The first game of the season was all it should have been. You see what we have. We have so much depth and strength in that lineup that we can score six runs even on a day when most of our best hitters are only so-so. We have a superb defensive team. You saw that catch by Alou, that throw by Beltran, and the dazzling play of Valentin. These may have been the most revealing moments of this game.
We know Glavine can pitch like that three quarters of the time. We have a good bullpen that will scare us and come through for us for most of the season. We were playing the World Champions but we were obviously the better team. We won decisively but there were a couple of moments when it could all have fallen apart. We had a couple of those bad moments in last year’s NLCS. I’m not saying that that the Cardinal’s victory was a fluke. It wasn’t. But if those two teams played 10 seven-game series against each other, I wouldn’t bet on the Cards winning five of them.
It was important to win this first game. Because Mets fans are confident but scared. They think the team will do well, but they can easily imagine a disaster. One game doesn’t mean very much, but the first game can matter. I still think that if the Mets hadn’t blown that opening day game against the Reds in 2005, they wouldn’t have started the season losing 5 straight and that very good season might very well have ended with a Wild Card.
So they should be cool and confident. They’ll need it for these first three series. It’s rare that the first three series are such a test. The Cards. The Braves. The Phillies. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. We have something to prove to all three teams and all three have something to prove to us. It doesn’t exactly feel like April.
