Read Online The Roger Angell Baseball Collection by Roger Angell - Free Book Online
Authors: Roger Angell
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flung the retrieved ball between Hook’s legs, and the fifth Brave run came across. I entered the fiasco in my scorecard, nodding my head sadly; same old Mets. A few minutes later, however, I received a tiny premonition that this might be a different kind of team after all. With two out in the top of the seventh, the Braves’ Hank Aaron ripped a low drive through the box, and Ron Hunt, the Mets’ rookie second baseman, made a sprint and a flying dive to his right, landing on his belly in a cloud of dirt. He missed the ball by about two inches—it went through for a single—but he brought a gasp from the crowd. There was nothing meretricious or flashy or despairing about that dive, even though the team was behind. Hunt very nearly pulled it off, and I suddenly realized that not once last year had I seen a Met infielder even attempt such a play. It gave me a curious, un-Metsian emotion—hope. Then, in the bottom of the eighth, with the Mets still trailing 3–5, Ed Kranepool, another home-team youngster, led off with a triple to left. Coleman walked, and Neal drove in one run with a double. Harkness, pinch-hitting, was walked, and Jim Hickman hit a grand-slam home run and trotted around the bases in a storm of screeching disbelief and torn-up paper. The Mets then played errorless ball in the second game, kept their poise when they fell behind 2–0, and jumped on Lew Burdette ( Lew Burdette? ) for nine runs in their last three innings. The fans trooping out into the darkness at the end of the long day chattered ecstatically about the team’s new power, its four-game winning streak, its imminent escape from the cellar. We had witnessed something like a jail break.
In the three weeks that followed the Braves series and the big bust-out, the Mets won ten games, lost nine, and moved up into eighth place. In this tiny euphoric period, Met followers began to collect and exchange tidings, tidbits, and little moral tales that seemed to confirm the new vigor and startling bourgeois respectability of their old ne’er-do-wells. The team lost three out of five games on a road trip and came home in last place again; while in Chicago, however, they had won a game on a Thursday—something they had never managed to do before—and had thus slain the last of their foolish statistical dragons. Back at the Polo Grounds, they took on the Dodgers in a night game and came from behind to win, 4–2. It was a happy beginning against a team that had humiliated them sixteen times in 1962. The Giants, the defending National League champions, arrived a few days later and administered a fearful cannonading to the outfield fences, winning three games in a row while scoring twenty-eight runs on thirty-six hits. Was this the beginning of a new collapse? No, it was not; Carlton Willey, a veteran pitcher whom the Mets acquired from the Braves this spring, stopped the Giants, 4–2, in the second game of a Sunday doubleheader, while 53,880 “Go!” shouters shouted. Against the Phillies two nights later, Ron Hunt ran down a bouncing single behind second base to save a run in a tight game, which the Mets won. The Mets then took three games in a row, to achieve seventh place and a five-game winning streak—both for the first time ever—and to come within one game of the first division in the standings. More significant, perhaps, was the fact that these three victories—two over the Phillies and one over the Cincinnati Reds—all came on scores of 3–2. In the lore of baseball, the ability to win one-run-margin ball games is a telling mark of team maturity, pitching depth, and a cool defense; last year, the Mets lost no fewer than thirty-nine games by one run. Finally, as the home stand drew to a close, the Mets played three really bad games against the Reds, looking slack in the field and foolhardy on the bases; they were lucky to pull out a 13–12 victory in the last one, after blowing two five-run leads. This year, the Mets have often looked
In the three weeks that followed the Braves series and the big bust-out, the Mets won ten games, lost nine, and moved up into eighth place. In this tiny euphoric period, Met followers began to collect and exchange tidings, tidbits, and little moral tales that seemed to confirm the new vigor and startling bourgeois respectability of their old ne’er-do-wells. The team lost three out of five games on a road trip and came home in last place again; while in Chicago, however, they had won a game on a Thursday—something they had never managed to do before—and had thus slain the last of their foolish statistical dragons. Back at the Polo Grounds, they took on the Dodgers in a night game and came from behind to win, 4–2. It was a happy beginning against a team that had humiliated them sixteen times in 1962. The Giants, the defending National League champions, arrived a few days later and administered a fearful cannonading to the outfield fences, winning three games in a row while scoring twenty-eight runs on thirty-six hits. Was this the beginning of a new collapse? No, it was not; Carlton Willey, a veteran pitcher whom the Mets acquired from the Braves this spring, stopped the Giants, 4–2, in the second game of a Sunday doubleheader, while 53,880 “Go!” shouters shouted. Against the Phillies two nights later, Ron Hunt ran down a bouncing single behind second base to save a run in a tight game, which the Mets won. The Mets then took three games in a row, to achieve seventh place and a five-game winning streak—both for the first time ever—and to come within one game of the first division in the standings. More significant, perhaps, was the fact that these three victories—two over the Phillies and one over the Cincinnati Reds—all came on scores of 3–2. In the lore of baseball, the ability to win one-run-margin ball games is a telling mark of team maturity, pitching depth, and a cool defense; last year, the Mets lost no fewer than thirty-nine games by one run. Finally, as the home stand drew to a close, the Mets played three really bad games against the Reds, looking slack in the field and foolhardy on the bases; they were lucky to pull out a 13–12 victory in the last one, after blowing two five-run leads. This year, the Mets have often looked
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