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I attended this Saturday afternoon game and was surprised to see the left fielder was Joe McEwing, acquired from St. Louis for Jesse Orosco at the end of spring training. Super Joe had been brought up from the minors overnight and was the leadoff hitter. From our seats in left, we could see Rickey Henderson in the doghouse in the dugout. The night before he’d led off the game with a long fly and went into his home run trot, only to have the ball hit the wall. The best base stealer in history wound up stuck on first and the Mets lost to the Marlins, one of three teams ahead of the Mets in the NL East standings.

In a game where Bobby Valentine went through the whole bench, Henderson only came in for the ninth to play left field after McEwing moved to shortstop. Valentine had to send up pitcher Mike Hampton to pinch-hit in the ninth. Representing the winning run, he nearly won the game, but his liner just missed the foul pole. Hampton then struck out and the Mets lost, 7-6. By the time I got back to the car, Rickey Henderson had been released. As has been the case every time the Mets have won the pennant, this club looked kind of dead in May.

I attended this game and was surprised for the first time to see Joe McEwing, acquired from St. Louis for Jesse Orosco at the end of spring training, playing left field and leading off. From our seats in left, we could see Rickey Henderson in the doghouse. The night before he’d led off the game with a long fly and went into his home run trot, only to see the ball hit the wall. The best base stealer in history wound up stuck on first and the Mets lost to the Marlins,one of three teams ahead of them in the standings.

So Super Joe was summoned overnight from the minors and was at Shea the next afternoon. In a game where Bobby Valentine went through the whole bench, Henderson only came in for the ninth to play left field after McEwing moved to shortstop. Valentine had to send up pitcher Mike Hampton to pinch-hit in the ninth. Representing the winning run, he nearly won the game, lining a ball that just missed the foul pole. Hampton then struck out and the Mets lost, 7-6. By the time I got back to the car, Rickey Henderson had been released. As has always been the case a Mets pennant-winning club looked in disarray in May.

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Months before their miraculous 1973 rally from the dead, Jon Matlack lay motionless on the mound at Shea after being drilled by a line drive off the bat of Atlanta’s Marty Perez. Matlack took the hard-luck, 10-6 loss. He was diagnosed with a fractured skull but missed only two starts! He talked about it a couple of years back for Swinging ’73:

“I’m trying to nail down this game,” Matlack recalls. “I overthrew the next pitch. It was a fastball, and I landed really hard when I threw it. I lost sight of the ball to the plate. I could see him swing and hear the bat crack, but I don’t pick up the baseball until it’s right on top of me. I barely got the fingers of my left hand in front of my face. It hit my fingers [on the mitt], hit my cap, and it hit me just over the left eye. They tell me—I don’t know because I couldn’t see it—but it went from my forehead into the dugout. It cost me two runs and ultimately cost me the ballgame.”

The sudden tie fell to secondary importance during this frightening moment at Shea Stadium. Right fielder Rusty Staub, shaking his head at the memory of it years later, summed up his teammates’ reaction: “We were just all thrilled that he wasn’t dead.” Dee Matlack wasn’t even sure of that as the trainer came out and pulled a tarp over her prone husband’s body as the rain fell.

“They’re messing with me, and it’s raining,” he thought as catcher Jerry Grote and his teammates gathered around him. “My wife thinks I’m dead because they cover me up with a tarp.”

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Check out my piece about the great Edgardo Alfonzo at Rising Apple. When they talk about Mets I’d like to see in the team’s Hall of Fame, Edgardo Alfonzo and Howard Johnson are two names that immediately come to mind. It has it been six years since the club last inducted anyone.

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Mike Piazza hits his 352nd home run as a catcher, breaking Carlton Fisk’s record for the position. His 405-foot blast—his 363rd career HR overall—comes on a 3-1 pitch from San Francisco’s Jerome Williams. The Mets beat the Giants at Shea, 8-2, and they’ll win the next night when Piazza provides a walkoff home run in extra innings. Now that the record is out of the way, the Mets speed up the move to first base for the oft-injured star. He’ll play 68 games at first base in 2004, but he provides the latest evidence that the position is not as “easy” to move to as nonballplayers think. He will never play the position again after ’04 and return behind the plate. Though not the best backstop with the arm or the glove, few would doubt that Piazza was as good as any catcher in history with a bat in his hands.

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One new Mets bails out another as 2006 continues to be a tremendous season. Billy Wagner allows two two-out singles to the moribund Pirates in the ninth to tie the game and cost Pedro Martinez a victory. It is already the third blown save for the team’s big free agent, and causer of controversy with the contrived “Whose Entrance Song Is It Anyway” hullabaloo. The Mets do nothing against the Bucs bullpen over the next three innings, while Duaner Sanchez and Chad Bradford hold the Pirates at bay. Leading off the bottom of the 12th, Carlos Delgado launches an opposite-field home run to send the Mets to the 4-3 victory. It is the second of three walkoff wins in five games. The 18-9 Mets lead the NL East by five games.

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On a dreary and foggy Monday night at Shea, John Franco goes for his 300th save a dozen years to the day after he notched his first save—for the ’84 Reds. Against the ’96 Expos he gets No. 300 in classic Franco fashion. With two outs in the ninth, the Mets up 3-2, and the tying run on base, the immortal Sherman Obando bats for the pitcher. Obando launches a long flyball that Lance Johnson catches at the wall to end the game. Many hugs and high fives ensue. Franco, who will rack up 424 career saves (now fifth all time) will be honored with John Franco Day at Shea on May 11, where he earns another distinction—getting ejected on his own day from a game he was not pitching during a brawl with the Cubs.

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Shawn Estes will always be remembered by Mets fans as a one-hit wonder. He was the one Met who had a chance to take revenge on Roger Clemens in the batter’s box and he missed him in June of 2002. Never mind that Estes won that game, humiliated Clemens by homering off him, and was far from the reason the Mets had a lousy year.

On this day in 2002 Estes throws his lone complete game as a Met with a 1-0, one-hit gem against the Brewers at Shea. And he beats the man whose spot he took in the rotation, Glendon Rusch, who also tossed a complete game for Milwaukee. Estes is perfect for six innings, but Eric Young (father of the future Mets speedster of the same name) singles for the only hit of the game in the seventh. Estes walks only one and fans eight. Jay Payton provides all the offense with a home run. It is the 23rd Mets one-hitter in history and the first since Rusch combined with Armando Benitez for one in 2001.

With the Mets irretrievably out of the race on August 15, just two weeks after they traded Jay Payton and future All-Star (though not as a Met) Jason Bay to shore up the pitching staff, GM Steve Phillips sends Estes to the Brewers and got back Pedro Feliciano, among others. Though pitching just 23 games as a Met, the name Estes conjures up plenty of Mets memories. One-hit wonder indeed.

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Shawn Estes will always be remembered by Mets fans as a one-hit wonder. He was the one Met who had a chance to take revenge on Roger Clemens in the batter’s box at Shea and he missed him in June of 2002. Never mind that Estes won that game, humiliated Clemens by homering off him, and was far from the reason the Mets had a lousy year.

On this day in 2002 Estes throws his lone complete game as a Met with a 1-0, one-hit gem against the Brewers at Shea. And he beats the man whose spot he took in the rotation, Glendon Rusch, who also tossed a complete game for Milwaukee. Estes is perfect for six innings, but Eric Young (father of the future Mets speedster of the same name) singles for the only hit of the game in the seventh. Estes walks only one and fans eight. Jay Payton provides all the offense with a home run. It is the 23rd Mets one-hitter in history and the first since Rusch combined with Armando Benitez for one in 2001.

With the Mets irretrivably out of the race on August 15, just two weeks after they traded Jay Payton and future All-Star (though not as a Met) Jason Bay to shore up the pitching staff, GM Steve Phillips sends Estes to the Brewers and got back Pedro Feliciano, among others. Though pitching just 23 games as a Met, the name Estes conjures up plenty of Mets memories. One-hit wonder indeed.

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After Endy Chavez’s remarkable catch in the previous year’s NLCS, Shea was still in love with the outfielder with the great glove and the the ability to leap tall fences in a single bound. I was at this game, watching Orlando Hernandez shut out the Rockies for seven innings. The game remained scoreless into the 10th when rookie Troy Tulowizki tripled home the first run of the game. Damion Easley answered the call, homering with two outs in the bottom of the 10th to tie the game. In the 12th inning, Shawn Green walked, was sacrificed to second, and was balked to third. With two outs, Endy stunned the crowd—and the Rockies—with a drag bunt to beat the band and win the game.

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A year after winning the Cy Young Award, 25-year-old Tom Seaver seems to just keep getting better. He ties the major league record of 19 strikeouts—set a year ago by Steve Carlton, against the Miracle Mets, no less. The second-year San Diego Padres are no World Series contender, but they do tie the game in the second inning on a home run by Al Fererra. The Mets take a 2-1 lead on Bud Harrelson’s RBI triple. Seaver shut the door like no one before him—or since.

Seaver finishes off the sixth inning by catching Ferrera looking. He starts the seventh by fanning the best bat in the weak Padres lineup: Nate Colbert. The next three batters go down looking. Pinch hitter Ivan Murrel’s K to end the eighth broke the club record of 15 set by Nolan Ryan—four days earlier.

In the ninth Seaver fans Van Kelly for the third time that day. Cito Gaston, who would later win two world championships managing the not-yet-created Toronto Blue Jays, manages to take strike three. Up steps Ferrera, whose homer accounts for San Diego’s only run in this one-run game—Dave Campbell had the club’s only other hit off Seaver. By now, catcher Jerry Grote has stopped even calling pitchers and just lets Seaver throw the heater. He fans Ferrera for his 10th straight strikeout and the 2-1 win. Nine straight strikeouts had not stood since Mickey Welch did it for the New York Giants in 1884. Eighty-six years later the record falls in front of in front of 14,000 fans on a Wednesday afternoon at Shea.