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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 are no doubt 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 in that elevator, to the strains of "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead."

That is mere conjecture, of course, but something has turned Delgado's season around, and who wants to talk about boring stuff like better pitch selection and more patience at the plate? Those are Delgado's officially sanctioned reasons for his drastic rebirth, which has landed him atop the NL in home runs (19) and RBIs (58) over that 65-game span, a stretch in which the Mets have gone 40-25.

No coincidence there.

Last night, Delgado saved his team from what to this point had been sure death, trying to win a game against Phillies closer Brad Lidge, 31-for-31 in save opportunities this season.

Trailing 3-2 and down to their final out in the eighth against Rudy Seanez, Delgado rescued the Mets by golfing the second pitch he saw into the lower leftfield seats to tie it up. The shot was his second of the game and 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, for now at least, to first place in the NL East, a half-game ahead of the Phillies.

Whether Delgado wants to acknowledge it or not, his life certainly changed for the better on July 17, even if it took him 10 days to process the information - or overcome his euphoria - that he no longer had Randolph to kick him around anymore.

Certainly, the two were not chummy after Randolph sat him after a 3-for-16 road trip in Colorado in late May. But he has been a different player under Manuel, as have several other Mets. Those include Reyes and Pelfrey - who admittedly had more problems with deposed pitching coach Rick Peterson - in particular.

Delgado's resurgence could not come at a better time for his team, nor for himself. Whereas 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, now the Mets would be crazy not to pick up his $12 million option for 2009.

On a night in which the Mets needed a superior effort out of Johan Santana, they had to settle for a so-so-outing, Santana's first in more than a month. With the bullpen depleted after Tuesday's 13-inning, eight-pitcher, five-hour-plus marathon, they did not want to go through the nightly death march of Feliciano-Sanchez-Heilman-Smith-Schoeneweis. And they certainly did not want to buck the enormous odds of trying to outbluff Lidge with money on the table in the bottom of the ninth.

With one swing of the bat, Delgado saved the Mets from all that. For the past two months, he has been their best hitter and among their happiest campers.

The timing of his revival is suspect, but so what? For the Mets purposes, Delgado's timing has been impeccable.