Mets-Pirates Game 4 Recap

This was the most impressive game that we have seen the Mets play all season. I think that they really responded to Terry Collins’s rant last night, but this response may only last one game. The game was played in two parts. The first part of the game was the first 2.5 innings and the second part was the last 6.5 innings of the game. The first part of the game completely belonged to the Pirates. In the top of the first inning, the Pirates had some lucky hits, but ultimately killed Pelfrey. They had two steals before the Mets recorded an out and 3 steals in the game. There was a meeting on the mound in the first inning as well. The big blows in the inning were singles by Andrew McCutchen and Matt Diaz. The Pirates scored 3 runs in the inning. After a 1-2-3 bottom of the 1st, the Pirates were at it again. Andrew McCutchen hit another RBI single and then Neil Walker hit an absolute bomb to right-center. It went over the 415 sign, the deepest part of the park, and continued on to hit the Dunkin’ Donuts sign. It probably traveled close to 440 feet and it scored 2 runs. The Pirates were leading 6-0, and then tacked on one more run in the third. It was 7-0 Pirates. To make things worse, Paul Maholm who came into the game batting .050 went 2-3 in the game. This was very typical Mets and every single person at Shea thought the game was over. We were in for our second Mets blowout loss in 2 games.

Paul Maholm at bat. He is about to get a single.

Now on to the second part of the game. This part belonged to the Mets. In the bottom of the third inning and down 7-0, Carlos Beltran hit a ball off of the facing of the left field middle deck and cut the score to 7-3. It was the first ball that I had ever seen hit past the lower deck in left field at Citi Field. This was nice, but so what. Nobody thought that the Mets would come back and win. But the Mets were not done. After a couple of boring innings, the Mets put together a great two-out rally in the 6th inning. With the bases loaded and two outs, Ruben Tejada hit a single to right to cut the Pirate lead to 7-5. Then, a pinch hitting Daniel Murphy singled as well to make it a one run deficit. In typical Mets-Pirates fashion, Ruben Tejada scored to tie the game on a passed ball by Pirates catcher Dusty Brown (who?). This was on the first pitch be Pirates reliever Chris Resop. Both pitcher and catcher were kind of a joke. At this point, Mets fans had a lot of confidence in their team. In the 8th inning, more disasters struck for the Pirates. First off, Jose Veras, the Pirates reliever was awful to say the least. In the 7 batters he pitched to, he got 2 out, gave up 1 hit, and walked 4 of them. After Ronny Paulino led off the inning with a single, he was pinch run for by Willie Harris. After this, Chris Capuano pinch hit for Jason Isringhausen. I was shocked when I saw Cappuccino pinch hitting, but he was only there to lay down a bunt. In typical Mets fashion, he was unable to get the bunt down, though Willie Harris did force a Veras balk and got to second. When Capuano had two strikes on him, something I never saw happened. Terry Collins pinch hit Josh Thole for Capuano in the middle of the at bat. Thole walked and then Ruben Tejada hit a sacrifice fly and Willie scored from third. Later in the inning, Veras gave up a bases loaded walk to Beltran to make the score 9-7 Mets. But the game was not over because K-Rod always makes games interesting. He gave up a leadoff triple to Xavier Paul, but Pittsburgh only scored once in the inning to give the Mets an impressive 9-8 victory. One thing to note about the final score is that Raphi, half-jokingly, predicted this score in the first inning. The first correct score prediction of the year goes to Raphi in a very strange game.

Jose Reyes Warming Up

To talk about the pitching briefly, Paul Maholm was fine except for the 3 run homer to Beltran and the 6th inning. Other than that, he was very impressive, but those things really hurt him. Pelfrey was pretty disgusting in this game giving up 7 runs in 5 innings, but luckily the Mets bailed him out and he avoided the loss. For the first time in a long time, the Mets bullpen did not blow the game. They were actually quite good. Congrats Tim Byrdak, Bobby Parnell, and Izzy. This was a big win for the Mets because if they lost this game, they would have lost 3/4 at home to the lowly Pirates. Even though it is not enough, at least they got 2 wins. This was the Mets biggest comeback in a game since June 30, 2000 when they came back from down 8-1 to the Braves. After Terry Collins’s rant last night, I expected the Mets to win this game, but not in this crazy fashion. I expect Collins’s rant to last one game and the Mets will return to their bad ways tomorrow night when they host the Braves. Terry was very happy about the win, almost too happy. He might have taken it as more than it actually was. I’m sorry, but all you did was beat the Pirates at home.

Pelfery on the Mound

Now on to the jokes from the game.

• Today’s Mets promotion was a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card. It is worth $2 at any Dunkin’ Donuts if you buy something there. It was a pretty meager reward for sitting through Mets-Pirates. Raphi was so disgusted with it that he gave his card to me. I am doubtful that I will use either card. Here is a picture of the card:

The Mets Dunkin' Donuts Give Away Card

• We wanted to go to Mets-Pirates batting practice today, but Raphi was 40 minutes late so we missed it. Fortunately though, we did get to the game in time for a softball home run derby. Even though they used metal bats, these guys were really able to smack the ball. I was actually surprised at how good they were. They hit many home runs. There were kids in the outfield trying to catch the balls and they all failed. See pictures and video below:

Kids in the outfield during the softball home run derby.

The Home Run Derby

• People actually sat in the upper deck of left field today! I was very surprised because this should have been the least attended game of the season. It was a Mets-Pirates day game. But people were out at the ballgame today. There were also a lot of schools that came out to Shea. Each school wore a different colored shirt and they all sat in a huge group so they were easily spotted. See pictures of upper deck left field and schools at the ballpark below:

Upper Deck Left Field

Upper Deck Left Field. People actually sat under the scoreboard!

Yellow Shirt School. Worst possible seats ever.

Some More Schools

Purple School in the Pepsi Porch

• After the home run derby and before the game started, there was really nothing going on. The Mets groundscrew was randomly watering the infield and the Mets were playing the radio in the background. They were popular songs and very unlike the Mets. See pictures of the groundscrew below:

Great picture of groundscrew. This is my favorite of the day.

• After the home run derby we decided to not leave our very good seats and go to our bad seats. Even though we got moved a few times, we never had to leave the area and we had very nice seats in the 10th row behind first base for the entire game.
• The highlight of the game for us was the paper, napkins, and plastic bags that blew onto the field. They just made the game even more of a joke. It was a very windy day and because of this, the field was covered with these things throughout the game. And they always huddled together. Sometimes there was a huge clump of napkins in left field, sometimes the plastic bags surrounded Angel Pagan in center, or sometimes they attacked Pelfrey on the mound. They also sometimes chased baserunners around the basepaths. See pictures and video below (Raphi claims that he was crying from laughter during the filming of the video):

Paper and Plastic Everywhere

Groundscrew working to get the field free of paper and plastic in between the innings. Needless to say, they failed.

More Paper and Plastic

• Because of all the wind, one of the security guards lost his light blue Mets hat and it blew onto the field. It was on the field for a good 5 minutes during game action. I wish it interfered with one of the plays. See picture below:

The Security Guard's Hat on the Field

• In the 7th inning stretch, Raphi got a shirt. I maybe should have gotten one also, but I had already caught 3 this year (I gave the first one I caught to Raphi). I already have 3 Mets shirts and I don’t know if I can stand any more of them. The shirts are wrapped with one of those long balloons that clowns use (we call it Petro’s armband) and after the last pitch of the game, I “fired away” the balloon. This expression comes from Peggle when you have such a big lead that you can just fire away and you will still win. Speaking of Peggle, I had a great shot on the train ride home from last night’s game. See a video of it below. Also see how Raphi used his caught shirt:

Raphi's Mets t-shirt catch. He decided to use this shirt to protect his legs from getting sunburned. Typical usage of a Mets prize.

• Here are a few more pictures from the game:

Jose Reyes Warming Up

Nick Evans Being Nick

Pelfrey Preparing for his Terrible Start

Matt Diaz, a Right Field Fan Favorite

Dusty Brown, Pirates Catcher. He had 4 at bats on the season coming into today and he has a great name.

Paul Maholm. He came into the game batting .050 and he still got 2 hits.

• After the game ended, we went behind the Mets dugout to try to get something from one of the players. I was sort of expecting something because they won, but I got nothing. I was kind of disappointed, but that is because I am very spoiled. In the 10 or so games that we have went to, we have caught 4 throw away Pepsi Max Shirts, got two Chevrolet Mets black shirts, 4 free tickets (to Mets-Phillies and Mets-Pirates), got 3 balls, and Angel Pagan’s hat. That is an impressive list, if I do say so myself.

If the Mets lost this game, Terry Collins would have been so angry with them, but I guess the pressure will be off them for one more day. I can’t see them beating the Braves tomorrow night, though. Here at KHH, we have some exciting events coming up. On Saturday, we will likely attend Red Bulls-Columbus Crew, possibly with Sam. Then, on Sunday night, it is possible (but unlikely) that we will go to Mets-Braves. If we do not go to this game, our last chance to see the Mets will be the day before I leave to go to camp on Friday, June 17 when they play the Angels. Next Tuesday, we will be back at Citi for Greece Ecuador. I am really looking forward to this and it should be great.

Soccer at Citi!

Mets-Pirates Game 3 Recap

Kevin Correia. He is batting .000 with an OBP of .040. That's disgusting. He should've had one of the Pirates infield singles.

This was such a classic Mets game. They blew their lead late in the game, as they usually do, and lost for the second night in a row at home to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-3. The first 6 innings of the game were as boring as watching the second quarter of Nets-Pistons, but the last 3 innings were as good as Nets-Spurs garbage time. The first scoring came in the game by a two out, two RBI single by Ruben Tejada in the fourth inning. No other team scored again until the top of the seventh, and boy, was the top of the 7th fun. The inning started off with an Andrew McCutchen infield single. Fine. But that was not all. The Pirates hit 4 infield singles in a row to start the inning, 6 hits to start the inning, and 5 infield singles total in the inning. Basically, they had 8 hits in the inning (they had 2 going into the inning) and 5 of them were infield hits and 2 of the outfield hits could have been caught. So the Pirates had one clean hit in the inning and ended up scoring 5 runs. Somehow, there were no errors in the inning, just plays that should have been made. It was very typical Mets. The Pirates added 4 more runs in the top of the 8th before a home run by Justin Turner in the bottom of the inning. Shockingly, (and this is really shocking) it was the Mets first home run in 11 games. Wow. Out of the Pirates 14 hits, 13 of them were singles and the other was a double, so they really just got pretty lucky. Or the Mets played very bad defense. Probably both.

Neil Walker swinging for the fences

The starting pitching in this game was actually pretty good. Kevin Correia got his major league leading 8th win of the season and his 7th win on the road. He left after 6 innings, so when he left he was not winning the game, but after the Pirates scored 5 runs in the 7th inning, he got the win. Even though Chris Cappuccino gave up 5 runs in 6 innings, they were not at all his fault. They all came on infield singles in the 7th inning and at least half of them should have been outs. I kind of feel sorry for him because he pitched very well and has nothing to show for it. The Mets bullpen tonight was very typical. Pedro Beato gave up 3 runs in 1 inning and Mike O’Connor gave up a run without recording an out. Dale Thayer pitched the last two innings without giving up a run. Congrats Dale! You were the best Mets pitcher of the night!

Dale Thayer making his appearance

Now on to the jokes of the game, and there were many of them.

• Raphi was 40 minutes late today, so we arrived in the beginning of the second inning. We missed a great Andrew McCutchen diving play in the first inning, but we saw a replay of it. The Pirates had quite a few nice plays in the field today. I was impressed with their defense. Anyway, we decided to use our Mets-Pirates tickets from Monday to get into the lower level. I bought the cheapest tickets possible on Stubhub. We were very successful with our choice of seat because we were in the third row and did not get kicked out.
• We were sitting in foul territory in right field, which is home to Matt Diaz of the Pirates. People were yelling things at him in our section for most of the game and told him to give them balls. They were most likely drunk. He was smiling for most of the time and not really focusing on the game. Typical Pirate. I think he also tried to talk back jokingly to the people yelling at him but I don’t know what he said. Here are some pictures:

Matt Diaz in Right Field

Matt Diaz Smiling

• When Angel Pagan was up, he hit a ball down the first base line that was just foul. It wasn’t foul until he was almost at first base and he took his sweet time walking back home and picking up his bat (he is still officially my favorite Met because I got his hat on Monday). While he was walking back, Citi Field played a full round of R.A. Dickey’s alarm clock. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it is one of the cheers they play at baseball games. Once when R.A. Dickey was pitching, we decided that it is probably The Dick’s alarm clock. It is just very R.A. I enjoyed listening to it.
• People were yelling at Anthony, the Mets ballboy (who we call Carmelo) the whole game to give them balls. He gave out more balls than usual tonight. Also, we noticed that he got a red-haired Mohawk. Interesting. See pictures below:

Carmelo

• Because we were not sitting even close to our real seats and because Raphi forgot his Tote Bag to put peanuts in (bring it tomorrow), we did not start eating our peanuts until the 5th inning when we thought that nobody would kick us out. Surprisingly, these were the first good Shea peanuts we have had and there was not an infinite amount of them. We finished them in a record 1.5 innings. I was impressed.
• In the 8th inning, Pedro Beato intentionally walked Chris Snyder, the catcher for Pittsburgh. As you would have guessed, this move did not work out well for Beato.
• Mike O’Connor came in to pitch in the 8th inning. The reason the Mets brought him in was to pitch to Lyle Overbay, a lefty. O’Connor is the Mets’ lefty specialist (AKA defensive specialist, AKA The Cracker) and yet he still gave up a hit to Overbay. Following this, he walked Ronny Cedeno on 4 pitches and then gave up a hit to Xavier Paul. He did not record an out. Well done Mike.
• During all the Mets pitching changes in the 8th inning, K-Rod was bored. He decided to stare at the game through the wire fence in the bullpen. He probably could not have been more bored and disgusted with his team. The funny pictures are below:

K-Rod bored out of his mind staring through the bullpen fence

K-Rod's still bored

• After the Mets were down by 7 runs in the 9th inning, we decided to move up like usual. We went to our same seats as on Monday when I got Angel Pagan’s hat. When the game ended we went up to the Mets dugout again. Unfortunately, they did not win so they were not celebrating on the field and throwing things into the stands. However, I did receive a ball from a mysterious person in the Mets dugout. He just threw the ball over the top of it so I was not able to see who it was. It was a relatively easy catch seeing how difficult catching a ball usually is. Also, in the 7th inning stretch, I caught another orange Mets and Pepsi Max shirt. I will wear it tomorrow to the game. Below you will find a Mets 7th inning stretch video. Unfortunately I did not take it because I was trying to catch a shirt, but it is still ok. Also, you will see a high quality version of the Mets 7th inning stretch song. It is one of my favorites.

• This game was our first blowout Mets game of the season. Most of the other games have been close, but ironically, their first blowout win or loss comes in a loss to the worst team in baseball in the last 20 years. As I said earlier, the end of this game, especially the 9th inning, was equivalent to garbage time of Nets-Spurs. For those of you who don’t know, this year when the Spurs visited Newark, they terribly blew out the Nets. The entire 4th quarter featured Steve Novak, Chris Quinn, Ben Uzoh, and Quinton Ross. It was disgusting. A similarity between the two games was that people were just yelling at the players and there was no crowd noise because everyone had left, so the players are able to hear everything people say to them. One guy today was yelling at Lyle Overbay for the whole 9th inning. See Mets-Pirates garbage time pictures below:

Carlos Beltran

Mookie Wilson with Willie Harris

Willie

Lyle Overbay bored in the 9th inning

Your favorite KHH bloggers will be back at the Citi tomorrow for more Mets-Pirates action! It is an early start, 1 PM, but we hope to go for batting practice at 11:30. There is also a high possibility that we will go to Red Bulls-Crew on Saturday in Harrison. Sam may even join us! We are looking forward to it.

Mets-Pirates Game 1 Recap

Memorial Day Baseball!

The Mets won their second game in a row tonight with a 7-3 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. They outplayed the Pirates in all aspects of the game and had a fairly easy win, though there were some nervous moments. The scoring started in the game with a long 2-run homer to left by Chris Snyder, the Pirates’ catcher, of all people. However, the Mets came back with 2 runs in the bottom of the inning. It was one of the most disgusting innings of baseball I have seen all season, but more on that later. The Mets added a run in the 5th, but Pittsburgh countered with a run in the top of the 7th to tie the score. In the bottom of the 7th, Josh Thole had a clutch double, bringing in two runs and giving the Mets the lead for good. It was one of Josh’s first clutch moments of the year. He has been terrible in crunch time until tonight. The Mets hitting tonight was impressive. 5 players had multi-hit games, and the only players who did not record hits were Dillon Gee and Willie Harris, though Willie made up for it with his defense (more on that later). For the first time this year, I was actually a little bit impressed with the Mets. They actually played well and closed out a game for once. Even though they should have scored a few more runs with all the hits they got, they scored enough to win. Also to note is that of the Mets 15 hits, 13 of them were singles and the other two were doubles. Interestingly enough, they did this without Jose Reyes and Jason Bay in the lineup.

Carlos Beltran, who went 2-4

Now on to the pitching. Dillon Gee was pretty excellent tonight, giving up 3 runs (2 on a home run in the second inning), 5 hits, no walks, and 8 strikeouts. The strikeout/walk ratio there was key to his great performance, and 5 base runners in 7 innings is good as well. The Mets bullpen finished off the game with Izzy and K-Rod pitching scoreless innings. For the Pirates, Charlie Morton was good enough. He pitched 6 innings and gave up 3 runs (only 1 earned) and did not walk a batter, though he gave up 11 hits. The problem for the Pirates was the bullpen. It gave up 4 runs to the Mets in 3 innings and Daniel McCutchen got the loss.

K-Rod

It is time for the Shea Experience and the jokes from the game. I will start at the beginning.

• As we arrived at Shea, we noticed the Chevrolet shirt give-away located outside the stadium. We had arrived early to see batting practice because we were bored out of our minds at home. We filled out a form and got a free Mets shirt. I love ripping people off like that. I wonder how many people will actually buy a Chevrolet after visiting that booth and not just doing it for the shirt. Raphi decided to put his shirt in his Mets Tote Bag from Saturday. It was still covered in peanuts and it covered the shirt in peanut grossness. More on peanuts later. Raphi, I still have your shirt, by the way.
• Because we were so early, we decided to go to the Mets box office and ask about tickets for the Ecuador-Greece soccer match at Citi Field on June 7th. We ended up buying tickets and we will be in attendance. We are looking forward to it. Also, we will be sitting in section 401!!! If you do not know about this, I think that this will be all you need to learn about it.
• When we arrived to batting practice, the Pirates were practicing. The mets practiced before we arrived so we did not get the chance to observe them. The Pirates were extremely boring, so after watching a while in the first row, we went up to sit in the shade. The Pirates hit very few home runs during batting practice. No wonder they are so bad. See pictures below:

Pirates Batting Practice

Pirates Batting Practice

• Raphi got Shea Fries for dinner. As he went to the ketchup stand to put ketchup on his fries, he pushed on the ketchup knob too hard and squirted ketchup all over the Mets employee standing by the stand. Luckily, she did not get mad but she definitely could of. Raphi was embarrassed and I thought it was very funny.
• Today was Memorial Day. To open the game, planes flew over the stadium after the national anthem and they were extremely loud and annoying. See video below. Also, Memorial Day baseball is kind of a joke. People make too big a deal about it. People came here to see baseball (if you consider Mets-Pirates baseball) not honor soldiers. Just play ball!

• We tried to Gadzuric our peanuts in Raphi’s Tote Bag again tonight, but we were less successful because of the people in front of us. Still, here are the peanut pictures:

Peanuts in our Tote Bag with Peanut Bag and All Star Ballots

Peanuts in our Tote Bag with Peanut Bag and All Star Ballots

Peanuts in our Tote Bag with Peanut Bag and All Star Ballots

• Just a note from the game, the cleanup (4th place) hitters tonight were second baseman Neil Walker for the Pirates and Daniel Murphy for the Mets. All I can say about that is ew. No wonder these teams are so bad.
• We noticed while looking at the scoreboard tonight that Pittsburgh shortstop Ronny Cedeno may have braces. I checked on the internet for it and found nothing, but I have my suspicions. We’re on to you, Ronny.
• The bottom of the second inning tonight might be the worst inning of baseball I had ever seen. The badness started with runners on second and third and Jason Pridie at the plate. Pridie strikes out on a normal pitch, but the ball goes past the catcher. I have no idea why he didn’t catch it. Pridie was safe at first and a run scored. But that was not all. The next batter, Ruben Tejada swung and hit the ball about 5 feet. A run scored from third and Ruben was safe at first. Then, with Dillon Gee at the plate, there was a wild pitch and the runners went to second and third. Gee then missed a bunt and ended up striking out. It was truly a terrible inning.
• Do you know those annoying guys who walk down the aisles at sporting events trying to sell memorabilia? Well tonight, we witnessed a very honest vendor. He was selling foam fingers and baseball pennants on sticks. While he was walking by, he was saying, and I quote, “Get your overpriced items here!”. What a great and honest guy. People still ended up buying from him.
• In between innings the Mets have something called “Mets Phrase Game” which is a little like hangman. Tonight, the clue they gave was something like “a holiday celebrated in America for our soldiers”. Hmmm… I wonder what that can be on Memorial Day. The guy playing the game obviously won.
• The singers singing “God Bless America” in the 7th inning stretch were awful to say the least. See pictures below:

Memorial Day Baseball!

Awful 7th Inning Stretch Singers

• Despite going 0-5 from the plate, Willie Harris had a few great defensive plays. See his best play from ESPN’s Web Gems below. It was number 2 tonight.

• Both teams tonight wore Memorial Day hats. The Pirates’ hats were especially bad, as they were red. They were really disgusting. The Mets’ hats were better but not great. See pictures of this as well as other pictures of the game below.

Justin Turner

Carmelo the Ball Boy

Murph in Action, Dillon "Alonzo" Gee on the Mound

Lyle Overbay

Garrett Jones

Pirates Outfield

Murphy and Tejada

Pirates Garrett Jones

K-Rod and Willie Harris

Andrew McCutchen on First

Andrew McCutchen on First

Lyle Overbay

• Before the Pirates batted in the 9th inning, we stealthily sneaked our way from close to the right field foul pole to behind the Mets dugout. We did this so that we can get a better view and also see the Mets players exit after the game was over. When the players left, they were happy that they won. When this happens, once in a while a player throws something of his into the crowd. Tonight, Angel Pagan was happy because he had just made a great catch in the 9th inning that didn’t save the game, but it did preserve the win. I was in the second row of people behind the dugout so I did not think that I would have a chance at catching Angel’s hat as he was throwing it. I was wrong. I leaped into the air (yes, it was this dramatic) and got my fingers on it. I tugged it away from 5 other hands and brought it low where I ripped it away from one last person. It was mine. I took it away with authority just like Dan Gadzuric would. It was basically the same thing as GadZoom dunking over Kwame Brown, the other people in the stands being Kwame Brown. Yes, I am declaring myself Dan Gadzuric. This is among the coolest things that I have gotten at sporting events, along with Jason Kidd’s armband with a #5 on it and Cliff Robinson’s shoes. It was kind of sweaty and gross, but I washed it when I got home. It was a great moment for me and KHH fans everywhere. See pictures below:

Angel Pagan's Hat

Angel Pagan, #16

Our next KHH event will be either Wednesday, Thursday, or both when the Mets host the Pirates again. The Mets do not return home again after that until the day before I go to camp, so we will be off from Mets action for a while. However, we will be returning to the Citi on June 7th to see Ecuador and Greece in a soccer game and we might also see some Red Bulls action one of the next two weekends. Until next time, so long.