Burress caught what proved to be the game-winning TDPerhaps obscured by how well the defense performed was the O's three touchdown second half - Reuben Droughns rushed in for two and Eli threw another - but the offense, tossed out on the street the last two weeks and ordered to fend for itself, wasn't the story. Freshman coordinator Steve Spagnuolo's blitz-happy, Jim Johnson-inspired Eagle defenses finally worked, and it was a joy to watch.
I'm obviously not writing about the Mets, though the term "huge, huge, potentially season-saving win" could certainly be applied to their performance as well. I actually didn't catch any of the game today - it is Sunday, after all, and between the Mets not being televised down here and Sundays in the fall belonging to football, I was forced to follow the end of the game whenever the MLB scores came around at the top of the screen on FOX's Giants/Redskins telecast. I'm just reading about it right now.
All I knew until a few minutes ago was that they were ahead 6-3 going into the bottom of the 8th, 6-5 when the ticker said ^9, and that the score was then tied the next time I looked up. I've never been the best at riddles or word problems, but someone with the nascent deductive reasoning skills of a small primate probably could have figured out that the Metsies' bullpen had blown it again. After 7-4 Mets became 8-7 Marlins on Thursday night, shrinking our lead over Philly back down to a game and a half, I suspected it was not going to be long before the score came back around again to tell me that we had another highly disappointing extra-inning loss on our hands.
The Nats tripped up the Phillies in the last. game. ever. at RFK stadium, so a loss wouldn't have dropped us to a half-a-game or anything quite that terrible. But it still would've been another ugly waste of a golden opportunity to move closer to putting this thing away in a 10-day period of much ugliness and plenty of wasted opportunities to at least make the rest of the regular season a little less interesting than its become. Playing part in my own little mini-metaphor for this frantic Mets September, I quietly hoped for the Amazins to pull it out, but nervously knew it was no sure thing.
I hadn't seen Carlos Delgado's big three-run homer in the 8th to give the Mets the 6-3 lead they'd go on to blow. And I didn't see David Wright come up clutch in the top of the 11th to give the Mets the 7-6 lead representing the margin of victory they'd go on to win by. And I certainly didn't see what was surely the heart-stopping combination of Aaron Sele and Scott Schoeneweis come on to pick up Billy Wagner and secure the victory in the bottom of the 11th, though I'm sure that was fun to watch.
The Schoew came up big today in extrasBut at around 5 o'clock or so, I did see "NYM 7 FLA 6," followed by "F," in the upper right hand corner of my football screen. And I did react excitedly, with a sense of relief - "ahhh God yes!" went the words coming out of my mouth, or something like that. And while the win maybe wasn't quite "season-saving," in a 2007 campaign marked by periods of beautiful, opera-like song, contrasted with spells of uncomfortable, indigestion-induced hiccups, I do know that with three big wins in Miami the Mets have re-established some NL East breathing room, seem to have moved past this latest hiccup, and are again in position to finally nail down a division that should've been nailed down long long ago. With just a bit more success this week, we'll all be able to "sip a little champagne," and Willie Randolph won't look like a jackass for predicting in the midst of our struggles last week that "when we do" it'll "taste a little sweeter."
This team has a chance to make history in the next 7 days as the first Mets team to win two division titles in a row. Mets fans everywhere will be watching, and rooting.
Hopefully, the coming week's potential toast will come to be. Hopefully, it'll be the first of four this fall.
(Photos courtesy sportinglife.com, espn.com, wholefoodsmarket.com)
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