It was a text book ending, just the way Willie drew it up in the clubhouse. 

Down by one in the 12th, Willie Randolph went to the top dugout step and launched into a furious sequence of signs….3^rd base coach Sandy Alomar Sr. signaled for time and looked at the skipper quizzically.  Randolph glared at Alomar and mouthed the words “do I stutter?” before going into the signs again….this time more slowly and methodically….walk, balk, bunt, balk. 

Alomar nodded and smiled.  “That’s better”, he told himself, “I thought Willie wanted to do something unorthodox.”    

Alomar dutifully relayed the signs, first looking at Reyes and flashing the universal sign for “Draw a walk” before quickly turning his glance to Endy Chavez in the on deck circle.  Chavez watched Alomar execute a rudimentary version of the moonwalk before stopping and drawing his fingers over his moustache, curiling the ends like Snidely Wiplash.  Endy  nodded knowingly.  ”Jose is to draw a walk and then I am to wait for a Balk by Armando” Chavez told himself as he applied pine tar to his bat and took two fierce practice cuts, “then and only then am I to bunt Reyes to third.  Just the way we practiced it.” 

Before stepping back to the coaches box, Alomar looked back at Reyes and touched the brim of his hat 3 times….”when you get to third” he signaled, “after walking, getting balked to second, and  bunted to third, you are to break for home like your cleats are on fire and then stop cold, drawing the second balk”.  Reyes nodded and smiled.

The amazing thing is that to the undisciplined eye, this all happened in the blink of an eye…Randolph-to-Alomar-to-Reyes and Endy…. all in the time it took for Benitez to circle the mound and kick the dirt off his cleats. 

And then, it happened. As scripted.  As surely as if Francis Ford Coppola himself had clapped the scene-starting clappers and barked “ACTION!".  Walk…balk….bunt….balk….(Beltran’s groundout omitted  for poetic license and brevity)….and just that quickly the game was tied.  Just like Willie drew it up.  Just like they practiced it time and time again in spring training.  “Walk-balk-bunt-balk, repeat after me” Randolph wound bark at his legions in Pt. St Lucie this March, “Walk-balk-bunt-balk, Gentlemen .  I want this to be second nature to you when we are in the trenches this summer”. 

After the perfectly executed  W-B-B-B gambit was executed, the Giants were toast.  We knew it and they knew it.  The score may have just been tied, but everyone in the stadium had to know what was about to happen as Carlos Delgado stepped to the plate.  If you didn’t sense he was going to crush his second homer of the game, you either don’t watch much baseball or just weren’t paying attention.

Know it is coming or not, there is nothing more euphoric than a walk off homer.  It reduces the most badass of dudes into an 8 year old kid again.  As Delgado launched the ball far and deep into the night, he, the 47,940 in attendance at Shea, the 30 guys in the Mets dugout and I all did the same thing simultaneously.  We silently, knowingly, joyously thrust our arms in the air. When Jim McKay evoked “the thrill of victory” in his Wide World of Sports intro, this is the kind of moment he was talking about.

A giddy, bouncing mass of Mets greeted Delgado at home plate as he leapt into his air for his final stride, gliding two-footed into home plate (bonus points for degree of difficulty and nailing the dismount).  Willie Randolph beamed as he embraced Delgado with a bear hug.  “Walk-balk-bunt-balk” he thought to himself, “works every time.”