SAN FRANCISCO -- About 40 minutes after the final pitch Friday, with the grounds crew cleaning up and the lights slowly turning off, a group of kids took to left field at Oracle Park. As they waited for their parents -- Giants players -- to finish up, the kids threw a ball around and made diving catches.
Those kids probably would have handled the final moments of Friday's game better than the Mets did.
In one of the most bizarre finishes you'll ever see, the Mets badly butchered a routine fly ball to left, allowing Alex Dickerson to race all the way around from first and clinch a 1-0 extra-innings win. It was the seventh straight win for the Giants and their 14th in 16 games. It got them back to .500 for the first time this season.
The way it happened, well, you just kind of have to watch it ...
Giants 1, Mets LOL. pic.twitter.com/1MPLEv1h4F— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) July 20, 2019
As bad as the Mets Mets-ed, the Giants did certainly take advantage, and that's what you have to do. Ron Wotus had a good send and Dickerson was running hard the whole way.
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"Right as I was crossing second I took a peak at the left fielder and he looked tentative," Dickerson said. "I know I've been in that situation before. Once you're tentative on those balls anything can happen. I was going as hard as I could, and once it dropped I was going to do everything I could to head home."
There was another hero, too. None of this would have been possible without Tyler Beede, who cruised through eight innings in the longest starting of his career, allowing the Giants to keep breathing on a night when Jacob deGrom was his usual dominant self.
Beede needed just 89 pitches to get through eight innings before retreating to the clubhouse where he watched the end with injured third baseman Evan Longoria. Their TV feed was delayed, but they could hear the screams echo through the park and knew something weird had happened as they watched Pablo Sandoval's fly ball sail seemingly harmlessly into the night. A few moments later, players came streaming through the door to celebrate.
"Well, we got a break," manager Bruce Bochy said. "You take it."
