Drive Slow

Happy Labor Day, all. Alternatively, Happy Not Being Perfectoed By The 'Stros Day. The one is obviously more important than the other, but I'd like to think the American worker is used to being dumped on for now, so we'll go with what's behind Door No. 2.

Roy Oswalt, the new $73 million man, nearly posterized the Mets Sunday afternoon at Minute Maid Park. He was perfect through six, plowing through the Mets' order and being ignored by the other Astros in the dugout.

Leading off the top of the seventh, Mr. Glass broke that nonsense up, beating out a chopper to short that Adam Everett tried to barehand. Nothing doing. Still, after Endy bunted him over, neither Delgado nor Green could do much with their cuts, and the Mets wouldn't score until Delgado's two-out blast in the ninth.

Oswalt, the baby-faced hick assassin, was too tough. Houston jiggled two runs off a single hit, thanks to El Duque's control problems, and the Mets couldn't finish off the sweep.

As a sidenote, I'm not exactly sure how embarassing it would have been to be the victim of a perfect game. I mean, Oswalt just became massively overpaid (and poisoned the market for starting pitching for the offseason, it should be noted), but he's a genuine ace, and sometimes, aces throw beautiful games.

The Mets had the B-team on the field (C-Woods, "D" Felice, Endy in center). That's a vulnerable team. But everyone knows that going in. Oswalt can and maybe even should dominate the lineup the Mets had out there.

Whatever. Nothing to complain about on this weekend, really, except the potential knee injury to Beltran. But even that looks like it's going to be fine, according to the Daily News reports of this morning.

Beltran busted his knee into the wall in Houston on what you certainly might call a game-saving catch, going up with a mini-Spider Man move to rob Berkman of what probably would have been a two-RBI, game-tying double in the bottom of the ninth.

Two-thirds of the Y2K staff was out of signal range on Saturday night, at a wack party in some Mid-Atlantic state of dubious origins and far from the goodness of SNY and broadcast Mets baseball. That is, we didn't see the catch in real time. Let's just say that if Baltimore is thinking about getting its act together any time in the new millenium, including some Mets on their TV dial wouldn't be a poor choice. Just throwing it out there.

But we damn sure heard about the catch after the fact, because each of these incidents is a potential season-ruiner.

They're all terrifying in their own way. Beltran on the wall. D-Wright fouling a pitch off his leg. Mr. Glass sliding into second base headfirst on a steal and jamming his finger. Chris Woodward juggling chainsaws. Actually, scratch that last one from the list. We can work with that.

But 27 games remain until meaningful baseball resumes for the Mets, and our starters are going to be on the field for most of them, exposing they selves to all manner of potential injury. There's no way around it. That's the game. You have to let these guys play.

And sometimes when they do, scary shit happens and seasons are ruined. Guys on top of the world start feeling a twinge in their elbow. Guys have heart problems. Guys get cancer.

All you can do if you're a Mets fans is hope. Championship-winning teams (and I'm thinking of the steady White Sox of a year ago here) tend to get a little bit of luck on the injury front, and that's just another little bit of randomness that keeps the game interesting.

As of now, Petey is scheduled to be back mid-way through the month. Glavine and Spliff are already back in spikes, looking great. You can't assume everything is going to be perfect, but the Mets also look like they're in position to have all the important pieces in place, and healthy. That could change at a moment's notice, but it's here for the moment, and we should be grateful.

If you're Willie Randolph, all you can do is force off-days on the guys who don't want to take them, and keep the risks minimized. If that means holding guys back on the basepaths a little bit, I'm all for it. I like guys stepping out onto the field for the NLDS in perfect condition, looking like they just left a “Men's Health” cover shoot and feeling as if they had done something slightly less A-Rod-like. But the point holds.

I don't have anything else to add about the Beltran catch, other than I'm not sure it's as good as everyone has been saying. It was extremely timely, but this year, we've seen Gary Matthews climb the fence at full speed to bring back a ball, and the Disappointment known as Coco Crisp go airborn to haul in a screamer into the gap. Aaron Rowand also put his face through a stadium wall, which we won't revisit at the moment. Too gruesome. All of these videos are easily found at MLB.com, of course, just by searching through that player's name and going to their multimedia section. (Moon pies. What a glorious time to be alive).

The highlight reel bar, in other words, is really high at the moment, and I don't think, as was suggested Sunday, Beltran's grab is of the caliber of those three. Which is good. Over the next 27 games, if the choice is between a Web Gem and an all-out dive into the wall, I'm calling for each and every Met to pull up.

Except Woodward. He can consider himself free to fire at will.


Enjoy the holiday folks.