Mets 4 Padres 3 It is the sort of moment for which the Mets got Mike Piazza. And it is the sort of hit that had eluded him since coming off the disabled list.
Until last night.
After Armando Benitez had blown an eighth-inning lead, and the Mets seemed destined for a loss, Piazza turned destiny around with one swing of his bat – a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth to give the Mets a 4-3 win.
The Mets erupted from the dugout even before Piazza had finished rounding third base. They mobbed him at the plate and ripped his shirt, and the crowd of 22,581 that had booed Benitez so vehemently now cheered Piazza and urged him from the dugout for a curtain call.
He eventually obliged, and why not? His high, arcing shot 386 feet into the Met bullpen off Padre ace closer Trevor Hoffman (0-2) had broken a three-game losing streak for the Amazin’s, and averted one that seemed headed for four.
“It’s a great feeling,” Piazza said. “You go deaf from the crowd. You can’t describe it. The crowd goes electric, and to see your teammatese [at the plate], it’s just a thrill.”
Piazza’s shot made a winner of Turk Wendell (1-0). It also was the Padres’ first loss when leading after eight innings since July 24, 1996. It also broke a personal slump for Piazza. He had been just 1-for-12 since coming off the disabled list April 25 in Chicago, and he had admittedly taken some ugly swings. But last night’s was a thing of beauty, taking Benitez off the hook and lifting the Mets to an emotional win.
“It’s coming back,” Piazza said of his stroke. “You gotta trust it. It hasn’t let me down too long. You gotta trust yourself.”
In his first nine appearances for the Mets, Benitez hadn’t given up a run. He came on in the eighth inning with a 2-1 lead, thanks to Al Leiter’s brilliant start. But after walking Quilvio Veras to lead off the inning, Benitez surrendered a first-pitch RBI double off the wall in right-center to Tony Gwynn to lose the lead. Then he gave up another RBI double to Phil Nevin and seemed ready to lose the game altogether until Piazza’s heroics.
In a pitching duel of former Yankee lefties, Leiter had outdone Sterling Hitchcock. After giving up a run in the first, Leiter pitched six straight scoreless innings. But in the end, the Mets again just blew too many scoring chances.
They stranded 13 runners between the third and eighth innings, including going down with the bases loaded in the fourth and again the sixth.
Leiter had fallen behind in the first on Nevin’s RBI double to center. But the Mets tied the score in the home first on John Olerud’s solo shot into the home bullpen, and they added another in the home fourth on Edgardo Alfonzo’s RBI double to left.
But the Mets went down in the fourth with the bases loaded, when Rey Ordonez grounded into an inning-ending double-play on the first pitch he saw. And they squandered two-on, one-out chance in the fifth when Olerud flew to left and Piazza popped up meekly to first.
Still, Leiter seemed to be smelling a victory, and had more than settled in and was in the midst of tossing six straight scoreless innings.
Quilvio Veras led off the sixth inning with a bloop single to right, but got doubled up one batter later. Reggie Sanders smashed a line drive down the first base line, but Olerud elevated and used every millimeter of his 6-foot-5 frame to snare the ball, and doubled Veras off first.
Leiter had a chance to help his own cause in the bottom of the inning, but struck out looking with the bases loaded. Rickey Henderson popped to first on the first pitch he saw to and for the second time, the Mets stranded the bases loaded.
