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Mariners vs. Yankees |
Mets vs. Cardinals
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Wednesday, October 18
Hampton's glorious game gets Mets to Series
By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com
NEW YORK -- These are the nights that define men's careers.
Nine shutout innings in the game that sends your team to the World Series. Nine innings, three hits, exactly seven balls leaving the infield on the fly.
|  | | Mike Hampton didn't allow a runner past first base and then got a celebratory lift from his teammates. |
These are the memories that never fade. Not 10 years later. Not 20 years later. Not 30 years later.
When Mike Hampton starts fielding those free-agent offers this winter, this will be the game rolling on the videotape in his own personal showroom.
Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. Mets 7, Cardinals 0. Winning pitcher: Michael W. Hampton.
He was the MVP of the NLCS. But to the New York Mets, he was more than that. He was the piece in the puzzle that got them to this spot.
If you were trying to define the biggest difference between the Mets team that will go to the World Series this October and the Mets team that fell two wins short of the World Series last October, you start with the ace.
You start with a man who pitched 16 consecutive shutout innings against St. Louis in the NLCS. You start, in other words, with Mike Hampton.
"I remember in December, when we got him," Mike Piazza said afterward, doing his best to tread water in a sea of champagne. "My dad said to me, 'You just got the pennant.' And I said, 'Are you crazy? There are no guarantees in this game. It doesn't matter who you get or who you trade for.'
"And after the first two months (during which Hampton went 6-4), I was like, 'OK.' But now I've seen it come true."
And now Mike Hampton has seen it come true himself.
He lived through three straight first-round playoff exits in Houston. He lived through four postseason starts without a win. He had his chances to do the things he did this year. And those chances had passed him by.
So no one had to explain to him what nights like this mean. He'd seen enough of the bottom of the canyon to recognize how awesome the view is from the top of the mountain.
"I think you envision things like this happening when you start playing this game," said the 28-year-old left-hander. "Sometimes those things come true. But sometimes they don't. So I feel very fortunate that this came true for me."
Not many of us will ever know that feeling that Hampton had as he drove to the ballpark Monday afternoon, knowing he could send his team to its first World Series in 14 years. Think about that feeling for a moment. There aren't many like it.
"Actually," Hampton chuckled, "driving through this traffic to get here, it was the same feeling I have when I don't have to pitch.
"But once I got here, it was different. It was a great feeling, knowing we had a chance to do this. And up 3-1, that kind of took some of the pressure off. I knew I had Al (Leiter) behind me if I didn't get it done."
He didn't need Leiter's help on this night, though. And his teammates knew it the moment they laid eyes on him, before he'd thrown the first pitch of the game.
"Hampton came into the clubhouse today," Piazza said. "And just from the look on his face, I said to myself, 'This guy wants to end this tonight.' "
And end it he did. But in many ways, the Mets made it easy for him. They mugged Cardinals starter Pat Hentgen for three runs in the first inning. By midway through the fourth it was 6-0, and Hentgen was looking for the exit signs. He'd thrown 90 pitches. The Mets had swung and missed at only three of them.
Not once this season did Hampton lose a game when the Mets scored six runs for him. So those 55,695 dreamers in the seats knew it was OK to start the party right then.
But if those six runs all but informed the Cardinals that their offseason had essentially begun, Mike Hampton was happy to book their reservations home.
"I was really able to settle in once we got those runs," Hampton said. "After that, I worked ahead in the count better than I did in the first inning. And that was the key tonight. After that, I just relaxed and trusted my stuff and threw strikes.
"I've had games in the past," he said, "that were just as dominant as this game. But my timing was great tonight."
That timing was no accident, though. The only reason he ended up with the Mets in the first place is that they envisioned him doing exactly what he did Monday night.
"As we looked last year at our starting pitching, this was the one thing we lacked," said general manager Steve Phillips. "We wanted to add a guy like that to our starting pitching, that you could pitch at the front end of a series. That was very important to us."
He allowed the rest of this group -- Leiter, Rick Reed, the Bobby Joneses -- to slot in behind him and just do their thing. And when the time came Monday for Hampton to do his thing, nobody had to give him an instructional manual.
It was an evening that felt more like December than July. But when asked if the cold bothered him, Hampton said: "I didn't even notice."
If anything, he used that chill in the air to his advantage. He kept burying those sinkers on the Cardinals' knees, shattering bats, grinding through one shutout inning after another. No Cardinal got a hit after the fourth inning. No Cardinal got past first base all night.
And then it came time to go out there for the ninth inning. Shea was literally shaking. The jets continued to pass overhead. But this time for a change, it was the stadium that rocked their windows, not the other way around.
In most of these electrifying clinching moments these days, it's the closer who takes that heart-pumping walk to the mound to pitch the ninth. But there was no doubt which Mets pitcher was going to take that walk on this night.
"(Pitching coach) Dave Wallace came up to me before the ninth," Hampton said. "And he said this was my game. That's all I wanted to hear.
"I wanted to be there. I don't think you could want any more awesome experience than closing out a series. I saw Bobby Jones do it in the first series (against the Giants). And tonight, I wanted to be that guy."
So he set down Craig Paquette on a floating liner to left. One out.
Then came Mark McGwire, normally the scariest sight any pitcher could have. But Big Mac wasn't going to be able to hit a seven-run homer. So Hampton mowed him down with a jam-job bouncer to second base. Two outs.
Finally, it was Rick Wilkins' turn. The count ran to 3-1. Hampton heaved a deep breath and took a walk around the mound -- his mound. He pawed at the dirt. He turned and set himself, staring in for the sign as cowbells chimed and grown men screamed and 55,000 people stood transfixed.
Hampton came back with one more fastball. Wilkins lofted it into center field. Timo Perez began hopping up and down like a kid on a pogo stick. Then the baseball returned to earth and landed in Perez's glove. And the Mets were the National League's last team standing.
Robin Ventura raced in from third and tried to lift Hampton into the turbo-charged night. "But he didn't want to go," Ventura reported. "I'm not strong enough to do that, I guess, when the guy doesn't want to go."
"Hey, I know I'm kind of short," Hampton said. "But I think I'm a little heavier than a lot of people realize. I can be tough to pick up."
But it didn't matter if Ventura could pick him up. What mattered was that Hampton had no trouble picking them up.
These are the nights when you find out which guys can carry that special October weight. And Mike Hampton sure carried his.
"When we got to spring training, this was one of our goals," Hampton said. "But we've got another one. And it's set just a little higher."
Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com.
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