The Chicago Cubs defeated the Mets in New York tonight 9-6.
With the score tied 6-6, Lou Piniella brought in Bobby Howry. I groaned audibly. When Daniel Murphy led off the inning with a triple, the groans turned to plain ol’ swearing. My wife even commented, "is that the pitcher you don’t like, honey?" Yeah, that about sums it up.
But wait! This story has a happy ending. With no outs, a runner on third, and no real option left in the bullpen, it was left to Howry to get the job done. He struck out David Wright. Lou called for two successive intentional walks to Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran. A short hop to Ronnie Cedeno by Ryan Church looked like DP-fodder but Ronnie took the sure out at home preventing the winning run from scoring. Finally, the coup-d-grace, Howry struck out Ramon Castro to get out of the inning.
The Cubs went on to score three runs in the top of the tenth on a Ryan Theriot single, a Derrek Lee double and a Aramis Ramirez homerun. Kerry Wood came on to pitch a scoreless tenth to get his 34th save.
All good things but nothing impressed me more than Howry and how he got out of his 9th inning jam.