Mets 7 D-Backs 6
Nearly 40,000 diehards pried themselves away from the Knick game to come out to Shea on a damp, blustery afternoon, and the Mets made it worth their while. The Amazin’s had saved the drama Saturday for just the ninth inning; but yesterday’s tilt was a classic from beginning to end, right up until Derek Bell stroked his game-winner in the ninth.
When Bell’s slicing RBI single tailed just out of reach of a diving Travis Lee in right, Joe McEwing came around from second to score the final run of a 7-6 win over Arizona.
Led by McEwing (3-for-4, two doubles and a home run), they’d chased Randy Johnson with his worst start of the year. They had trailed four times, and rallied four times, the last bringing the 38,826 fans to their feet and bringing the Amazin’s storming out of the dugout.
Bell thrust his hands into the air; and Robin Ventura – who’d ignored his sore thigh to tie the game at six with his eighth-inning, pinch-hit solo home run – was the first to reach Bell and leap into his arms. The rest of the Mets mobbed him halfway to second, celebrating not only a gutsy win but a stunning sweep, all three by a single run.
“I saw the ball tailing away, but I stayed with it and went the other way. I saw it slicing away from [Lee] and I knew I had a chance,” said Bell, who fought off a full-count pitch from sidearmer Byung-Hyun Kim (2-2).
“I was telling these guys it’s only a matter of time before we start clicking, before we got big hits. We just had to get through that spell and wait it out. That’s what I love about this team; we never give up. It’s big any time you do things like this. It helps morale to beat Randy Johnson. We got good hits. We didn’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s Randy Johnson out there.’ We battled.”
That they did; and just like last year’s NLDS, the Mets pummeled Johnson. He fanned a season-high 13, but gave up eight hits – all for extra bases – and five runs in 62/3 innings. He’d given up just five runs in his last six starts combined. The Mets made him throw 129 pitches, waited on his sliders low and inside, and tagged him for three of their season-high four home runs.
“That was two good teams that went at it. Randy had two or three leads, and we just kept battling. That’s a good sign,” Bobby Valentine said. “None of these guys [conceded] the game before it started. That’s why you play the games. I’m proud of them and the way they fought, and Joe led the charge. That was a good game, that’s all I can tell you.”
No make that a great game. Arizona scored first on Steve Finley’s RBI single, but the Mets got two back in the bottom of the inning when McEwing, Bell and Edgardo Alfonzo led off with three straight doubles. The D-Backs went ahead again with two in the third, but the Mets knotted it at three on Mike Piazza’s mammoth, 492-foot homer into the mezzanine.
Johnson struck out 10 of the next 12 he faced, and Lee gave him a 5-3 lead to work with when Rick Reed hung an 0-2 pitch at the letters and he turned it into a two-run home run in the sixth. But the Mets rallied a third time, with seventh-inning solo shots by McEwing and Alfonzo.
McEwing – who’d made Johnson work through a 12-pitch at-bat before doubling to left in the fifth – caught up to a belt-high fastball and homered to left. Alfonzo hit one into the left-field loge to tie the game and chase Johnson.
Finley (3-for-4, three RBIs) put Arizona ahead yet again with an eight-inning solo shot off reliever Dennis Cook. But the Mets had plenty left, when Ventura came off the bench with a pinch-hit homer in the bottom of the inning. Turk Wendell (3-2) pitched a perfect ninth; and after McEwing worked Kim for a leadoff walk and stole second, Bell won it.
“We went out and we battled. We trailed four times, but we gave 27 tough outs,” McEwing said. “You’ve got to go out and continue to be aggressive. You’ve got to want that situation. As a professional, you’ve got to want to go out and beat the best. It’s a great feeling to come away with a big ‘W.’ “
