The Greatest Game Ever Played (On A Friday Night In The State Of Florida)

Did Friday's incredible win remind you of something?

Did you see a little Lenny Dykstra in Luis Castillo as he started the rally with two outs and nobody on?

Did David Wright remind you a bit of Mookie Wilson when he continued the rally?

Was Carlos Beltran's grand slam part Keith, part Darryl, and part Ray Knight all rolled up into one?

You can be forgiven if you saw Jeremy Hermida and Hanley Ramirez reach base and all of a sudden see Davey Lopes and Bill Doran roaming the bases ... or if Mike Jacobs looked an awful lot like Glenn Davis ... or if Jorge Cantu's long fly ball down the left field line which would have won the game all of a sudden made you see Billy Hatcher jog backwards down to first base before Cantu's ball went foul and you were allowed to breathe again.

You can be forgiven because we've pretty much waited for this kind of thing from the Mets all season long ... October magic in August was that lacking ingredient last season, and Friday it returned in all its spectacular fashion. Of course, it wasn't without its corresponding headaches as Luis Ayala threatened to go Jesse Orosco all over Miami.

I might be reaching with this comparison, but you have to realize one thing from my perspective ... that there was another parallel between October 15th, 1986 and August 29th, 2008: I fell asleep during both games.

Only in '86 I had it timed a little better: I had come home from school dead tired for that 3PM start and tried like hell to stay awake, but after the Astros had taken a 3-0 lead I must have thought that Game 7 was inevitable, and unconsciously became, well ... unconscious. By the time I woke up, I kid you not, Lenny Dykstra was leading off the ninth inning. So you can say I really didn't miss a whole lot.

Friday night, same deal. Wright strikes out with the bases loaded in the seventh and I'm done. I sleep with the TV on so that if something big happens, most likely I'll wake up to it. I must have been extremely dead because from the time Cantu misplayed an easy ground ball in the eighth until Jacobs was up in the ninth, I was dead to the world. Not even a grand slam was enough to shake me out (and Gary Cohen gave it the double "outta here" ... and I still didn't wake up. Whoa.)

In fact, for some reason I had it in my mind that 2-1 became 5-2 because of two runs in the eighth and two runs in the ninth. (Obviously, I had created my own ball game while I was asleep.) But truth, as always, is stranger (and more dramatic) than fiction.

(Editors note: You know what else contributed to that '86 feeling? It was the football markings on the field. They were all over the Astrodome ... and it was those football markings which forced that NLCS to start and end in Houston when the Mets rightfully should have had home field advantage. It's just too bad that more of the home fans didn't show up Friday ... I mean, Maroone Honda sales draw more customers. But hey, more seats for Met fans. Oh well ... maybe they'll show up Saturday. I hear Mike Scott's supposed to pitch.)