Togetherness pays for Mets
Meeting, bus ride change the karma
MILWAUKEE — His team in a tailspin, and Brewers ace Yovani Gallardo primed to complete a sweep at Miller Park, New York Mets manager Jerry Manuel’s sense of timing seemed off in calling for a postgame meeting late Tuesday night. For a guy who is known to read the writings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi, this was not out of the Manager’s Handbook.
“I don’t know if anything really works,” Manuel said. “Normally what people do is they don’t wait until they face the No. 1 starter — they wait until their No. 1 starter is pitching and then have a meeting.”
But after Johan Santana was rocked Tuesday, that wasn’t an option. Good thing Mike Pelfrey, technically the Mets’ No. 2, picked the right spot for one of his best starts of the season. Pelfrey pitched 7c scoreless innings to outduel Gallardo, who had a career-high 12 strikeouts, and Ryan Church’s RBI single in the sixth was the difference in the Mets’ 1-0 win Wednesday.
The win snapped a five-game losing streak and allowed them to take a deep breath before heading to Pittsburgh for today’s makeup game with the Pirates (12:30 p. m., SNY). Then it’s a trip to Philadelphia.
Lost in the commotion late Tuesday, when Manuel spoke to his players for nearly a half-hour during the closed-door session, was the fact that Pelfrey already had gone back to the team hotel. Scheduled for the matinee, Pelfrey showered and left in the sixth inning. He didn’t even know about it until the team-mandated bus ride to Miller Park the next morning.
“Somebody told me, ‘Thanks for showing up,’ ” Pelfrey said. “I was like, meeting? What meeting?”
Pelfrey (6-3) allowed six hits, walked two and struck out six to win for only the second time in 10 starts since May 12. It was his longest scoreless outing since he went eight innings July 13 last season. “I told him if he’d been at the meeting, he would have thrown a no-hitter,” Manuel said, laughing.
Probably the most important thing to come out of Manuel’s lecture was his decision to have the entire roster ride the team bus to the game. The scheduled arrival time in the clubhouse was 11:15 a. m. for the 1:05 start.
Right on cue, to the minute, the whole traveling contingent, dressed in suits, walked through the door in a parade of sunglasses, sports coats and wheeled bags. It was an unusual sight. Rarely do players take the bus from the hotel and never en masse as they did.
“It was just show and go today,” Church said. “Everybody came together. It was probably the first bus ride I’ve ever taken. Seriously, I’ve never taken a bus ride. It was great to have all the players and coaches together. You had a sense that something good was going to happen today.”
There were a few tense moments. In the seventh, after a leadoff single by Prince Fielder, Pelfrey faked a throw to first and was called for a balk. But the Mets caught a break when Corey Hart missed a bunt attempt. That left Fielder stranded off second, and a strong throw by Brian Schneider got the 2-6-5 pickoff.
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