ENDY Chavez made a play for the ages and a play for the Agees. And it was not enough to save the Mets’ season.
The Mets pretty much shut down Albert Pujols over seven games and still could not advance, though the rest of the Cardinals lineup looked like something the Kansas City Royals dragged in.
The Mets were the NL’s best team from April to September, but not here in October – largely because their offense played dead for the second time in the NLCS against Jeff Suppan, who was just the kind of righty they had spent April to September ascending to the top of the National League against.
The Mets are going to have regrets. Huge regrets.
“I don’t know how you can be happy about getting this far when the next step is just around the corner,” Billy Wagner said a few feet away from clubhouse televisions covered in plastic to protect them from a champagne shower that never came.
The Mets projected as better than the Cardinals in just about every category, especially when you added the unfathomable Game 6-7 work of John Maine and Perez. Yet the Cardinals are advancing to a Motown Showdown.
It is St. Louis that is World Series bound to face the Tigers. It is the Mets who have to ponder how moments of pure magic in Game 7 provided by Perez and Chavez, and the raucous encouragement of a Shea full house failed to translate into the fifth NL pennant in team history.
The Cardinals won 3-1 last night in a Game 7 not decided until Carlos Beltran looked at a called third strike from Adam Wainwright with the bases loaded and two outs in the ninth.
“I had a feeling we were going to pull it out like we did all year,” David Wright said. “But it wasn’t in the cards.” Actually, it was. The Cards won even after the Mets had reached what had been the best part of their team, their bullpen. Lighthitting Yadier Molina hit a two-run, tiebreaking homer with one out in the ninth off an Aaron Heilman changeup that stayed up.
All the energy and noise drained from Shea except for a squealing section of Cardinals officials sitting next to the visiting dugout.
So after all the worry about Maine and Perez, it was actually the two strengths of the team – bullpen and offense – that sent the Mets into the offseason. Heilman put the Mets behind in the top of the ninth and a fizzled rally in the bottom half left the Mets 2-for-14 with men on base against Suppan, Randy Flores and Wainwright.
The Mets ultimately survived the loss of the seemingly indispensable Pedro Martinez and also Orlando Hernandez. But the disappearance by the lineup is going to haunt this franchise until, at least, pitchers and catchers in February.
The Mets defense had done its part, namely Chavez. His elbow was fence-high when he snared what would have been a one-out, two-run homer by Scott Rolen in the sixth.
He said his biggest worry was that his glove, with the ball in the webbing, was going to fall over the wall. He held on for the most meaningful, majestic catch by a Mets outfielder since Tommie Agee and Ron Swoboda in the 1969 World Series.
“It seemed destiny was on our side,” Wagner said. “But it is a cruel sport sometimes.” It is. Chavez’s catch went from folklore to footnote. The Mets went from NL dominance to what could have been. This was reminiscent of the 82-win 1973 Mets upending the Big Red Machine in the NLCS, just the Mets were on the wrong end this time, getting upset by the 83-win Cardinals in their own park.
In 2006, it turned out this was not the time or the team, as the Mets slogan suggested.
This was ultimately devastation. The Cardinals were replete with flaws and limped into the playoffs in worse shape than Cliff Floyd.
Yet they are moving to the World Series, great Chavez catch and all, wonderful work by Perez notwithstanding.
The champions of April to September ended in misery in October.
