For most of Wednesday night, my only thought was that feeling pain because of the Mets was actually progress: better writhing in agony than sitting dour and numb watching another night of bad baseball, as we have for the last three and a half weeks.
Kodai Senga [1] was the best he’s looked as a Met, with command of every pitch in his arsenal and an apparent bit of extra intensity. (Maybe it was all the family members in the stands — given Joey Lucchesi [2]‘s first scintillating start in San Francisco, perhaps every Met starter needs a retinue of relatives in attendance.) But the Rays pierced Senga for a lone run in the fourth and that looked like it would be enough to beat him, because the Mets couldn’t do anything with Josh Fleming [3] or Kevin Kelly [4]. The sixth was particularly frustrating — Jeff McNeil [5] pinch-hit and walloped a drive to left-center that annoying showboat Jose Siri [6] ran down, Francisco Lindor [7] singled, but Pete Alonso [8] grounded out and Daniel Vogelbach [9] looked utterly helpless in a lefty-on-lefty matchup with Jake Diekman [10]. When Siri smacked a homer off Jeff Brigham [11] an inning later, the crowd at Citi Field seemed too depressed to boo.
The ball hit to center by freshly anointed savior hasty import newly arrived Mark Vientos [12] off Ryan “No Not That One, He’s Like 75 Years Old by Now” Thompson looked destined to wind up in Siri’s glove, undoubtedly to be followed by Siri turning several cartwheels and blowing kisses to his teammates. But somehow it kept carrying until it was safely over the fence: Implausibly and wonderfully, the kid had done what we’d been clamoring for him to do here instead of in Syracuse and the Mets had tied it.
Well, for about five minutes. Adam Ottavino [13] didn’t have it, walking Randy Arozarena [14] and looking perturbed as Arozarena swiped second, one of seven Rays to steal off Mets’ pitchers — phrased that way because Francisco Alvarez [15] was at fault for exactly none of them. When Brandon Lowe [16] — I forget if he’s the Lowe pronounced like OW or the Lowe pronounced like the oh in OH NO — homered off a slider that slid its way into trouble, Citi Field felt like a funeral home, with the faithful stunned into silence.
I was on my couch, but I knew I looked like all the fans SNY’s cameras lingered on: a dull stare above the rigor mortis of surrender. I rarely stalk away from even terrible games, but I won’t claim that’s the product of superior moral fiber; mostly it’s because I’m old and a certain long-haul fatalism has crept in. But OK, it’s also because there’s still a better me somewhere inside this gloomy old hulk, and that better me always has to be blowing frantically on some sad little ember of hope and chirping annoyingly that it’s not over yet and anything is possible and wouldn’t you feel like a chump if one of those 1,000-to-1 bets placed out of stubborn belief paid off and you missed it?
Because sometimes — OK, once in a very great while — those bets actually do.
Even when you’re playing the best team in baseball, the one with the relentless hitters and the pitiless base swipers and a million relievers throwing from two million weird angles, and you let that team tack on a ninth-inning run to leave you three in arrears, with the three feeling more like 30.
In the bottom of the ninth Jason Adam [17] was tasked with facing Vogelbach, Starling Marte [18] and Mark Canha [19], not exactly a trio to spark fear this year. But he walked Vogelbach and hit Marte before striking out Brett Baty [20], sent up to pinch-hit for Canha. Vientos flied to center and the Mets had used 26 of their precious outs, with only one left. All that stood between the Mets and another defeat was Alvarez, whose rapid improvement has yet to include not trying to do too much in big spots.
Alvarez spat on a sweeper just outside for ball one, which was mildly encouraging; Adam tried that pitch again, left it middle-middle, and Alvarez demolished it, smashing it off the facing of the second deck to tie the game. He unleashed an epic bat flip and floated around the bases, levitated by the swagger that’s made me laugh since I first glimpsed him as a Brooklyn Cyclone not so long ago.
A wonderful moment, except it lasted about as long as the afterglow of the previous game-tying homer from a rookie. Against David Robertson [21], ghost runner Taylor Walls [22] swiped third leading off the 10th, came in on a Harold Ramirez [23] single, and then Ramirez came home on a single by the other irritating Lowe. Robertson had been all but untouchable all year, but that one looked like a dagger. Sure, there’d be hopeful things to say about Vientos and Alvarez and Senga would earn well-deserved praise, but the Mets seemed fated to lose another one.
McNeil led off the 10th against Pete Fairbanks [24] with a single, pushing ectoplasmic Brandon Nimmo [25] to third, but Lindor looked hapless striking out on a pitch in the dirt and up came Alonso — who was “sick as a dog,” we’d learn later from Buck Showalter [26].
Fairbanks’ first pitch was a slider that caught a lot of plate, except Pete was looking fastball and it zipped in untouched.
“That might be the best pitch he sees,” I grumbled.
A wonderful thing about baseball is sometimes you’re completely and utterly wrong and it makes you happy. Fairbanks’ next pitch was the fastball, he threw it to the exact same spot as the slider, and the second Alonso made contact you knew the game was over — impossibly and unbelievably and blissfully over. This is baseball’s greatest magic trick: a slow, grim forced march to a seemingly inevitable unhappy ending somehow transformed in an instant and become stammering, staggering joy [27].
The Polar Bear stomped around the bases and vanished into a forest of helmet pounds and high-fives, with one SNY shot catching Baty, Vientos and Alvarez in the same frame, romping out of the dugout beaming and impossibly young. Pete offered up his postgame LFGM for Steve Gelbs’s mic, except this time he said the words and not the letters, including the word that I assume will draw a fine from the FCC* and tut-tutting from the ranks of the self-appointed tut-tutters.
Another reason it’s good to have a billionaire owner? I’m pretty sure Steve Cohen will pay the fine without so much as a blink. I’m tempted to chip in myself — maybe even enough for the triple play pancake breakfast. And I know there will be a next however many games when all looks dark and dreary but I stay at my post, obeying that little voice, the one that simultaneously annoys me and that I hope I never stop hearing, the one insisting that anything is possible and wouldn’t you feel like a chump if you missed it?
* the FCC’s fining/grousing is limited to broadcast, smarter people tell me. Carry on, Polar Swear!