OF CITI FIELD
Johan basks in afterglow
risking injury or compromising his effectiveness in the coming weeks. It’s just not the way he’s wired, after all.
“Coming back (from shoulder-capsule surgery), there were a lot of question marks around me,” Santana said. “Whether it’s velocity, whether it’s ‘can he come back and compete again?’
“But I’ve got my heart, and I always love to compete. So more than risking anything, my thought was, ‘I have the opportunity to make this happen and I’m not gonna let it get away. It might be once a lifetime.’ ”
In other words, no regrets the morning after.
Collins only wished he could say the same. He’d gotten only a little more sleep than Santana, not because he was celebrating, but because he stayed awake in bed, still asking himself if he’d done the right thing.
Yes, Collins was still as conflicted as ever. He did feel a little better when his bosses, Jeff Wilpon and GM Sandy Alderson, told him they supported his decision, and he was relieved when Santana told him on Saturday he felt fine, not to worry.
But it will be a couple of days — or longer — before the lefthander will be able to truly gauge the effects of his effort, and Collins acknowledged that he is planning to give Santana a couple of extra days before his next start.
So we’ll see. But if karma counts for anything, Santana will come out of this all right.
After all, the Mets and their fans desperately needed a moment like this, something big enough to perhaps reverse the curse of collapses, injuries and financial problems that has plagued them since Carlos Beltran famously took strike three against these same Cardinals to end the 2006 NLCS.
Who knows, maybe t he no-hitter is a sign the Mets are going to continue to take this surprise season deeper than anyone dares believe right now. R.A. Dickey couldn’t duplicate Santana’s feat on Saturday but he did throw a shutout in a 5-0 victory over the Cardinals, running his record to 8-1.
With Dickey and Santana at the top of the rotation in a division that’s more wide open than anyone expected, suddenly anything seems possible.
At the very least, however, Santana’s no-hitter was a unifying moment for the franchise and its fan base. That mattered to the lefthander, who has come to think of himself as a New Yorker, as well as a Venezuelan, during his five years as a Met.
In fact, he has become the latest to continue the Mets’ tradition of aiding the 9/11 community, last week donating $10,000 from his foundation — which the Mets matched — to the Tuesday’s Children program for families affected by 9/11.
“I do most of my charity work in Venezuela,’’ Santana said on Saturday, “but I wanted to do something to help make a difference in New York.’’
He could have been speaking of the no-hitter as well, of B course. ecause you only had to be at Citi Field on Saturday, where anyone who cared about the Mets was in a dreamy state of euphoria, to understand just what a difference he’d made.