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Bye-bye Willie, bye-bye ball!

Wallace Matthews

August 28, 2008

PHILADELPHIA

In the early morning hours of June 17, following a rousing 9-6 victory over the Angels, Mets manager Willie Randolph was fired along with two of his coaches.

Exactly 10 days later, Carlos Delgado embarked on a hitting tear that, more than two months later, shows no sign of ending.

Hmmm.

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You no doubt are wondering what Jerry Manuel or hitting coach Howard Johnson said to Delgado to get him going. In fact, it might be more a case of what Omar Minaya said to Randolph that night in Anaheim.

Just understand that from the moment Delgado and Carlos Beltran heard the news of Randolph's firing in the lobby of the Mets hotel - according to the report written by our own David Lennon, the two registered no reaction and disappeared into an elevator - no Met's game has improved the way Delgado's has.

Along with the resurgence of Jose Reyes and the emergence of Mike Pelfrey, Delgado's rejuvenated bat has led his team's second-half surge. It makes you long for a peek at the security camera footage taken in that elevator the night Randolph got canned. If Jimmy Rollins thinks the Mets celebrate too much over a home run, he should have seen Delgado and Beltran dancing and high-fiving in that elevator while singing "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead."

That is mere conjecture, of course, but something has turned Delgado's season around.

According to Delgado, the secret is better timing at the plate, something he achieved after a year-and-a-half of "hard work, man." Manuel said Delgado's health is a factor as well - "After the game, he has ice everywhere" - but Delgado laughed that off.

"Maybe Jerry knows something I don't," he said. "Maybe Jerry should get a second career as a doctor."

All we know for sure is since June 27, no player in the National League has hit as many home runs (19) or driven in as many runs (58) as Delgado. During that 65-game span, the Mets have gone 40-25. No coincidence there.

"When he hits, we win," Manuel said. "He just carries us. He puts us on his back."

Last night, Delgado carried the Mets past the scary graveyard of facing Brad Lidge going for a save, a situation he had never failed to covert in 31 attempts. He did it by golfing the second pitch he saw from Rudy Seanez into the lower leftfield seats to tie the game with two outs in the eighth. It was his second homer of the game, his third RBI - he had singled in Reyes with the Mets first run in the opening inning - and it ran his total to multi-home run games to five this season and 47 in his career.

Best of all, it forced Charlie Manuel to use Lidge in that oh-so-difficult role for a closer, the dreaded non-save situation, and he responded accordingly, allowing the Mets to tack on three more runs. The 6-3 victory gave the Mets a split in this miniseries and returned them to first-place in the NL East, a half-game ahead of the Phillies.

"This was huge for us, key," Delgado said. "It shows we have a lot of character in this room, a lot of guys with short-term memories."

Like Delgado, whose life certainly changed for the better on that morning of June 17, even if it took him 10 days to recover from the hangover of realizing he no longer had Randolph to kick him around anymore. Certainly, the two were not chummy after he was benched after a bad road trip to Colorado in late May. But he has been a different player under Manuel, as have several other Mets, particularly Reyes and Pelfrey, though Pelfrey admittedly had more problems with deposed pitching coach Rick Peterson.

"Sometimes things just happen for simple reasons,"' Delgado said. "We're not reinventing the wheel here."'

But Delgado has reinvented himself, and at a most opportune time for both his team and his future. Two months ago, it was taken for granted that Delgado would be cut loose with $4 million of Wilpon Walkaway Money when his contract expires at the end of this season, but now the Mets would be crazy not to pick up his $12 million option for 2009.

"I would like to stay here," he said. "But that's out of my hands. I'm past the audition stage. If they don't see it by now, what can I do?"

Only what he has been doing since that night in Anaheim. The timing of it all may be a little suspect, but so what? For the Mets, Delgado's timing has lately been impeccable.