happens when you wake a sleeping giant!

The Mets mustered all the motivation they could find, inspired by a ferocious slide by bad-ass Carlos Beltran, and absolutely hammered the first-place Phillies.

Beltran not only dropped to the ground and got dirty, but his slide was in the general direction of another human being. Kevin Burkhardt reported that Beltran nearly took out TWO infielders on the play. It was an incredible display of interest, to the point where it almost confused the Phillies. Not only that, but the slide filled Beltran’s teammates with enormous pride and attentiveness, giving them the energy they needed to stomp all over Kyle Kendrick and the rest of those dastardly, dirty dregs from Philadelphia. It was a shining moment in Beltran’s career, and one that cemented his status as the team’s leader.

Excuse me for a moment … I’m getting verklempt just thinking about “the slide” …

Game Notes

OK back to reality. Beltran’s slide was hard, clean, and appropriate. But the channel 11 / SNY staff’s decision to position it as something inspirational was laughable. If that slide was the Mets’ answer to Chase Utley‘s from the night before, then this team is even more clueless than we thought — and more in need of someone to teach them how to play baseball than anyone realized. There was nothing remotely outlandish or motivational about it, aside from GKR and SNY’s response to it — which was, as with the Utley slide, a completely fabricated angle of importance. Maybe the idea is to build “toughness” and “hard play” as a snowball of a talking point that eventually explains the hiring of a “fiery” manager such as Wally Backman. Believe me, I’m all for seeing Wally as manager next year — but please don’t create some artificial platform to justify his hiring; he is qualified on his own merits.

Dillon Gee was once again outstanding, allowing only 2 earned runs on 5 hits and 2 walks in seven strong innings. Gee should be the focus of excitement in this ballgame, not the first time Beltran slid toward a middle infielder in six years.

Or better yet, let’s talk about Lucas Duda, who delivered a 3-run, pinch-hit double to put the Mets ahead. The postgame interviews would have you believe that drive was inspired by the Beltran slide, but I’d be more inclined to think that Josh Thole‘s bases-loaded single did more to swing the momentum the Mets’ way. Though, in the post-game interview, Thole did “admit” that “the slide” helped get the Mets motivated — after being handed a framed question to which answering any other way might embarrass the inquisitor. But hey, maybe the slide really did get the Mets going. If so, why the heck did it take 154 games to light a fire?

By the way, Beltran’s slide was kind of sheepish compared to that of Wilson Valdez, who took out Jose Reyes an inning before.

Just think, if this were 1960, the season would be over and we’d all be out of our misery.

Two streaks were snapped with this game: the Phillies’ 11-game winning streak and the Mets’ 6-game losing streak.

Next Mets Game

The rubber match occurs at 1:35 PM on Sunday afternoon. Pat Misch faces Cole Hamels.

From Wikipedia:

Sissy is a pejorative for a boy or man to indicate that he fails to behave according to the traditional male gender role. Generally, it implies a lack of the courage and stoicism which are thought important to the male role. It might also imply interests seen as strikingly un-masculine. This pejorative may be given to anyone as an insult. Several variations, such as “sissy boy” or “sissy baby”, exist and any term can become pejorative or insulting if preceded by “sissy” and applied to a boy or a man.

Sounds about right for a team that is offended by Chase Utley making an aggressive but clean slide. Utley was (and is) playing the game the way it was meant to be played. There was no malice in his slide, nothing “dirty” about it — other than the fact he soiled his uniform pants. Why people are even focusing on “the slide” as if Utley did something wrong is preposterous — if anything, it should be an example of instruction on how one is to slide hard but cleanly in an attempt to break up a double play.

The press has turned this slide into an event, probably because the Mets are so damn boring and uninspiring that they’re hoping to artificially create excitement. They cajoled lame duck manager Jerry Manuel into suggesting that his team will “take care of it” by sliding hard into Utley. Um … how about sliding hard into Utley ANYWAY, since that’s what a player is supposed to do on a DP attempt? David Wright’s response was similarly off-base:

“We’ll reevaluate the way that we go into second base. … He’s a second baseman. If he wants guys sliding like that into him then it’s perfectly fine. … It’s a legal slide. It’s within the rules. But somebody’s going to get hurt. … He knows the difference between a good, clean slide and a slide that’s late. … Chase plays the game hard. He plays the game passionately. But there’s a thin line between going out there and playing the game hard and going out there and trying to get somebody hurt. That’s a thin line. Nobody’s going to go and push us around. We’re going to have our teammates’ back. I think cooler heads prevailed, but we’ve got to let them know that over on our side, we didn’t appreciate it, and we’re going to go out there and have our teammates’ backs. … If he doesn’t mind guys coming like that after him, then everything’s good.”

Bad move, David. Because Utley did not cross that line. But more importantly, Wright has more or less promised that Utley will get taken out — possibly by crossing that “thin line”. Which means that if Utley does not get upended or knocked down at the plate, the Mets will transform from simply sissies to “sissy marys”; from Urban Dictionary:

Someone who chickens out of doing something after promising to do it.

It’s a lose-lose situation — if they don’t do something, then they’ve publicly cowered to the Phillies based on an imaginary issue. But if they do initiate something against Utley this weekend, they’ll look like whiny sore losers to everyone except the most blindly diehard Mets fans. It would not be unlike the situation we saw in Game 161 of 2007, when Miguel Olivo charged Jose Reyes. The Marlins were at the end of a long, frustrating, disappointing season, were down 10 runs in the ballgame, and thus Olivo’s act was pathetic desperation — not any kind of “grit” or “toughness”. The Mets are in a similar place right now, and knocking Utley on his backside will not turn the team into something they haven’t been for several years. Let’s face it — in addition to underperforming and lacking the talent to reach the postseason, the Mets would not have been described as a “hard nosed” team for a long, long time.

Though, if the Mets and Phillies do get into some kind of rhubarb, I’m liking the Mets chances — particularly with beasts such as Lucas Duda, Mike Hessman, and Chris Carter jumping off the bench.