Just a Game (Is All You Need)

Goodness knows the Mets have had plenty of drama in this very strange year. But every so often, they play a baseball game that’s just a baseball game, refreshingly free of sideshows and controversies and agita. And it’s a reminder that, to quote the endlessly quotable Bull Durham, “this game’s fun, damn it.”

At our house the game began on the radio, as we were out in the backyard grilling — on a perfect evening, with mosquitos still happily absent. It was 2-2 when we moved inside, saying farewell to Howie Rose and new fill-in John Sadak and hello to old friend Kevin Burkhardt and, well, Joe Girardi. (Who was fine, though I kept thinking that, as with some other baseball lifers, Girardi looks faintly ill at ease if he’s wearing anything that isn’t a uniform.)

The Mets and Rockies kept trading blows (on the scoreboard, not between the pitcher’s mound and home plate), with Carlos Gomez‘s two-run homer matched by singles from Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado, then Todd Frazier‘s RBI single followed by some lousy Mets defense that scored Brendan Rodgers. It was 3-3 as Steven Matz topped 80 pitches, then 90, and just kept going.

When the count topped 100, I have to confess I was muttering to myself. This was Matz, the Mets starter most likely to have an arm actually come off mid-pitch, spontaneously combust, or do both at once. Still, a look at the Mets bullpen made me think a one-armed, burning-like-a-torch Matz was better than any of Mickey Callaway‘s options for the sixth inning. (Or Jim Riggleman‘s — Callaway was ejected in the fifth, having had enough of Mike Winters’ surrealist, wobbling parallelogram of a strike zone.) Matz allowed a leadoff single to Ian Desmond, fanned Rodgers, and hit Tony Wolters. Jon Gray tried to bunt the runners over, but Wilson Ramos pounced on the ball and threw to third, getting Desmond fairly easily.

That left Matz facing Blackmon, a dangerous confrontation at any pitch count. Matz’s final pitch of the night was a high curveball — but Blackmon swung under it, and Matz was out of the inning and the game at once. He’d wind up the winner thanks to a Ramos double past Blackmon, a Frazier single and a double-play grounder from Amed Rosario, with Pete Alonso chipping in an insurance run with a homer just above the left-field wall. Alonso arrived at third along with the ball, then hung around a bit sheepishly in the dugout with his helmet on until the umpires declared that it was, in fact, a home run.

It’s been a weird year, with Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler all maddeningly inconsistent. Quietly, Matz has become the guy you worry least about — he’s had two bad starts all year, and the Mets are 8-4 in his outings. I’ll happily sign up for that kind of performance and an Alonso homer, particularly if that also comes with the game as faithful companion on a pleasant spring evening. Sometimes a game’s just a game, and that’s more than enough.