Dave VW
January 17, 2023
On a cold and windy night in San Francisco, Gooden tosses his second-to-last complete game as a Met but he has one bad inning where his defense let him down, leading to his 10th loss of the season. In that 2nd inning, Matt Williams -- who was in his second game off the DL -- led off with a double, and was moved to third on a Dave Martinez groundout. Royce Clayton then tapped one to third that Johnson nabbed and quickly tried to tag Williams out before he got back to the bag. It was a bang-bang play but the ump ruled Williams safe. Kurt Manwaring then singled in the Giants' first run, but opposing pitcher Bryan Hickerson struck out trying to bunt next. That could have been the end of the inning if HoJo got the call. Instead, Darren Lewis follows with an RBI single, which Bonilla boots trying to pick up, leading to the runners advancing to second and third. Steve Scarsone, starting at 2B for the injured Robby Thompson, then grounded one to Johnson, who this time threw wide of first, allowing yet another run to score. Will Clark, who'd homer later in the game, flew out next to finally end the inning.
Johnson was painful to watch play at this point. He clearly had nothing left in the tank as far as power, reaction time or fielding prowess were concerned. Dallas Green was hitting him second at the time in an effort to jumpstart him, but he hit .218 over 16 games in the 2-hole, so it definitely didn't work. Truth be told, he only had 6 more games to go before his Mets career was over. It's so hard to believe he went from a legit MVP candidate in 1991, to a complete nothing by 1993.
The aforementioned Darren Lewis set the major league record by playing his 267th consecutive game without an error in this one. His streak lasted all the way until game #392. Though Nick Markakis broke his record, Lewis does still hold the record for consecutive games without an error to start a career.
Also, Eddie Murray collected hit #2,732 -- a first-inning RBI single -- to tie Tony Perez for 39th on the all-time list, according to the Mets broadcast. Bob Carpenter filled in for Tim McCarver in the game, which was a pleasant relief for my ears. He continued some fill-in work for the Mets in 1993 before moving on to the Twins' team in 1994. I wasn't aware until visiting his website, but he designs and sells his own scorebook, which apparently is the most widely used scorebook in the nation. Good for him.
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