Rooting for my Team or for History?

I have a few things to admit.  I feel like I am sitting here confessing my sins, but here we go.  For the first half of the game against Johan Santana and the Mets, I was hoping for a Cardinal come back as much as anyone.  I was angry when I saw Beltran’s double get called back by an umpire who had to make a split second call as to where exactly that baseball landed, but the more I see of the replays of that one moment, the more tired I am of hearing so many people use that as some kind of half-baked excuse for a team that showed little if any ability to product offense. 

Another thing that I need to confess is my love of pitching.  While friends of mine told me claimed that low scoring baseball games were somehow boring, a bad draw of a game when they saw a contest that ended with only a few runs on the board.  I downloaded the 2011 NLDS game 5 off iTunes the second it became available, and I cannot count the number of times that I have watched the replay of that game with every perfectly placed pitch reminding me that baseball would soon be coming.

Now how do manage the conflicting nature of this love of pitching with the desire to see the Cardinals win the game?  The truth was that after I realized the lack of a bullpen and pathetic offense with replacements of back-ups filling the batting order made a Cardinal’s victory all but impossible, I found myself rooting for the first no-hitter in New York Mets’ history.  If there is someone who deserved a no-hitter even if it was against the Cardinals and taking advantage of their sudden offensive weakness, a case can be made for Santana.

How could I not root for a man who was left for dead after shoulder surgery?  Santana was once a great pitcher who was a favorite every year to win a Cy Young, and while injury has robbed him of his fastball, no Cardinal hitter would be able to claim that his changeup was anything but dominant.  There is no shame at being no hit by a pitcher with this combination of talent and motivation.  I wonder how many times Santana heard that he would never come back to pitch and have success in the Major Leagues?  I am sure all that these voices were in his head as he reached the 120 pitch mark and above and I wonder if he smiled to himself, more determined than ever to prove all these people wrong.  Yes, for one day, I found myself rooting for the team that was playing against the Cardinals.  How could I not root for Johan Santana?