To paraphrase the late, great Roger Angell (for neither the first nor last time in this space [1]), specifically what he said about his presence in Boston during Game Six of the 1986 NLCS while the Mets were cheating death in Houston and baseball had “burst its seams and was wild in the streets” in New York, what I missed by not being awake for the Mets’ stunning comeback and subsequent backslide amid the wee, small hours of Tuesday night may have been less than what I gained from having absolutely no idea of what transpired at Oracle Park as I sawed wood. Drifting off with SNY on across the living room is nothing new, particularly when a continent separates us from our home team. But the 8-2 trailing of the Giants, combined with an overwhelming desire to visit dreamland, compelled me to smash the “off” button on the remote control, something I almost never do, regardless of hour, when the Mets are in progress. Zs sometimes win out, just as the Mets occasionally appear destined to take an L. “I just hope this” — Chris Bassitt’s 11.32 ERA in two starts versus San Francisco in 2022 — “isn’t a thing if we see these guys in the playoffs,” was my last waking baseball thought as I reluctantly silenced Gary and Keith.
Less than six hours later, I stirred to tentative life on the same couch where I conked out in the fifth. I discerned the time from the clock that has sat atop the Princes’ sturdy standard-definition TV since 2004, deduced that the game I slept on must be over by now, then reached for my modern phone in search of the final score. There was a notification of a text greeting me. Chances were it was either a marginally helpful automatic reminder (a prescription is ready, a payment is due) or it was Kevin. Some Metsian correspondents reliably email me. Some choose to DM or IM their LGMs. If this wasn’t a utility or a pharmacy — and it wasn’t — the medium was going to be the message. I instinctively knew the text was Kevin’s; Met-related; and potentially momentous. Kevin wouldn’t be texting me during a late night West Coast game on a whim.
“Holy shit,” is what Kevin needed to let me know at 12:42 AM. Three minutes after, he added, “It was 11-8 at the end of the 10 run 8th in 2000.”
YOU MEAN WE WON? That wasn’t my response via text. That was what I thought, because who invokes The Ten-Run Inning and all it implies on spec? Kevin, especially; he doesn’t mess around when it comes to Mike Piazza. It wasn’t yet 5:30, so I wasn’t fully unfuzzed from sleep. I needed further confirmation that sleep was a bad choice. I made my way to the MLB app. It would tell me what I needed to know — if not what I wanted to read.
The Giants, as you know by now [2], won, 13-12. There was indeed an 11-8 Mets lead, which didn’t jibe with the 8-2 deficit I shut my eyes on, but these Mets are regularly unimpressed with other teams’ advantages. It still looked too weird to be true. I picked up my iPad and hoped Baseball-Reference’s late city final had been delivered to my digital doorstep.
It had. The full box score with its line-by-line play-by-play was hot off the presses. The Mets had hopped from 8-2 to 8-4 on a Lindor homer in the seventh, BB-Ref explained, and then leapt the leap of a thousand Endys by scoring seven runs in the eighth. Seven-run innings have become to the 2022 New York Mets what portraits were to Felix Unger, commercial photographer: a specialty.
Mets magic greeted me in data detail. The bold type indicating run-scoring plays. The multiple Rs indicating multiple runs driven in. The pleasingly steep column of Met at-bats. A three-run triple from Lindor (six RBIs in all) catapulting the Mets above the apparently undaunting hills of San Francisco. The lead taken on a sac fly by Pete Alonso. Ohmigod, it really was 11-8, Mets.
So how did we lose, 13-12? I rode up and down the Baseball-Reference rollercoaster to piece together however many of the three hours and fifty minutes of highs and lows I missed in my misguided fit of drowsiness. Why do I keep seeing Joc Pederson’s name? And wait…we gave up the lead, got it back, and lost anyway? The penultimate Met lead was surrendered by Drew Smith, huh? All right, but what about Edwin Diaz?
Oh. Or, more accurately, oh, Edwin. For Diaz’s first three seasons in Queens, that would have been snarled. Here, it was offered with empathy. I felt bad for the closer who’d mostly slammed doors since April. Surely he’d done his best. They all had. They would have been forgiven by dawn’s early light for throwing in the towel as I had. It’s been too beautiful a season to date for serious recriminations. That they held that towel in abeyance with as much grip as they could manage instantly placed my gut reaction to this game in a special cupboard I keep for losses that are too gratifying in their feistiness to festoon with anger.
There was the third-ever Subway Series game, June 18, 1997, two days after Dave Mlicki pitched The Dave Mlicki Game. David Cone was no-hitting the Mets until the seventh. Trailing by one in the eighth, pinch-runner Steve Bieser, at third, teased a balk from the intermittently perturbable Cone and earned a free trip home to tie the game. That we lost it in ten almost didn’t bother me. We’d taken the first game, lost the second and spiritually rated a draw in the finale versus the big deal defending world champions across town. We’d done good, I told myself. It’s been too beautiful a season to be mad at coming close and falling short. We’re on our way up.
There was Game Six, the 1999 NLCS, Braves 10 Mets 9 in 11 innings, except it had been Braves 5 Mets 0 in the top of the first, and everything thereafter filled me with shock and pride (give or take a few balls out of the left hand of Kenny Rogers). That the pennant was lost that night at Turner Field is no small detail, but I can never really rile up over how the Mets ultimately fell. They were practically squashed from the outset yet somehow they almost won, almost forced Game Seven, almost went to the World Series and hypothetically almost won it all. We’d done good, I told myself again. It was too beautiful a season to be bad mad at coming close and falling short. We glimpsed the mountaintop.
That’s what Giants 13 Mets 12 felt like, especially since I didn’t live through its crushing conclusion in the conscious sense. On the iPad, via the team-friendly Mets.com highlight montage and in the string of quotes [3] testifying to the benefits of clean living and staunch determination — “Remarkable to watch them compete every night”; “The whole team did well”; “We came from behind, and they came back in the eighth”; “I’m super proud of everybody here” — the near-miss was a triumph in the soul if not the line score.
I love the feel of perspective in the morning. It feels like victory.
Cribbing Angell again, this time from his regretting wasting Memorial Day weekend in the country while the 1969 Mets found their footing at Shea…
MAY 25: Giants take third game of series while I stay awake for entire affair. Bad planning.
This one goes down as The Thomas Szapucki [4] Game, a far cry from what it meant to be Mlicki a quarter-century ago. We last met Szapucki on a steamy night somewhere on the outskirts of Atlanta at the end of last June. The final then was 20-2. The final Wednesday afternoon was only 9-3 [5]. Neither could be processed as any kind of win, not for the Mets (who broke their heartening streak of wins following losses and finally dropped a series to a National League foe), not for the youngster whom we have to stop meeting like this. In 2021, Szapucki was one of a seasonlong long parade of relief cameoists. This time he was plucked from the bottom of the Mets’ starting pitching depth chart to fill an unforeseen hole in the schedule. Once you got past March’s projected rotation — it used to include Jacob deGrom — then the injuries that have occurred since (Megill, Scherzer), then dealt with the icy fallout from last Friday’s Denver snowfall, after which no starter on staff reached Wednesday with ample rest, you found yourself relying on your No. 9 option.
If you can’t get a few decent innings out of a pitcher you deem competent at Triple-A, you may want to drop him into double-digits as you rank future possibilities for a stray spot start. Young Thomas, bereft of command, rhythm and savvy, gave the Mets one-and-a-third frames of the most dreadful sort. Joc Pederson was still scalding the ball, as if rock ‘n’ rolling all night allowed him to party every day. Evan Longoria was at least as hot. Mike Yastrzemski warmed to Szapucki’s stuff, too. The San Francisco trio homered four times among them. Wilmer Flores doubled twice before Buck Showalter realized Szapucki shouldn’t be there for us. It was 9-0 and the second wasn’t done. Four relievers proceeded to hold San Fran at bay the rest of the way, but by the point Szapucki’s short stint served to instigate a full employment act for Williams, Holderman, Shreve and Lugo, the game was irredeemably all wet. Three Met runs crossed the plate between the third and the eighth, and we now cling semi-seriously to the notion that we’ve got them right where we want them whenever we’re way behind, yet there was no hint of the kind of comeback that roared while some of us slept. The spirit can only will so much in a single 24-hour period.
This week’s episode of National League Town pays its respects to both Roger Angell and Joe Pignatano, two figures who immeasurably enhanced the Mets-loving experience from 1962 forward. You can listen listen here [6] or wherever you seek your podcast pleasures.