from Ron Darling's The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball and the Art of Pitching:
Just like that, we were done. More to the point, I was done. I knew the ball was gone as soon as Gonzalez hit it, but as it cleared the fence there was time for every doubt, every uncertainty to play itself out in my head. I had time to think, What the hell happened to my career? Where did it all go wrong? Why am I even in this game, in the bottom of the fourteenth inning? And then, as I started to walk off the field, the questions continued: What am I still doing here, in a New York Mets uniform? Why have I not been traded? Why are they embarrassing me like this? And why am I embarrassing myself?
I had no answers, just questions. I had always been a durable pitcher. I'd never been on the disabled list; I'd missed only those few starts that followed my thumb injury in that 1987 game against the Cardinals. I'd always been the guy who wanted the ball in a big game, but now I wasn't so sure. I'd allowed all this doubt and uncertainty to creep into my head, to where my rally cry was no longer "Give me the damn ball!"
Now it was more like "Me? Really?"
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