Mets Eliminate Braves!!!!!

After six innings last night it looked like although Oliver Perez had pitched a surprisingly competent game against these upstart Marlins his run support, like the muscle contractions a constipated colon, were slow and sluggish to come. The Mets were down 4-0 and the Magic Number wasn't getting any smaller.


Did the 128 minutes of total rain delay work to the Mets advantage?

But then in the 7th, with the daunting Josh Johnson who had allowed a mere three hits over five innings icing his arm to the tune of the Florida Marlin bullpen, David Wright slapped an RBI double to narrow the margin to 4-1 and in the 8th Carlos Delgado smacked a three-run homer, his 39th of the season to straightaway centerfield off Taylor Tankersley to tie the game.

Classic bullpen meltdown by six Florida relievers who combined to allow 10 hits and six runs in four innings or mere inevitability that the Mets offensive juggernaut could not be derailed forever?

Wright's second double following Delgado was followed by yet another double by Cliff Floyd and just like that the Mets held the lead.

In a telling contrast to the Marlin bullpen Chad Bradford, Guillermo Mota, Aaron Heilman and Billy Wagner held the Marlins scoreless over the final four innings, allowing five hits but striking out five as well and helping the Mets to a rain-soaked and inspirational 6-4 victory.

But best news of all, in spite of a rainout in Atlanta, the Mets victory meant

The Braves Have Been Eliminated From the Postseason!!

After 14 long years of uninterrupted domination the Atlanta Braves will not have to contemplate what went wrong in the playoffs for the first time.

To put this into perspective, the last time the Braves didn't make the playoffs in a season that wasn't marred by a strike was 1990. The same year the first McDonald's in Moscow opened, the same year South African President F.W. de Klerk allowed the African National Congress to legally function again and promised to free Nelson Mandela, the same year Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson, that the Hubble Telescope was launched, that East Germany and West Germany reunified into a single Germany and of course, the same year DC Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for crack in an FBI sting operation to the tune of "Bitch Set Me Up!".

Let's see, David Wright was 8 years old.

The Mets won 91 games in 1990 but not the NL East, finishing 4 games behind the Pirates. The Pirates! Talk about the world being upside down...

*****

Applause are in order for the outing by Oliver Perez who ended a short string of porous pitching performances by starters and free-styled his way to striking out 11 Marlins over 5 innings, four runs and five hits worth, but the real heroics were the bullpen who held the Marlins scoreless and the batting order, who rallied back yet again from deficit and helped the Mets to their 89th victory of the season.

11 wins over their last 18 will give them 100 for the season.