Game 5, day 5, March 19, 2011 -- Nationals vs. Mets @ Port St. Lucie
No, it wasn't the 4th of July. Just a Saturday right around the official end of winter. And I was at the ballpark.
One clerical note - my dad went back home Saturday morning after spending the first 4 days of my vacation with me. It involved me missing going out to the back fields. Oh well.
I did walk into the park a little bit before 12 noon (I had to stop and schmooze with the people outside the stadium at the booster club table - I'm 0 for 2 winning in their raffle) and basically walked right into an autograph - Ivan 'Pudge' Rodriguez of the Nationals had come over to the Mets side and started signing. Someone of his stature can do that as a visiting player and still draw a crowd. And it wasn't so much of a crowd that I was able to figure out what was going on, make my way down to the rail and get the autograph with relative ease. But I was 0-for-Mets in the autograph department for the second straight day.
For the game, the Mets got on Jair Jurgens early for 4 runs, added on another 3 a few innings later, and had a big 7-0 lead going into the 7th. I should first note that Chris Capuano started for the Mets, a lefty in case you don't know his work, and he has a great pickoff move. Fooled a runner once and fooled me another time (in that he went home when I thought he was going to first, and I should note that I was watching from behind 3B).
Then the 7th...and Oliver Perez. He got booed coming in. It was already the 3rd time I've seen him pitch in 5 days in town. I don't remember any wind at the ballpark, and he did what we've called in the past 'Bad Ollie' after several games of 'Good Ollie'. But 'Bad Ollie' gave up 2 HRs, broke the shutout, and didn't settle down after that, and didn't make the inning. Boos got louder. Huge cheering for Terry Collins when he came out with the hook for Ollie. And right at that moment, I saw the Mets press corps (there is a picture on facebook of them together) dart towards the Mets clubhouse to start getting their Ollie quotes.
Then things settled down and the Mets won the game.
Leave a comment or drop me a line at DyHrdMET [at] gmail [dot] com. "Like" RememberingShea on Facebook (the function formerly known as "Becoming a Fan"). Become a Networked Blog
