There were so many big Mets moments during Terry Collins’ tenure as manager, but perhaps the one that most had his ‘ass in the jackpot’ was the first no-hitter in team history.
Some will continue to say it wasn’t actually a no-hitter, and some will say it ruined Johan Santana’s career, as he threw 134 pitches – 20 more than the limit Collins had planned to impose – just a year removed from shoulder surgery, and ended up only making 10 more career starts.
Collins said after that game that ‘if in five days his arm is bothering him, I’m not going to feel very good,’ and when he joined Joe Benigno and Sal Licata live on WFAN at Fanatics Fest Saturday, well, he had another admission about the game.
“Probably not,” Terry said when Joe asked if he would’ve left Santana in had the Mets had a no-hitter in franchise history prior. “But if you know him, this guy is such a pro, and during that game, I went to him in both the seventh and eighth innings and asked how he was doing, and at one point, I went to the mound to ask if he was okay and he said, ‘I’m gonna be fine, leave me alone.’ If there would’ve been a no-hitter before that I probably would have got him, because I just knew we were entering the danger zone with that pitch count, but he so deserved it, with what he had accomplished.”
Joe remembered that the next game against the Yankees was a clunker (six runs in five innings after back-to-back complete game shutouts), and Santana was never the same – in fact, he never pitched in the Majors after that 2012 season, but holds no ill will towards Collins or anything for it.
“On the anniversary of the no-hitter, I came to New York and Johan got me off the side, and told me, ‘I have no problem with what with what we did,’” Terry said. “And he said, ‘Terry, I gotta tell you my arm hurt the whole game. I’m gonna tell you right now, I knew I was at the end, so I want to thank you for leaving me in.’ And he had no problem with the results at all.”
Collins revealed that Santana reiterated that same night that he knew he wasn’t coming out of the game, perhaps because he knew this was his last chance at history, even as Collins kept the bullpen live.
And none of it would’ve happened if that Carlos Beltran liner was called, perhaps rightfully, fair, something Joe still can’t shake the memory of.
“Hey, it was foul, that’s all I can say!” Collins laughed. “But I remember one time I had an argument with an umpire against the Yankees, they picked Tejada off second base and the ump called him safe, and then said he was out – and I went out there and asked what happened, and he said, ‘I missed it,’ and I said, ‘well live with it, because we have to!’”
But through it all, one thing we can live with now 12 years later is that even if the first was tainted for some, it wasn’t for Santana, and the Mets have another one in the books.