Remember the Maine

Yes, I admit it. It's a headline so bad that not even the Daily News or the New York Post dared to go with it. But while José Reyes' home run in the first got things going last night, and Paul LoDuca's "We Don't Miss You At All" hit off ex-Met-washout Braden Looper in the 7th blew the game open enough so that not even "Heart Attack Billy" Wagner could blow it, last night's game belonged to John Maine.

Maine, a gawky 6'4" kid with a receding chin and an expression that doesn't appear at first glance to have much grey matter behind it, took the enormous pressure of "It's all on your shoulders now, kid" and said "What pressure?", pitching 5-1/3 innings that were just good enough and not one iota better.

This was the kind of performance that sportswriters live for. It was a chance to wax rhapsodic about a number 5 starter who came to the team in what was then seen as the "batboy and a box of balls" dump of wingnut hose bitch Anna Benson and her pitcher husband Kris onto the Baltimore Orioles last January as if he were the second coming of Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, and Sandy Koufax all rolled into one.

Mike Lupica, in the Daily News:

even pitching just 5-1/3 last night, Maine gave the Mets as big a start last night as Seaver or Koosman or Gooden or anybody ever gave them in any postseason. Maine pitched like those guys last night. It wasn't a complete game, it doesn't go into the books as a "quality start" because he didn't go six, it wasn't Bobby Jones throwing that one-hitter against the Giants the last time the Mets went to the World Series. It will do. Two hits while he was out there. No runs against him on a night when there were no expectations for the kid at all.

Oh yeah. What he did to the Cardinals in Game 6 will do.

Murray Chass, in the New York Times:

Baseball is such a wonderfully unpredictable game. I tell you the Mets’ chances of staying alive in their league playoff series against St. Louis depend on their rookie pitcher, John Maine, and you say no way, no chance. Remember, buddy, he’s pitching against Chris Carpenter, a once and maybe future Cy Young award winner.

The likelihood of Maine’s beating Carpenter, you tell me, is about 1 chance in 100. I tell you, as Joaquín Andújar used to say, you never know.

We know now. The game is over. The rookie beat Cy Young. The Mets live to play another day. Well, night. Tonight. The National League pennant will be decided at Shea Stadium tonight.

[snip]

Maine, it should be remembered, was Anna Benson’s goodbye gift to the Mets. He joined the Mets last winter in the trade that sent Anna’s husband, Kris, to the Baltimore Orioles. The Mets traded Benson because Anna had become too much of a loose verbal cannon. The Mets, however, are unlikely to send Anna a World Series share.

A 25-year-old right-hander, Maine pitched five and a third innings, allowing only two first-inning hits. He walked four batters and hit a batter, but only one of those five advanced beyond first base.

After Maine walked Jim Edmonds, the leadoff batter in the sixth, and retired Juan Encarnación on a fly to left field, Manager Willie Randolph walked briskly to the mound and summoned Chad Bradford from the bullpen.

Even before Randolph reached the mound, Maine’s infield mates gathered there and patted him, expressing their appreciation for the job he had just done. After handing the ball to Randolph, he walked to the dugout to the roar of the crowd. When he reached the dugout, his teammates there slapped hands with him and gave him many more pats of appreciation.

On this night, the rookie became a man.

Baseball as bar mitzvah. Gotta love it. Only in New York.

Bob Klapisch, in the Bergen Record:

You don't see masterpieces like this in October very often, not when the season is on the line and greater New York is living and dying with your every pitch. John Maine could've collapsed under the burden, and no one would've blamed the rookie. No one would've said the Mets went out of the NL Championship Series as chokers.

But all Maine did was keep the Mets alive in October, pitching them to a 4-2 win over the Cardinals in Game 6. The Series, the season, the world comes down to nine innings tonight; every pitch will be treated as if the Mets' legacy depends on it. And it does.

Maine gave the Mets a running start to the sort of comeback that'll be remembered by generations of Shea loyalists. It might not have been Johnny Podres shutting out the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series, the one that liberated Brooklyn forever, but it was close enough to be called a miniature classic.

[snip]

Was Maine nervous? Do we even have to ask? He said "I'm nervous before every start," but an early lead, and successfully working out of a bases-loaded jam in the first inning help quiet the fires of his anxiety.

It's the beauty of this kid that he's so quiet, so self-contained. Maine is the anti-Pedro Martinez, flat-lining his emotions, letting his fastball act as his voice.

"That's been his MO all year," Randolph said. "Cool and composed. That's him."

It also helped the Mets to be playing in an open-air asylum. Shea was that loud, that aggressive. The sold-out crowd did more than just root for the Mets, they exuded a hostile edge that made the Cardinals shrink, one inning at a time.

Meanwhile, the Post, which is obviously the Official News Outlet of the New York Yankees, simply borrowed a story off the AP wire and has kept up its gloating over the game 5 loss on its web site, lest we forget.

But regardless of what happens tonight, in a one-game playoff in which anyone can win, it's been one of those postseasons where there are no bad guys among the winners. Jim Leyland, as good a baseball man who has ever managed in my lifetime, and who left baseball a disillusioned man, returned to take the Detroit Tigers, a team that lost 119 games in 2003, to the World Series this year. And now either the philosopher king Tony LaRussa or the unflappable Willie Randolph will represent the National League at the fall classic. What's not to like?

And yet, despite the fact that scrap-heap salvage job Oliver Perez goes up tonight against Jeff Suppans 0.00 NLCS ERA, you can't yet count the Mets out. Clad in those so-far magical 1986 blue-and-orange pinstripes with the ghosts of Bob Knepper and Bill Buckner still clinging to them; this team, which resembles a pen full of cute, friendly puppies far more than it resembles the arrogantly swaggering 1986 team; this ugly, old dying stadium, which seems today to be presided over by Tug McGraw shouting "You Gotta Believe!"; these fans, who simply by their taunts and their prayers and their sheer force of will for this team, just might pull this off.