Most Valuable Angles

In the spirit of the Baseball Writers Association of America members with whom I rubbed or at least grazed elbows Friday night, I humbly submit my ballot for Most Valuable Angle from the 10-9 ten-inning Mets win over the Guardians.

1) MY PRESENCE IN THE CITI FIELD PRESS BOX
This first-place vote may seem like the height of self-absorption, but a) blogging is foremost a first-person medium; and b) the Mets are 7-0 when I cover a ballgame from the Citi Field press box (high-rolling craps players have gotten less for their money from gorgeous good-luck charms they pay to blow on dice). More pertinently, the Mets win some of their craziest bleeping games when I’m wearing a credential around my neck rather than my heart on my sleeve. Rule No. 1 of the press box is there is no cheering, not even by a member of the media whose medium is all about advocating for the cause of the home team. I’m a seasoned pro when it comes to tamping down my rah-rah impulses, having taken those aforementioned crazy bleeping games in remarkable stride, at least until the credential came off my neck and the shouts emerged from my larynx.

2) INTERLEAGUE IS DEAD
I was Working Press for a night because I had an idea or two I wished to pursue, among them the notion that what was once conceived as a novel avenue toward boosting fan interest in the course of a long season is now so commonplace that it doesn’t matter. Seven National League clubs played seven American League clubs on Friday. Same as Wednesday. It’s not “Interleague Week,” the way it was introduced to us in 1997. Every week has a bunch of matchups between NL and AL, creating a wallpaper effect. Maybe the intracity showdowns are still big news. Maybe the chance to see Shohei Ohtani in, I don’t know, Cincinnati, is a godsend to Reds fans. Otherwise, we’re in NFL/NBA/NHL territory wherein team from this conference plays team from that conference and it’s business as usual. Thus, I wanted to get credentialed for the opener of this Mets-Guardians series so I could ask Buck Showalter, a manager whose dugout experience predates Interleague play, if the onslaught of 29 different opponents across the schedule presents new challenges to his preparation (and we all understand how critical preparation is to Buck). I asked, and he gave me a really good, really detailed answer around 4:30 Friday afternoon that doesn’t seem all that relevant given the events transpiring around 10 o’clock Friday night, but he confirmed my suspicion. Buck admitted, “I don’t even think about it anymore” whether it’s an NL team or an AL team next on the Mets slate, and credited “the advance people” for being on top of such a plethora of potentially unknown quantities. Despite it fading into the background as Friday’s festivities went along, this angle gets my second-place vote because it tickled my curiosity enough to get me to the ballpark and on assignment.

3) SILENT NO MORE
The other angle that lured me to Citi Field Friday night was the appearance of the leading light of the Silent Generation Mets. Those were the 2020 Mets who weren’t Mets before or after the short but depressing pandemic year, meaning they never knew what it was like to play as Mets in front of fleshed-out Mets fans. All the likes of Billy Hamilton, Jake Marisnick, Guillermo Heredia, Hunter Strickland and Erasmo Ramirez knew from were cardboard cutouts. I mention those Mets of recent, quiet vintage, because they have at least come back to Citi Field as former Mets. None made much of an impact in 2020, so none really drew a rousing ovation in ’21 or ’22. Ah, but Andrés Giménez was a veritable force as a 2020 Met, the youngest kid on the roster making a name for himself and his future. Andrés played in 26 of 30 home games as a heady infielder on the rise, even rating a smidge of Rookie of the Year support in the succeeding offseason’s BBWAA balloting. Then he was traded before a single fan who might have applauded for him while watching him on television could do it in person. I thought it would be instructive to see and feel Giménez immersed in an authentic Flushing din. Let’s say he now knows what Citi Field really sounds like.

4) YESTERDAY’S FUTURE
Giménez was traded in a package that included the Met shortstop he was in the process of making superfluous, Amed Rosario. Rosario was the breakout star of our dreams way back in 2017. That long? Or is it only that long? We know how we are about demanding a hot prospect be granted his immediate promotion; we didn’t just invent that impulse this year. Rosario’s installation on the active roster was a happening. The Mets followed up with Rosario-themed giveaways. As he progressed, you couldn’t picture our future without Amed. Then one day he was deleted from our present. It warms my heart to report Rosario, like Giménez, received tangible applause when the starting lineups were announced Friday night. More a trickle than a flood, but neither of them was treated like an American League stranger (no video, though). After Rosario’s first-inning hit, a sing-song chant of “Jose! Jose! Jose!” went up. Could it be the crowd remembered Rosario as protégé to Reyes and was making a meta-comment on the circle of Met life? No, it was just some Cleveland supporters excited to see Jose Ramirez come bat next. Guardians groupies would find a lot to get vocal about in the minutes ahead.

Always a giant matchup.

5) ECHOES OF 1954
The “Cleveland” wasn’t the Indians, the “New York” wasn’t the Giants, and the Polo Grounds is a housing project in 2023, but geographically if not in precise name, we had a World Series rematch on our hands: CLE (AL) at NY (NL). One last glint of sepia-toned romanticism to frame the Mets-Guardians matchup in the glow of memories forged when Willie Mays made The Catch, Dusty Rhodes delivered The Pinch-Hits and the National League champions upset the supposedly unbeatable junior circuit behemoth in four straight. Random Interleague matchup? We had a tradition to uphold! Or, perhaps, just a third consecutive game to win in the midst of what had been, until very recently, a morbid May. “Still,” Arnold Hano wrote in A Day in the Bleachers, the book that made the 1954 Fall Classic a true classic, “I’m not an American League fan. All I know about the Indians is what I have read about them in the papers.” During my night in the press box, I noticed the official scoresheet listed the Mets’ foes for the evening as the “Cleveladn” Guardians. I feared word would get down to the visitors’ dugout and Terry Francona would use the typo as motivation.

6) HE DIDN’T GET HIS MEN
Carlos Carrasco, off the injured list, replicated Sal Maglie in one respect. Both the Giants’ starter from Game One of the 1954 World Series and the Mets starter in the first of three games set for this weekend (weather permitting) gave up first-inning runs. In that respect, Maglie would have fit in nicely with the 2023 Met rotation. Maglie — “the Barber” — got nicked for two runs out of the gate, then shut down Cleveland through seven. Carrasco — Cookie — didn’t compensate for his early crumbles so effectively. Carlos had the Mets trailing, 4-0, after two and 5-0 after he completed his night’s work after five. We could only hope our bullpen had enough Don Liddle and Marv Grissom to it should the Mets’ bats mount any kind of comeback.

7) BABIES COME BACK
Five fine innings from Cal Quantrill (even better than what Bob Lemon posted to open Game One in ’54), combined with the five runs Carrasco gave up, were too much for the Mets to handle…or would have been, before the Mets commenced to reinvent themselves as full of spit and vinegar — and adamant about never saying die. These Mets aren’t your grandfather’s Mets. Or your father’s. Or your older brother’s. Or yours from Monday or Tuesday. These are the Mets who got it together on Wednesday, kept it together on Thursday and gave no indication they didn’t plan to keep it rolling on Friday. How? With an infusion of blood so young it could get a base hit for two different teams in two different cities off two Hall of Fame pitchers on the same day. Francisco Alvarez, 21, went high and deep in the bottom of the fifth. Nobody was on base, but the run Alvarez drove in didn’t stay lonely for long, as former kid who still plays like one Jeff McNeil drove in another run. It was 5-2 heading to sixth — and 5-3 heading out of it, thanks to Brett Baty, 23, homering to lead off the home half of the inning. Climbing out of holes is suddenly a Met skill set. Toddlers love to climb, right?

8) NOTHING POLARIZING ABOUT IT
Having generated such a thoughtful response from Buck pregame, I wondered if I could ask him a followup in the seventh: “What’s this debilitating fascination you have with Dominic Leone?” Leone, who hasn’t inspired an iota of confidence during his Met tenure to date, got bailed out by his defense in the sixth. He responded to his good fortune by loading the bases in the seventh. Stephen Nogosek was the next safety net. It almost worked, too. Rosario lined to center, but Nimmo (who’d performed a little Maysian magic on a Wertzian drive from Giménez) caught it and fired home. Baserunner Will Brennan found himself trapped in a rundown. Alvarez threw to Baty, who chased Brennan toward the plate before tagging him out. In the books, that’s an 8-2-5 double play. That’s the stuff of Dykstra to Gibbons to Hojo, speaking of New York (NL) teams to have won it all. Alas, Nogosek wouldn’t eradicate what was left of Leone’s mess, and the Guardians took a 7-3 lead to the bottom of the seventh. Pete Alonso then took that lead and turned it to dust. Grand slam!!!! Four runs!!!! Tie game!!!! (Exclamation points abound here because in the press box, remember, no cheering.)

9) PITCHING AND DEFENSE
So Leone and Nogosek weren’t the Liddle and Grissom of their day. Liddle threw the pitch that Vic Wertz blasted to most distant center only to have Mays track it down; Grissom was the pitcher Leo Durocher brought in after him, with legend having it that Liddle told Grissom as he vacated the mound, “Well, I got my man.” Most importantly, the two Giant relievers from 69 years ago didn’t allow Cleveland to add on to their two runs. That’s the kind of performance the Mets needed ASAP. It’s what they got just as quickly from Adam Ottavino in the eighth — no baserunners, which was great, because an Ottavino baserunner is an automatic Ottavino basestealer — and David Robertson in the ninth. Robertson in particular was assisted by fancy fielding, with McNeil robbing Steven Kwan, and Alonso squelching a base hit bid by Ramirez. The two pitchers doing their best to add up to one Edwin Diaz were half of the reason the game was heading to extras. The other half? The Mets didn’t score in the eighth or ninth, either.

Lindor in the middle of everything, including me (in windbreaker over the shortstop’s left shoulder).

10) THE DRAMATIC RATHER THAN TRAUMATIC CONCLUSION
Drew Smith took a step outside the bullpen circle of trust, giving up a two-run homer to Gabriel Arias (after Rob Manfred put a Guardian on second) in the top of the tenth to almost certainly make the night an exercise in highs and lows that would land with a thud on a low. Unless you were nutty enough to foresee a nutty conclusion to what had been a fairly nutty game through nine-and-a-half. I was sitting in the same press box I was sitting in when Alonso tore off Michael Conforto’s shirt after Conforto and Todd Frazier tore the roof off the Citi sucker in 2019; when Joey Votto hit a ball off the top of the outfield wall rather than over it on the night 1973 Met stalwart Jon Matlack was inducted into the team Hall of Fame in 2021; and when the Marlins threw all the goodwill they could at the Mets and away from each other on Keith Herrnandez’s number retirement day in 2022. Those were all highlights of unfathomable walkoff wins. How on earth could you expect the Mets to match those kinds of heroics?

• First, you call Rob Manfred and ask for a runner on second, and magically appears Brett Baty.

• Then, you cope with the presence of Emmanuel Clase, the American League’s answer to Edwin Diaz in 2022.

• Then, you send up your Most Valuable Met from 2022, Starling Marte, but it’s a new year, and Marte flies out to right. At least it’s enough to move Baty to third.

• Then, you make with the spit and vinegar again, via the third of the Citi Kids, as I’d taken to calling them in my head. Mark Vientos, 23 and DH’ing (we’ll overlook what a miserable role that is to inflict on a veritable child), singles Baty home. It is 9-8. By never saying die, death is averted.

• Eduardo Escobar comes into pinch-run, no slight detail. The Mets have not had their pinch-running specialist Tim Locastro for weeks and won’t have him for more weeks (thumb problems while on rehab). Escobar, the displaced veteran, carves out a niche as the base thief of record. He steals second, setting up a marvelous opportunity for pinch-hitter Daniel Vogelbach.

• Yeah, right. Vogelbach strikes out.

• But here comes Alvarez! Except Alvarez, after two pitches, is in an oh-two hole at the plate, and up in the press box, Mr. They Never Lose With Me Here unplugs his tablet from the handy outlet of which he’s been availing himself all night because this reporter knows it’s a lost cause and maybe he can get a jump on the commute home if he starts to pack up before the inevitable becomes a reality.

• And, I swear, as soon as the charger’s prongs were detached from the electrical socket, Alvarez socked the next pitch he saw into left, scoring Escobar with the tying run. The detached observer up in the press box plugged his tablet back in.

• Nimmo grounds near but not to Rosario. Amed doesn’t have enough time to nab the ball and Brandon, meaning it’s first and third.

• After Buck’s presser and before settling into my press box seat, I took a trip out onto the field. You can do that when you have the right credential around your neck. Between the reporters and the photographers and the various guests the Mets welcome and the perk-enjoying season ticket “members,” there may be more spectators surrounding the field during batting practice in Flushing than there are in the stands during games in Oakland. Even this ad hoc crowd was bigger than any Giménez saw when he was a Met. One fellow amid all this activity stood out. He’s got the hair for it, the bandana for it, and the charisma for it. Francisco Lindor attracted attention, whether he strove for it or not. He stopped to give an interview for Cleveland’s pregame show. He stopped to greet families who couldn’t believe the Mets’ shortstop was not only talking to them but smiling at them. He invited two children to come see “my office,” meaning the clubhouse, and whisked them on a whirlwind tour. Lindor was already doing it all and first pitch was still two hours away. As focused as I was on Rosario and Giménez coming home, it was a much bigger deal for the Guardians and their fans/press corps that they’d be facing the players they sent to New York: Carrasco and, especially, Lindor.

• Lindor was a big deal in Cleveland for a reason and is a big deal in New York for a comparable reason. The man comes through. Even after interrupting his pregame preparation to accommodate everybody. Even while having to wear an olive drab cap that doesn’t go with his dyed curls (or anybody’s natural ones), let alone black jersey. Even when the Mets appeared in various states of dead and desperate.

• The erstwhile Clevelander turned on the nightlife in Queens, singling home Alvarez — who Francisco labeled one of the “Baby Mets” with the winning run. I like Citi Kids as a moniker (I’m already seeing the poster in my head), but the important thing is we’re test-driving adorable names because we’re so excited about these adorable young players and their adorable elders. Together, the generations made it Mets 10 Guardians 9 in ten. Two nights after Mets 9 Rays 8 in ten. Sandwiching Mets 3 Rays 2 in nine. All one-run wins are not created equal, but each of these one-run wins has been huge in its own right, and this version takes its place in the pantheon of press box EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! special editions, the kicker coming from both out on the field, where “L.A. Woman” blared like it was 1999 (followed by “Takin’ Care of Business” evoking 2006) and back in the Excelsior concourse where, whenever somebody opened a rear door, you could hear LET’S GO METS!!! rumble down the steps from Promenade.

So yeah. A good night to cover a ballgame.