Mets 3 Athletics 2

It’s games like this that make me wonder why BeelzeBud Selig found it so necessary to artificially juice up the offense to make baseball “more appealing”. Because if you weren’t at the edge of your seat in the 8th and 9th inning of this game — and through most of the extra innings, for that matter — then you’ll never, ever appreciate the game and you probably don’t enjoy watching great mystery movies, either. The masterful pitching performances by R.A. Dickey and Gio Gonzalez built up great tension — an eight-inning crescendo that came to an exalting release when Jose Reyes ripped a triple. Even though it wasn’t a score, we all knew that Jose would score — somehow, some way. And when Justin Turner drove him in it might have been considered anticlimactic.

Of course, the emotional rollercoaster took a heart-wrenching, stomach-turning dive when Francisco Rodriguez allowed the A’s to tie it up in the ninth. As a Mets fan, you weren’t happy, but as a viewer watching the plot twist, it was purely magnificent entertainment value.

In the extra innings that followed, there were about dozen moments that had us on the edge of our seats — be they strikeouts that almost weren’t, or drives off of bats that were erased by improbable dives. Just when you thought the story might end, it instead took a turn and continued to evolve.

And when the game finally ended, you were still at the edge of your seat, and as a Mets fan elated — while as a mere spectator of the storyline, you may have been mildly disappointed that the movie was over, because the story succeeded in ending at a point where you were hoping it would continue for just a few more minutes (or not end at all).

Who needs homeruns when the game can naturally tell a brilliant story like that? Continue reading →