Bizarre Game Leaves Phillies, Mets Asking, 'What Just Happened?'

NEW YORK -- Just when you think you've seen everything there is to see in baseball, a second baseman shuffles his body just a tiny bit to his right and bedlam breaks out. It was only a few inches, mind you, almost an unconscious move choreographed by Eric Bruntlett as he tried to shake the cobwebs from his head.

He'd already made an error in the bottom of the ninth, clumsily booting the ball and allowing the hapless Mets to hang in. Bruntlett was also on the end of what was generously called an infield single, and now the Mets had two runners on base, the winning run at the plate, and Philadelphia closer Brad Lidge was flirting with another meltdown.

A few inches. That's the gap between incredulous rub-your-eyes wonder and here-we-go-again exasperation. A few seconds. That's the time it took to once again seal the disparities between baseball's defending champions and this season's cursed losers.

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Bruntlett turned an unassisted triple play to seal the Phillies' 9-7 victory over the Mets Sunday afternoon, just the 15th overall unassisted triple play in major league history, the first to end a game in National League history and the second to end a game period. He was in the right place at the right time -- All-Star second baseman Chase Utley needed a day of rest -- and an hour after Bruntlett's magical spin into history, he was still clutching the ball as if it were a lump of gold.

"What a shocker," Pedro Martinez kept saying, after he had become almost an afterthought in his wild return to Queens. Martinez got the win, but only after a string of peculiarities flipped Citi Field into a carnival house. If a feral black cat had escaped the ruins of Shea and stopped by to greet Martinez along with 39,038 humans, nobody would have blinked, that's the kind of game it was.

"Completely crazy," said Jeff Francoeur, the Met who ripped a sharp liner up the middle that would have been a clean single and continued the rally had the runners not been going with nobody out.


The Mets, down 6-0 after the first inning, had aggressively chipped their way to this point, but on the 2-2 pitch to Francoeur, Bruntlett broke toward second. Covering the back end of the double steal, he was in perfect position to snag the ball, touch second base to force out Luis Castillo, then turn and chase Daniel Murphy, the trailing runner. Murphy backpedaled until Bruntlett caught him with a tag to the chest.

"The whole game was strange. There were a lot of oddities that happened there. It really is true. When you think you've seen it all, you'll have something you've never seen before happen," said Bruntlett, who also had a fine afternoon at the plate, batting 3-for-5 with a run scored.

"Even with the runners going I did not expect him to be there. The only place he could catch the ball was where he was. To end the way it did was a little disheartening," said Francoeur, who halted halfway to first, eyes about to pop out, as he watched the unimaginable take place in midfield. Francoeur's frustration could be heard in the skyboxes. Given the Mets' misfortune this season, it's a wonder he didn't break both arms slamming his helmet to the turf.

"That's a first for me," said Jerry Manuel, the Mets manager who has witnessed pretty much everything this season. If Manuel was still in shock, it might be because he also had the misfortune of watching his own starter's wretched performance. There aren't many things in baseball more painful than viewing Oliver Perez when he's in the throes of a bad day.

And this was a bad, bad day for Perez. If the game hadn't ended in such ridiculous, unbelievable fashion, the restless crowd might have chased Perez to the Whitestone Bridge. Perez lasted 2/3 innings, giving up a pair of three-run homers to Jayson Werth and Carlos Ruiz. The last batter Perez faced was none other than Martinez, who yearned to return to the Mets this season. It is still too early to pound the Mets for passing on Martinez (his four seasons in Queens were a mixed bag of occasional brilliance and injuries), but how could they justify awarding Perez $36 million over three seasons when he is to finding the plate what Bernie Madoff was to honesty? The biggest free-agent bust of the winter raised his ERA to 6.92. The man who approved that contract -- Omar Minaya -- will be back next season. For Mets fans, the news just gets better and better.

Martinez was cheered loudly as he walked to the plate in a ballpark crammed with Phillies fans. But the home crowd showered Pedro with love, too, until he worked the count to 3-0 and the anger rotated back toward Perez. He was pulled in the middle of the count, having thrown 47 pitches (20 for strikes), and the boos that trailed him were as vicious as any heard at Citi Field this season. (Castillo's bumble against the Yankees seems like it happened eons ago, doesn't it?).

Reliever Nelson Figueroa struck out Martinez to end the inning, and soon Pedro's touchdown lead was marred by another unexpected marvel -- an inside-the-park home run. Angel Pagan hit a rocket to the deep centerfield gap, the ball lodging under the wall's padding. Outfielder Shane Victorino raised his arms in a theatrical appeal to the umpires that the ball was stuck, as Pagan chugged toward third. Left fielder Raul Ibanez easily dislodged the ball, threw it to the infield and Pagan slid home.

"I'm like, 'What just happened?' " Victorino said later. "I don't know, I thought the ball was dead."

That's how it went for nine bizarre innings. What just happened? Martinez, a lifetime .099 hitter, poked a RBI single to right field in the third for a 7-2 Philadelphia lead, nudging him over the .100 mark. "Imagine that," Martinez joked. "You never thought you would see that, did you?"

Martinez tossed two 1-2-3 innings, looked shaky in a couple others. His fastball teetered around 90 mph and he now has a 2-0 record in three starts with the Phillies, which is one more win than Perez has with the Mets this month. Completely crazy? And then there was this: Phillies manager Charlie Manuel going slightly bananas arguing a play involving -- who else? -- Bruntlett and Francoeur in the top of the ninth. Francoeur made a Ron Swoboda-like diving catch on Bruntlett's line drive, Francoeur swallowing the ball with his glove as Bruntlett motored around to third. But umpire Rob Drake ruled the ball hit the grass first, Jerry Manuel argued, the umpires reversed the ruling, the other Manuel came out to argue.

And got tossed.

And missed a front row seat to the most improbable finish of all. An unassisted triple play to end the game? Just when you think you've seen it all, the unpredictable happens.

"I'm not surprised about anything that happens in my starts," said Martinez, laughing. "To see stuff like this doesn't really surprise me, but at the same time, it's so strange that everybody would have to say 'Wow, what happened here?' "

Only bedlam. Only history.