eys Journey Through Addiction & Salvation.The book offered a frank telling of his ad

NEW YORK -- Curtis Granderson needed only three innings of playing time to do all sorts of damage.Granderson came off the bench and homered twice, Jose Reyes had four hits and the surging New York Mets beat the Miami Marlins 7-4 on Tuesday night.Asdrubal Cabrera added to his recent tear at the plate, hitting a two-run homer after missing one start with a sore knee. Rookie right-hander Seth Lugo (2-2) gave up two runs in the first inning but recovered nicely as the Mets won for the eighth time in 10 games.Were playing good baseball. We just need to play consistently right through September, Reyes said.By taking the first two games of the four-game series, the defending NL champions moved ahead of slumping Miami for second place in the NL East. New York (68-64) remained 2 1/2 games behind St. Louis for the leagues second wild card.I think it helps having a little bit of pressure, Lugo said. Its a little easier when theres something on the line. Gives you focus.Looking to spark a scuffling offense, Marlins manager Don Mattingly shuffled his 2-3-4 hitters. It worked right off the bat, with Christian Yelich hitting a two-run homer in his first career plate appearance batting cleanup.It was Miamis first home run in eight games, but that was all for the Marlins until J.T. Realmuto hit a solo homer off Jim Henderson in the ninth. Jeff Francoeur tripled with two outs and scored on Dee Gordons single before Jeurys Familia struck out Marcell Ozuna for his major league-leading 43rd save in 46 chances.Familia matched his 2015 total and again tied the franchise record for one season, first set by Armando Benitez in 2001. Seven of Familias saves this year have come against Miami -- most for any major league reliever versus one team.New York has won nine of the past 12 meetings this season.Miami has dropped four straight and six of eight overall.We cant try to fix it overnight. Its not going to work that way. Weve just got to play good ball, starter Tom Koehler said.Granderson, batting for Lugo, connected against Koehler (9-10) for his second career pinch-hit homer leading off the sixth, extending the Mets lead to 4-2 with the clubs ninth pinch-hit homer this season.Alejandro De Aza added an RBI single later in the inning off Dustin McGowan.Granderson, who stayed in to play right field, launched a two-run shot in the seventh.Its tough to pinch-hit in any situation, he said. Not an easy task by any means.Reyes singled leading off the first and Cabrera went deep on the next pitch. It was the 17th home run this season and fourth in 11 at-bats for the reigning NL player of the week. He is batting .447 with four doubles and 11 RBI in 11 games since coming off the disabled list Aug. 19.Reyes and Cabrera got on base seven times in 10 combined plate appearances from the top two spots in the lineup.Slumping slugger Jay Bruce, who started over Granderson, doubled and scored on a two-out single by Wilmer Flores that gave the Mets a 3-2 lead.Before the game, manager Terry Collins said he thinks De Aza is the teams best option in center field right now. Bruce and Granderson, both with All-Star track records, have been sharing time in right as each tries to get going at the plate.Ive commissioned the commissioners office to give us a rover. They havent OKd that yet, Collins joked. So were going to do the best we can. But I think both of them are everyday players. We just dont have everyday spots.Lugo went six innings and retired the final eight batters he faced in his third major league start. He has won the past two.Struggling reliever Hansel Robles followed Lugo with two scoreless innings.LIKE A HAWKScott Hairston (2011) and Hawk Taylor (1964) were the only other Mets players to homer twice in a game they didnt start.TRAINERS ROOMMarlins: LHP Adam Conley (finger tendinitis) began a throwing program in Florida. It could take him about three weeks to return, Mattingly said.Mets: Rookie LHP Steven Matz (shoulder) is not ready to come off the disabled list and was scratched from his scheduled start Thursday night. Jacob deGrom will be moved up a day to start for Matz in the finale of the four-game series, Collins said. ... 2B Neil Walker sat out his third straight game with a stiff back.VEGAS, BABYThe Las Vegas 51s of the Pacific Coast League will remain the Mets Triple-A affiliate for at least two more years. The teams announced an extension of their player development contract through the 2018 season. Well aware of how inconvenient its been at times to have players travel across the country on red-eye flights when they get promoted to the big leagues, Collins sounded unenthused. The only thing thats good about it is theres enough flights out of Vegas late at night, he said. That situation is what it is, and I dont have anything else to say except we hope that those flights keep going.UP NEXTMarlins RHP David Phelps (7-6, 2.52 ERA) starts Wednesday night against 43-year-old RHP Bartolo Colon (12-7, 3.44 ERA).Fake Yeezy 350 v2 Black . Colin Wilson had two goals and an assist, and Mike Fisher scored a goal and helped set up two others in the Predators 6-4 victory over the Red Wings on Monday night. Cheap Yeezys Fake . But the quarterback hopes to stay involved in football after officially calling it quits Tuesday. "Id love to look at those opportunities as they arise," Pierce said in an interview from his Winnipeg eatery. http://www.yeezys350cheap.com/cheapest-yeezy-boost-350-v2-beluga-2-0-grey-bold-orange.html . -- There were a lot of firsts for the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday night. Yeezy Boost 350 V3 Replica For Sale . PETERSBURG, Fla. Fake Yeezy 350 v2 White . LOUIS -- Heading into the final stretch of the season, the issues for the Chicago Bears banged-up defence only seem to be getting worse.If tragedies are meant to be clustered in threes, then Thoroughbred racing has paid its dues in full for the rest of 2016.In another life, Steve Sexton was a colleague at Daily Racing Form. His name on a teletyped message or an inter-office bundle meant you were getting the straight scoop, and that the job -- any job -- was getting done with a discipline of purpose and respect for the work that co-workers crave in a boss on the rise.Sexton was 57 when a virulent form of brain cancer took him from his friends and loving family at home in Texas last week.When I last spoke with Steve he had helped create the United States Grand Prix, at a spanking new mega-course in Austin, Texas. This, to a fellow traveler in the Formula 1 car racing world, is what God would have done on the seventh day if he hadnt taken a break. In between, Sexton lent his good nature and organizational skills to a number of Thoroughbred racetracks. Lucky them.Even as president of Churchill Downs Inc., Sexton was a classic behind-the-scenes guy, preferring to pass around the credit and the praise. Walter Swinburn never had that option. From his first swings in the saddle he was the Golden Child, the Choirboy, already mounted with such outsized talents as All Along and Shergar by the time he was 22.The fishbowl of Swinburns life often was polluted by injury, alcohol, and the ravages of weight control. And still he rode like a dream, until there was no more to give, and retired to life as a trainer.Swinburns death this week at 55 was mourned by his British racing family as the loss of a son in a battle he had been losing for years. To their credit, they honored him in life as well, but his passing opened floodgates of praise, like this from veteran journalist Chris McGrath in the Thoroughbred Daily News:However incongruous with his hidden torments, then, the seraphic exterior was perfectly consistent with vitals seated far deeper than his stomach or liver. There was a nearly ethereal continuum between the core of his being and that of the horse he governed so lightly.There was no hiding the torments that finally ended the life of Garrett Keith Gomez. He was a drug and alcohol addict, a poster boy for dependency and its evil cousin, self destruction.He was also an athlete of grace and style and competitive fury, talented beyond words, who emerged from the depths of his addictions to write a peerless chapter as a professional jockey.Gomez already was a known commodity as a riding star and cocaine connoisseur when he found rock botttom in 2003.dddddddddddd His career and marriage were in shambles. He spent most of the year either on the run, in jail, or in court-ordered drug rehabilitation. He needed to heal from the inside out, and he did, or at least well enough to resume his riding career in September of 2004.There ensued seven miracle years. Between 2005 and the end of 2011 the horses ridden by Gomez earned more than $138 million. He was national champion four times, Eclipse Award winner twice, and won an incredible 13 Breeders Cup events. He rode champions Rags to Riches, Lookin At Lucky, Beholder, Indian Blessing, Wait a While, and Blame.Two days before Gomez rode Blame to a narrow victory over Zenyatta in the 2010 Breeders Cup Classic, the jockey suffered a broken right arm and scapula in a fall on the Churchill Downs turf. He later wryly noted that it was a good thing he didnt need to switch the whip to get the job done, because he couldnt move his arm.At the beginning of 2012, Gomez fractured his heel in a freak fall on the way to the track at Santa Anita. He spent part of his physical rehabilitation collaborating on his biography with historian Rudy Alvarado. They called it The Garrett Gomez Story: a Jockeys Journey Through Addiction & Salvation.The book offered a frank telling of his addictions and their consequences, as well as the riders gratitude that there was still a sport and a family that would offer him another chance. The story also was fraught with warnings, none more dire than the one contained in the last line of the book:? but he was the only one that couldve ever given those things to himself -- and in the end, the only one that can take those things away.Gomez rode for the last time in late 2013. The news of his death at age 44, apparently from a drug overdose, was the first time he had made any kind of headlines since his name appeared on the 2016 Hall of Fame ballot along with fellow jockeys Ramon Dominguez, Victor Espinoza, and Craig Perret.This reporter has missed dealing with the public version of Garrett Gomez these past few years. He was funny, friendly, and articulate regarding his craft. and when he was at his healthiest, the public and the private man were pretty closely aligned. He would have preferred a life less complicated, Im sure. But at least he left an image of the athlete at full throttle, and a warning that glory is fleeting, and never the point. ' ' '