Mets brush aside miscues ... along with the Dodgers

In the cat-and-mouse National League Division Series between the New York Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers, the mouse was actually tied or in the lead after the fifth inning in two of three games.

Oh, but the claw marks on Squeaky by the end ...

The Mets completed their three-game NLDS sweep over the Dodgers on Saturday with a 9-5 victory in Los Angeles, a sweep most striking in that it was not that New York could do no wrong, but that New York could do wrong and still win going away.

In Game 1 on Wednesday, Mets manager Willie Randolph let relief pitcher Guillermo Mota bat with the bases loaded in the bottom of the sixth inning, watched him allow three runs in the top of the seventh -- and still, the Mets won, 6-4.

In Game 2 on Thursday ... well, nothing really went wrong for the Mets there, unless you want to get worked up over them loading the bases twice in the bottom of the fifth and scoring just one run.

But in Game 3, the mistakes came and came again, and yet the only price New York and its metropolitans paid was to have to stay up past midnight for the series-ending celebration.

Leading two games to none, several of the Mets came out for the dusky pregame introductions at Dodger Stadium smiling like their official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot range model air rifle was already under the tree. Ex-Dodger Paul Lo Duca, coming back to the city that raised him in baseball, literally had a bounce in his step.

For their part, the Dodgers looked dead serious trying to forestall a dead series. Los Angeles (the team, the city, you name it) had been scrambling for salvation ever since the two-car pileup of Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew at home plate in the second inning of Game 1, and was just trying to last long enough for redemption to arrive.

And then, just three batters into Game 3, Lo Duca was shocked to find himself thrown out at third base by Dodger centerfielder Kenny Lofton (via shortstop Rafael Furcal). It was a moment that encompassed both the incomprehensible (Lofton's arm has been considered as box art for spaghetti packaging) and the irresponsible (making an out at third base with hot slugger Carlos Delgado on deck) -- and it seemed to make for a perfect turning point to the series.

Instead, the Mets still got three runs out of the first inning, thanks to singles by Delgado, David Wright (a screwball shot over Dodger third baseman Wilson Betemit), Cliff Floyd (a lazy fly to slow-reacting leftfielder Marlon Anderson) and Shawn Green. Only a leaping catch of a Jose Valentin line drive by Dodger rookie first baseman James Loney kept two more runs from scoring.