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ST. LOUIS -- Some guys have a monster October, and you wince. Barry Bonds comes to mind. Remember that 2002 postseason when Bonds hit eight home runs in 17 games, leading San Francisco to the World Series? Remember how you felt? Queasy, perhaps.
Feel good about Carlos Delgado. He's having a monster October, and if you can find anyone but the St. Louis Cardinals who aren't happy about, grab their dunce cap and snap it against their skull.
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| Finally in the playoffs, Carlos Delgado is proving his worth. (US PRESSWIRE) |
First of all, let's get the baseball stuff out of the way: Delgado tied a Mets postseason record with five RBI Sunday night, leading New York to a 12-5 blowout of St. Louis that evened the NL Championship Series at 2-2. With at least two more NLCS games to go, Delgado has already tied another club record with nine RBI in one postseason series, and has set another with six extra-base hits in a series.
Don't look at the lopsided final score and assume Delgado got his on a day everybody was getting theirs. It's not that simple. Delgado got his, true, but his broke this game open. It was 2-2 in the fifth when he launched a three-run home run to left. That made it 5-2, where it remained until Delgado doubled to left-center in the sixth to make it 7-2.
This game was over. So is the part of this story that frames Delgado as merely a baseball player, because if we put him in that box we're excluding some neat stuff. Not that the baseball stuff is blasé. Delgado, 34, is a stud -- a possible Hall of Famer who will enter 2007 with 407 career home runs and 1,287 RBI. He has more than 1,000 runs, more than 400 doubles and a .282 batting average that says he's more than a masher.
"He's been, for a long time, one of the best hitters in the game," Mets manager Willie Randolph said.
Unleashed finally in October, Delgado is hitting .414 this postseason with four home runs and 11 RBI in seven games. Baseball geeks will be interested in his .966 slugging mark, his .467 on-base percentage, his 1.433 OPS.
But didn't we say this story was about more than the baseball? We did.
Delgado has a social conscience, and not like so many players who lend their name to a good cause, attracting the occasional nice headline, but for the most part not knowing exactly what good is being done in their name. That serves a noble purpose, but that's not Delgado. On the day the Marlins traded him to the Mets after the 2005 season, the teams had to track down Delgado in his hometown in Puerto Rico, Aguadilla, where he was serving dinner to people with disabilities.
There are also stories of Delgado renting a helicopter to get to hard-to-reach places in Puerto Rico, taking toys to kids. You can't make this stuff up.
Delgado isn't perfect, of course. He can be churlish to media questions, especially those he considers silly or beneath him. Delgado's a thoughtful guy, someone who turned down his biggest offer as a free-agent after the 2004 season -- from the Mets, actually -- because he felt insulted by the way the Mets' Hispanic brass was pandering to his heritage. Delgado took less money (but still a ton) to sign with the Marlins.
By then Delgado was known for having protested the U.S. military's usage of the Puerto Rican municipality Vieques for bombing target practice. Delgado also quietly opposed U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by staying in the dugout during the seventh-inning stretch in 2004, when ballparks were playing God Bless America. Delgado isn't a neat guy because he protests against the United States. He's a neat guy because he thinks beyond his pile of money. And if you were wondering, he was on the field Sunday for God Bless America.