By definition, a Sunday afternoon spent beating a pair of American League All-Stars en route to winning by five is time well spent.
That’s what the Mets did on July 4, racking up four runs in 3 1/3 innings off All-Star Gerrit Cole [1], whose situations were as sticky as his grip might no longer be, and then pounding All-Star Aroldis Chapman [2] in an inning that went from tense to celebratory to anticlimactic in a hurry.
The Mets jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a first-inning home run by Dom Smith [3], which would have been a mere flyout in a park sized for adults, but hey, we didn’t set the dimensions. In the bottom of the second, though, a Francisco Lindor [4] error turned a double play into two extra runners and the Yankees put up a three-spot against Marcus Stroman [5]. That could count as an alibi, except Stroman’s location was poor on a number of key pitches and his stuff was missing its usual crackle — he recorded no Ks against a lineup not exactly bristling with high-average hitters.
The Mets were screwed out of a potential comeback in the top of the third, when they challenged a blown call on Brandon Nimmo [6] at first only to have the replay-review umps insist that Nimmo was indeed out when he was clearly safe. Since things eventually turned out OK, I’ll spare you two or three indignant, venom-spitting paragraphs and instead simply note that baseball’s greatest tragedy is it has to be entrusted to the dick-self-stepper-onners who run MLB.
After the Yankees tacked on another run to make it 4-1, the Mets rose up in indignation against Cole in the fourth: Michael Conforto [7] singled, Jeff McNeil [8] singled, Billy McKinney [9] walked, Tomas Nido [10] singled in a run and Nimmo singled to drive Cole from the mound and cut the deficit to a single run.
The hits from Nido and Nimmo were excellent to see because they wounded the Yankees, which goes without saying, but even more appreciated because they were hard, clean singles over the infield rather than do-or-die uppercuts aimed at the farthest reaches of the ballpark — any road to victory is worth walking, but the Mets played the kind of relentless, uptempo game that’s been seen too rarely in 2021, and it was a welcome change.
Lindor snuck a ball through the infield to tie the score against Jonathan Loaisiga [11], though some bad baserunning by Nimmo helped damp a potential rally. (Honestly, Brandon — you’re not going first to third when there’s a catcher on the bases in front of you and Aaron Judge [12] patrolling right field.) Loaisiga then held the Mets at bay and in the bottom of the 5th disaster loomed as some addled strike-zone judgment and a Stroman wild pitch (which fortunately didn’t decapitate Luke Voit [13]) let DJ LeMahieu [14] scamper home with the go-ahead run.
The top of the seventh was handed to Chapman, who had the recipe for success in his pocket: throw fastballs above the zone to Pete Alonso [15], who’d spent much of the afternoon swinging underneath them and then looking agonized about having done so yet again. On a 1-2 count, Chapman inexplicably opted for a slider that caught too much plate; Pete swung from his heels and walloped it over the left-field fence, leaving Chapman with his hands on his head and Aaron Boone [16] staring at the field with the expression of a man trying to pass a kidney stone after four hours at the DMV.
It got worse: Chapman hit Conforto, walked McNeil (who ground out a terrific eight-pitch AB) and exited to boos, replaced by Lucas Luetge [17]. Enter a parade of Mets pinch-hitters: Luetge walked Kevin Pillar [18], fanned James McCann [19] and faced Jose Peraza [20] with the bases loaded and one out.
Peraza drove a 2-2 slider to the left-field wall, over the head of Tim Locastro [21] … and into the glove of a fucking idiot in a Conforto jersey who reached a good two feet below the top of the wall, turning Peraza’s drive into a ground-rule double and costing the Mets a run. I hope said fucking idiot was banned from all future baseball games and had RUN TIMO RUN tattooed on his forehead as a reminder that he is and always will be a fucking idiot, no doubt birthed of fucking-idiot stock and a lead-pipe cinch to bring yet more fucking idiots into a world that would be a better place without them.
(And what kind of flashback do you think Tony Tarasco [22] had over in the first-base coaching box?)
Fortunately for our wanna-be Bartman, Luetge then served up a hit to Nimmo that it made it 9-5 Mets, followed by a Lindor single that scored Nimmo. The eruption buried the Yankees, who went down on eight pitches against Seth Lugo [23] to give the Mets the game [24] and the series.
(The schedule indicates a second game was played, but I cannot confirm this and so shall commit no further pixels to what might or might not have happened [25] later in the evening.)
Look, it would be foolhardy to assume a two-day flurry of hits and runs have transformed the Mets’ hitters from meek to mighty; Sunday’s first game was a disorienting mix of patient, successful ABs and frantic ones built around swing paths aimed at the moon. One way for a team to look better is to run into a team that’s far more of a mess; that can be confused for actually being better but isn’t necessarily the same.
Still, six-run final innings will play well against anybody, and they play particularly well when they come against the Yankees, in their skeleton-friezed mausoleum, and on George Steinbrenner’s birthday. Hell, those are the kind of fireworks that make you want to put your hand over your heart and wave a flag, regardless of the date on the calendar.