FLUSHING, NY – It looked like a scene from a movie or a bonehead play made by a bad Yankee team. It wasn't something a playoff team should do in Game 1 of the playoffs.

But, there it was in the second inning. Russ Martin drives a John Maine pitch off the right field wall with Jeff Kent on second and J.D. Drew on first. Shawn Green relayed the ball to Jose Valentin, who threw it to Paul Lo Duca at the plate. Not only was Kent out easily, but Drew followed to give the Mets an easy double play, which helped Maine get through the inning with only one run scoring.

Dodger manager Grady Little had no excuse for it.

“What happened,” Little said,” [third base coach Rich Donnelly] was getting ready to stop Kent on the play and J.D. was running on the ball all the way, he was about 10 yards behind Kent, so it kind of altered his decision on Kent. J.D. kept going. As it turned out, if J.D. continues on without stopping, I don't know if Lo Duca would have got the second one. He might have snuck in there.

“That's a trick play we work on in spring training.”

Well, at least the manager has a sense of humor about it. The truth is the Dodgers ran the bases very poorly on Wednesday. That play killed any Dodger momentum and energized the Shea Stadium crowd, which was settling down after seeing the Mets not score in the first inning.

“It was certainly a base-running blunder there,” Little said, “that more times than not you're going to pay for later in the ballgame. It will come back to haunt you; that one certainly did.”

A 3-0 lead would have been tough for the Mets to overcome and may have chased Maine earlier in the game, which would have forced Willie Randolph to make different decision with his bullpen. But Kent and Drew took care of that very easily.

“I know [Martin] hit it good,” Maine said, “but I didn't think he hit it, you know, it was gonna go off the wall. I was backing up. I saw the relay coming in. I was like, Okay, they got this guy, then I was yelling at Lo Duca, I was like, 'Turn around, there's a guy right behind you.' I don't think he heard me, but he turned around just in time to catch it.”

Ironically, Randolph was a spectator for a similar play back in 1985 when both Bobby Meacham and Dale Berra were tagged out by White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk on a Ricky Henderson hit off the centerfield wall at Yankee Stadium.

“Yeah, it came right back,” Randolph said. “Flashback. I remember very vividly. Gene Michael throwing his hands up like, 'What the hell's going on?' Then you see Dale Berra and Bobby Meacham, or Bobby Meacham, Dale Berra, I think was the sequence. It was a total flashback.”