Posted: 3:44 am
July 6, 2008
PHILADELPHIA - This was your grand mother's secret recipe for calamity laid out in front of you at Citizens Bank Park, all of the ingredients thrown in this bandbox blender, a full house eager to kick the Mets while they were down.
Don't think so? What was missing? The Mets had an early 3-0 lead, blew that. They'd had gaggles of chances to add on runs, blown those. Their starting pitcher, John Maine, who had no-hit stuff save for one pitch that Ryan Howard converted into one of those 350-foot home runs this park is famous for, had to leave the game with a cramp in his left arm, of all things.
You want more ingredients? How about Ryan Church, less than a week removed from a long stint on the DL thanks to a concussion, leaving the game with what was termed dizziness (though later he would insist the symptoms were linked to migraines he's suffered from before his recent spate of head trauma). And, for the topper, the Phillies seized a 4-3 lead in the eighth and were set to throw J.C. Romero (who kills the Mets) in the eighth and Brad Lidge (who kills everyone) in the ninth.
"What we needed," Brian Schneider would say later, "was for a couple of guys to step up and deliver for us when we needed it very badly."
It so happened that Schneider himself was the chief contributor of what became a thick cast of able assistants in the eighth and ninth innings, when the Mets scored three runs in each to turn what had all the makings of a gut-punch loss into another one of those feel-good wins that may or may not nudge them to the precipice of something bigger, something better.
We'll know about that soon enough, starting today.
"We've had our share of starts and stops," Schneider said. "We need to back this one up. That's when you start heading in the right direction."
It was a few days ago, in St. Louis, that Jerry Manuel called Schneider into the visiting manager's office, told him to take a seat.
