July 20, 2019

History Repeats

The Giants beat the Mets 1-0 in ten innings as a defensive miscue in a similar game in 2018 comes back to haunt the Mets:

As Dominic Smith converged with Amed Rosario on Pablo Sandoval’s pop-up in the 10th inning Friday night, the Mets left fielder’s thoughts turned to his collision last season with the shortstop that had cost their team a game, against the Giants.


This time there would be no collision. Smith took his eye off the ball in order to gauge Rosario’s whereabouts and dropped it. The Giants’ Alex Dickerson was full steam ahead to home plate with the winning run in a 1-0 loss for the Mets at Oracle Park.


“The ball went up and I had a good read on it, a good beat,” Smith said following the Mets’ second straight extra-inning loss. “In a second, I got a little scared because last year we collided. I just took my eye off the ball because of what happened and ended up dropping it.”


Said Rosario: “I got a good jump on it and started to go back, and once Dom called me off, I backed off.”

NYPost.com

History repeats twice in this case, recalling the 1962 Mets and Richie Ashburn:

For a superb outfielder surrounded by a less-than-stellar cast, it was a trying time for Ashburn, especially when pop flies came down at the Polo Grounds. Ashburn had trouble communicating with the shortstop, the Venezuelan-born Elio Chacon, when the two converged on fly balls, so he asked the bilingual Joe Christopher how to say ”I got it” in Spanish. Christopher told Ashburn, ”Yo lo tengo.” The next game, Ashburn ran in for a pop-up, yelling, ”Yo lo tengo.” Chacon backed off, but Ashburn had neglected to let left fielder Frank Thomas in on the dialogue. Thomas, who spoke no Spanish, promptly flattened Ashburn.

NYTimes.com

On the bright side, this gives the Mets a 21-34 record on the road, with is a Fibonacci sequence.

The Giants are now 13-2 in July and have gotten back to .500. They are now just two games out of the second wild card slot in a very competitive NL race.

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