The Absence of Pain

On Saturday afternoon in Pittsburgh the Mets … won a baseball game.

That’s it. They played a baseball game and it ended with more runs for the Mets than their opponents, so they won. That shouldn’t be particularly noteworthy, yet alone breathtaking, yet after the frustrations of Toronto and the horrors of Atlanta and the hungover farce of opening night in Pittsburgh, it felt like quite something indeed.

I watched the game in a vaguely narcoleptic state after getting too much sun in a kayak on the East River, but I registered the details through my self-inflicted haze, from Kodai Senga‘s superb pitching (minus an inexplicable, Leiteresque few minutes where he forgot how to pitch) to Brandon Nimmo supplying excellent defense and the jarring sequence where the Mets’ infield did not, though in fairness the first of their two errors in that frame should have been on the second-base umpire, who misread Luis Guillorme‘s superlatively fast transfer at the front end of an attempted double play as a drop. This time the roof didn’t cave in: The Mets tightened up and got out of the inning with just a single run scoring, leaving the game tied. Which it stayed until the seventh, when the Pirates chose to walk Guillorme so slider specialist Dauri Moreta could go after Mark Canha. I’m easily one of the planet’s Top 100 Guillorme fans, but that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me; Canha suffered the indignity of a 2-1 slider outside being called a strike but then got one from Moreta without enough break and lashed it up the gap for a double, followed by about 75,000 exhales in the Greater New York area.

The Mets kept going, adding two more runs on a Francisco Alvarez home run and another Canha RBI double, and their relief corps choked out the Pirates without undue trouble, leading to what in happier times might be called a rather ho-hum 5-1 win. This was the kind of game ideal for a baseball nap that erases the middle innings, a mildly pleasant diversion fated not to be thought of again once 28 hours had passed. Which was what the Mets as frustrated players and we as enraged fans sorely needed, what with the humdingers and barnburners all going in the enemy column of late.

It was just a baseball game. The Mets won it. It’s a formula they’re encouraged to repeat.

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In case you didn’t see it, Joel Sherman of the Post got Steve Cohen on the horn to basically ask why he hadn’t unleashed a red wedding on his employees given a frustrating season and its recent nadir.* Cohen’s lengthy ruminations on the subject of how to react when everything goes awry isn’t satisfying if you’re looking for catharsis, but it’s undoubtedly a lot more healthy than what any of us would have done if unwisely empowered to take action after the 13-10 curb-stomping by the Braves or whatever the hell that was Friday night in Pittsburgh. It’s worth reading and thinking about.

* * *

Back in 2001, Topps celebrated its 50th anniversary of making baseball cards by unveiling a set called Topps Heritage. It presented 2001’s players on cards based on the 1952 design; Topps has advanced year by year since then, chronologically revisiting each of its original designs for a new crop of players. One’s fondness for Topps Heritage depends on how one views the original design being resurrected: I loved 2013 Heritage because I think 1964 Topps is the pinnacle of its designs and was left cold by 2017 Heritage because I think the 1968 Topps “burlap sack” design is a low point; reasonable people might have the exact opposite point of view.

Topps generally plays things straight with Heritage, but every so often they’ve paid sneaky homage to some aspect of the set that came 50 years before. From a Met fan perspective, the pinnacle of such efforts was 2011 Heritage, which left Met fans complaining that the Mets hadn’t received a team card and a lot of the players were shown hatless in generic-looking uniforms. It fell to baseball-card dorks like me to explain what was going on: Back in 1962 Topps had shown nearly all of the brand-new Mets the same way (a format known in the trade as BHNH, or Big Head No Hat) and skipped a team card; since 2011 Heritage used the ’62 design, Topps was being true to its antecedents. They even went so far as to create a David Wright “error” card listing him with the Reds, in tribute to fellow third baseman Don Zimmer‘s ’62 card that shows him as a Red wearing a Mets hat.

This year’s Heritage set uses the 1974 design, which isn’t particularly a favorite of mine, and I paid the Mets selected no particular heed while obtaining a set. But then I read a fun post noting that cards in the set that echoed those produced the first time around, and got to digging. Sure enough, Topps is up to something with this year’s Mets: Pictured are the ’74 Topps cards for Tom Seaver, Tug McGraw and Bud Harrelson, and the ’23 Heritage cards for Max Scherzer, Brett Baty and Pete Alonso.

Coincidence? Nah — the card numbers even match. Well played, Topps!

* because that was totally the nadir, right?