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Shea la vie Mets return home with commanding 2-0 series lead
NEW YORK (AP) -- Down two games and facing a challenge no team has ever overcome in a league championship series, the St. Louis Cardinals now confront Shea Stadium, where the Mets had baseball's best home record. Anybody got any ideas? "Most clubs get down two don't do very well," manager Tony La Russa said during workouts Friday. "It is possible." La Russa said the solution was fairly clear. "I'm not sure it's anything that's too complicated," he said. "It's just straight baseball. We had a couple of chances with men in scoring position where we could do a better job of having an at-bat. We gave up runs with two-strike pitches where we threw breaking balls that got up. We've got to make better pitches. "We need to compete like we competed the last two days. When it gets down to the winning difference, a little bit better at-bat, a better pitch, you've got to make that thing happen. We played very hard and pretty good. They played better." History is not on St. Louis' side. Thirteen times, teams have frittered away the home-field edge in an LCS by losing the first two games at home. None recovered to win the series. The Cardinals are trying to avoid becoming No. 14. "Down 2-0, it's definitely going to be a project," first baseman Will Clark said. "Especially here."
Playing at home has been an edge for the Mets all season. After losing a designated home game in Tokyo at the start of the season, the Mets were 55-25 at Shea, including a three-game sweep of the Cardinals in July. In that series, Mike Bordick and Bubba Trammell, both acquired in trade deadline deals, homered in their first at-bats for New York. "Our team plays well all over," manager Bobby Valentine said. "I think we just got a lot of hops when we were playing at home to make our record a little uneven. But we've played the same brand of baseball whether we're here or on the road. "We don't get any signals from the scoreboard or any of that good stuff that some home-field advantages supposedly have. We just play the game of baseball." Rick Reed, who starts Game 3 for New York against the Cardinals' Andy Benes, thinks the Mets are simply more comfortable in their stadium. "You get used to your home field, obviously," he said. "I guess it's the excitement of the fans. They're into every game. They're into every pitch. So that's a little advantage on our side." Complicating the Cardinals' task is the fact that the Mets are hot. They have won five consecutive postseason games for the first time in franchise history and displayed remarkable resiliency doing it, winning three of those games in their final at-bat. In Game 2 of the division series against San Francisco, J.T. Snow wiped out a 4-1 New York lead with a pinch home run in the bottom of the ninth. The Mets won it in the 10th on a hit by Jay Payton. In Game 3, the Mets fell behind 2-0 early and were hitless through five innings. They tied the score in the eighth and won it in the 13th on a home run by Benny Agbayani. Then came Game 2 against the Cardinals when New York let leads of 3-1 and 5-3 get away but won the game in the ninth on a hit by Payton. They give every indication of a team on a mission. Clark said he saw some hopeful signs for the Cardinals on the team's late-night flight into New York. "When we got on the plane last night, I saw a lot of people go to sleep," he said. "That told me that everybody that Tony La Russa sent out there gave everything they had. They left everything they had out on the field. That's the effort Tony gets, Tony expects. And that's the kind of effort he'll get tomorrow."
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