Real Mets Finally Show Up

They’re here.

The Mets, that is.

That’s got to be what the rest of the National League East contenders are feeling. The Mets aren’t creeping up on them, they’re catapulting toward those teams.

Tuesday, the Mets scored two ninth-inning runs to defeat the Padres, 3-2.

The Mets are 66-54, 12 games over .500, their season-high mark. With each passing day, with games such as Tuesday’s as evidence, you get the feeling the Mets have no intention of being evicted from the haughty territory anytime soon. They’ve won five out of six games on the home stand, seven of their last eight overall, 10 of 12 and 12 of 15. ...

Well, you get the idea. Undoubtedly the rest of the National League East does. Tuesday’s victory completed the Mets’ march past St. Louis and Montreal and put them in second, 3 1/2 games behind first-place Chicago.

With all that winning has come the swagger that marked the Mets’ division-winning years in 1986 and 1988. Tuesday, the air was thick with that confidence.

“There’s just a great feeling around here,” said catcher Barry Lyons, who scored the winning run. “We know we can win and we’re going to find ways to win.”

They sense it even though a hot pitcher such as San Diego’s Ed Whitson carried a seven-hitter and 2-1 lead into the ninth. Even though the right-hander had harnessed many a powerful Mets hitter and made some Mets, such as Kevin Elster (groundout, strikeout, infield pop), wish they’d never gotten out of bed.

None of that mattered.

“We’re playing better and when you’re playing better, you know you’re going to get a win,” Elster said. “Even going into the bottom of the ninth down by one run doesn’t matter.”

To make matters worse for the Padres, it wasn’t as if the Mets were destined to win because of superb plays on the home team’s part. Oh, there was inspiration, in the form of a game-tying home run by Kevin McReynolds with one out in the ninth. But the winning play occurred because San Diego had Lyons -- undoubtedly one of the slowest guys in New York -- dead to rights at home plate. But San Diego fouled up the final play of the game, not once, not twice, but three times to allow Lyons to score.

How destined was the victory from the Mets’ standpoint? (And ugly from the Padres’ standpoint?)

Lyons was running from first on a two-out double by Elster, a play third base coach Sam Perlozzo had every intention of halting with runners and second and third. But Marvell Wynne, a defensive replacement of all things, bobbled the ball in the left-field corner. Perlozzo changed his mind and waved Lyons home. He immediately wished he had not.

“Barry made so wide a turn, I thought, ‘Oh no!’,” Perlozzo said. But Wynne turned the shock to joy by missing two cutoff men, putting the relay throw in the hands of tiny second baseman-turned-third baseman Bip Roberts. Roberts was out of position and cursed with a bad arm to boot, just enough to ensure a horrendous throw home. Benito Santiago never had a chance at Lyons because he never caught the ball.

“Sometimes,” said Perlozzo with a laugh, “it’s better to be lucky than good.”

Right now the Mets are both.

They were in position to win because another starter did the Mets’ mighty rotation proud, even though Sid Fernandez left the winning to Jeff Mussleman. Fernandez limited the Padres to only two runs in seven innings. Mets starters have given up 23 earned runs in their last 115 innings pitched for a 1.80 ERA.

Fernandez sulked a bit after the game because of “one bad pitch”, lamenting the Chris James home run that put New York behind 2-1 in the seventh inning. But Fernandez made good pitches, too. Fernandez, who entered the game among the league leaders in strikeouts, struck out seven Padres to increase his total to 133. He allowed six hits, typical for the league leader when it comes to having the lowest batting average against (.198 prior to the game). Only Nolan Ryan has been tougher, holding American League hitters to a .185 average.

The Mets also were in a position to win because of Howard Johnson. The third baseman has been bothered by a sore shoulder but was healthy enough to touch Whitson for his 28th homer. His shot landed well back in the Mets bullpen in right, snapping New York out of what had been a sleepwalk against Whitson.

Then McReynolds homered to the visitors’ bullpen in left in the ninth, which set up the Elster hit, the Lyons jog, the Mets victory.

“We’re just playing good baseball,” Manager Davey Johnson said. “Even if we would have lost, I would have been proud of the team. We executed, we didn’t beat ourselves, we played with heart.”

The Mets expect that of themselves based on past seasons’ performances. The experience, the confidence, should have been their edge over Chicago and Montreal all along. Those weapons weren’t used early on however, but the Mets seemed primed to use them August, September and beyond.