Live Bat...Dead Arm

That was a Roy Hobbs moment we witnessed on Saturday at Shea.

It was surreal to see everyone rise as one in the fifth inning and cheer Carlos Delgado before the pivotal at-bat of the game. It wasn't like that in innings one and three, where Delgado failed. He came up in those innings to an apprehensive crowd...mixing boos and cheers. Then came the fifth inning, with Jeff Conine being walked to get to Delgado.

Grady Little and Eric Stults...the supposed Met killer...slapping Delgado in the face by basically giving in to the bashing by Met fans, saying "your own crowd doesn't think you can do it, so we don't think you can do it either". And once again it comes down to Met fans being protective of their own. "Sure, we can boo him...we're family. But don't you dare come in as an outsider and slap our guy in the face...no way." So the crowd rose as one to exhort their embattled one on. The FOX cameras caught it just as it was scripted. Of course FOX always has at least 35 cameras in the stands to catch those "I just saw Elvis" looks in the crowd. But for once, the cameras were useful. Because as if the crowd all at once said "what the hell have we been doing with our booing? Let's try something different...and let's show Grady Little that he shouldn't disrespect our guy by walking to get to him. Disrespecting our guys are our job."

Don't think Carlos didn't notice. Don't think the shortness of Carlos' swing on his two run single to center field which basically won the game (Orlando's ninth straight start with a win...yeah, he helped too) was a coincidence. He knew. He understood. All that was missing was blood on his jersey and a Savoy Special.

Of course, to go with our newly live bat, is a dead arm. And unfortunately, it's Billy Wagner's dead arm. Country Time has pitched a lot lately...why else would Aaron Heilman be entrusted with the fire hose today? Thankfully, there was water in the hose instead of kerosene. That's probably because Willie Randolph never told Heilman he was closing...he never had a chance to fill the tank with gas.

Somebody get the ointment to revive Billy's arm...quickly.