During the final nine days of 2013, I’m going to revisit nine memorable baseball moments from the year.
This one was an awfully long “moment.”
On June 5, it rained. On June 6, it rained some more. I took a chance and bought a ticket for the June 7 game, hoping I’d get to see a doubleheader with Matt Harvey pitching one of the games against the Miami Marlins.
The Mets disappointed me by deciding to go with a single game on June 7 and a doubleheader in September. As it turned out, that was a really fortunate decision.
I got to see Harvey match up against Jose Fernandez, but considering the overall quality of both team’s lineups, it’s tough to say how much credit to give them for it being a 1-1 tie when they left the game.
Actually, considering the Mets and Marlins bullpens both pitched five scoreless innings, I’d say the “credit” mostly belonged to the talent levels of the two teams’ hitters.
Then when inning 13 came around, both teams turned to the starters who would have pitched except for the rainout.
For the Mets, it was Shaun Marcum, who entered the game with an 0-6 record and had generally been terrible, though on occasion he did pitch almost well enough to win… if he played for a team that scored runs.
For the Marlins, it was Kevin Slowey. And for seven more innings, they matched zeros.
Naturally, in inning 20, Marcum finally allowed a run. And mercifully, Rick Ankiel, Omar Quintanilla and Daniel Murphy were unable to extend the game further in the bottom half of the inning.
It took 6 hours and 25 minutes to play, 561 pitches were thrown, 41 players were used, and of an official crowd of 20,338 fans, only a few hundred remained to see the end.
I was one of them.
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