On the Mets beat

Here’s your Newsday.com-only Mets game story with quotes. Enjoy:
It was about 12:05 on Thursday morning when some clever scoreboard person at Shea Stadium put the Eric Clapton song “After Midnight” on the loudspeakers.
It was only the seventh inning of the Mets-Cubs game that was supposed to start at 7:10 p.m. but didn’t get underway until 10:17. That’s a three-hour, seven-minute rain delay.
Waiting that long to get in the game – especially with another one scheduled for Thursday at 1:10 p.m. – was OK with the few thousand fans who braved the rain and stuck around. And it was really OK with the Jorge Sosa and the Mets.
Sosa allowed one run and one hit in seven-plus innings as the Mets beat the Cubs, 8-1, in a game that ended at 12:53.
There was one troublesome note for the Mets: Jose Reyes was replaced by pinch runner Ruben Gotay after feeling tightness in his left hamstring during an eighth-inning at-bat.
Reyes said he felt a cramp after his first swing in the at-bat (he stayed in and singled). He also said he would play Thursday afternoon.
“No doubt,” he said.
Sosa, who has won all three of his Mets starts, left to a standing ovation from the small but energetic crowd after walking Cesar Izturis to open the eighth. Izturis came around to score on a two-out bloop single by Cliff Floyd, ruining the shutout but not Sosa’s impressive evening/morning.
“He’s doing a nice job,” manager Willie Randolph said. “He’s in a nice little rhythm right now. He’s pitched like that in the past at times. He’s really feeling his pitches and staying on his slider real well, mixing in his pitches.”
Damion Easley had a two-run homer, rookie Carlos Gomez had two hits and his first two major-league RBIs and David Wright had two hits and two RBIs for the Mets (25-14), who leap-frogged Atlanta again to move into first place in the NL East.
Sosa, who walked three and struck out five, was a 13-game winner for the Braves in 2005. In 2006, he went 3-11 with a 5.42 ERA for Atlanta and St. Louis. The Mets signed him to a one-year, $1.25 million free agent deal on Jan. 16, but he had an awful spring training – 8.53 ERA – and started the season at Triple-A New Orleans.
Cajun cooking must have been to his liking. Sosa went 4-0 with a 1.13 ERA for New Orleans before his recall on May 5.
“He threw strike one after strike one after strike one,” said catcher Paul Lo Duca. “He was unbelievable.”
Rain began falling at Shea Stadium at about 4 p.m., just as general manager Omar Minaya was answering questions from reporters in the Mets dugout about the steroid suspension of minor-leaguer Lino Urdaneta and the Lastings Milledge rap lyrics fiasco.
It rained hard and it rained good, with thunder and lightning and everything, before finally stopping a little before 10 p.m. The few thousand fans who remained (37,483 tickets were sold) cheered when an announcement was made that the game would begin around 10:15.
The Mets took a 1-0 lead in the second inning against Cubs lefthander Rich Hill (4-3) when Gomez blooped a two-out RBI single down the rightfield line.
Gomez, who is 4-for-9 since getting called up on Sunday, will get to stay a Met a little longer as Moises Alou was placed on the 15-day disabled list after the game, retroactive to Saturday.
The Mets called up lefthander Jason Vargas to start on Thursday against Chicago’s Angel Guzman.
After Wright’s sacrifice fly in the third, Easley made it 4-0 in the fourth with a 415-foot, two-run home run into the Cubs’ bullpen in left. It was the sixth homer for Easley; two more and he’ll tie Carlos Beltran for the team lead.
Notes & quotes: Vargas, 24, was 2-3 with a 5.40 ERA in seven starts for Triple-A New Orleans. Last season he was 1-2, 7.33 in 12 appearances (five starts) for the Marlins. “I like his stuff,” Randolph said. “He uses his changeup real well, pitches inside for a lefty, uses his cutter. I know when we first made the [trade], I liked the move at the time.”. . . Aaron Sele, the final holdout among the Mets players, got his head shaved yesterday.