I’ve never felt more like Jack Buck after returning home from a ballgame, for “I don’t believe that I don’t know what I just saw!”
Did I see the Mets play the Marlins? Pretty sure I did. That was important to me, as, entering Thursday, I had not seen the Mets play the Marlins in person yet in 2023, and I’ve seen the Mets play the Marlins in person at least once (usually too much) in every non-pandemic season since 1997. I can confidently write “Miami” in The Log after having personally observed them in action versus the Mets.
Did I see the Mets beat the Marlins? I don’t think I did. True, the Mets led the Marlins, 1-0, at the end of the eighth, the last completed inning of the evening before a downpour made the field unplayable during the top of the ninth. With all those qualifiers, and knowing what we know about an official game, it kind of reads like a Mets win. But I was there, watching through the press box window, and I’d have to swear on a stack of media guides that I did not witness a winning effort on the part of the home team. For a few minutes, I thought it might be. I thought it might be rued in Marlin lore as The Rafael Ortega Game once the little-used outfielder, subbing for Brandon Nimmo once Nimmo left with an injury, drove in, after seven-and-a-half scoreless innings, the game’s only run. What lovely reprisal for not only [your choice of crime inflicted upon Metsdom by the Teal Menace], but Jesus Luzardo’s ten strikeouts across seven-and-a-third innings.
[1]The Citi Field tarp is perpetrating a coverup, preventing us from finding out whether the Mets won, lost, tied or even played Thursday night.
Did I see the Marlins beat the Mets? We were likely getting close to that eventuality, what with the Marlins usurping that thin 1-0 lead of the Mets and transforming it into a 2-1 edge of their own in the top of the ninth off noted closers Grant Hartwig and Anthony Kay. Hey, it’s only a game with an impact on the entire postseason picture. Might as well try whoever you have out in the pen to finish off a contender. Ah, what’s a closer but a label? Neither Hartwig (who did put up a zero in the eighth) nor Kay lived up to the example set by David Peterson, who not only shut out the Marlins for seven innings (with 8 Ks and a touch of help from a six-minute two-team video review challenge that correctly removed a Marlin run from the scoreboard), but has never given up a run the three times I’ve attended starts of his: 19 IP, 0 R. How am I not on Peterson’s pass list? Reed Garrett became the third pitcher of the ninth just in time to give up a hit and then be overtaken by a tarp that was about as welcome in the ninth inning as a skunk at a picnic…or the Marlins anywhere.
Did I see the Mets-Marlins game suspended? Not until after I bolted the hermetically sealed comfort of the press box to take on the rain, the rails and the ride home. Good call, I have to say. When I exited Citi Field, the rain delay was about 50 minutes old. When I walked into my living room and flipped on SNY, the delay was well past the two-hour mark, and an impromptu Amazin’ Finishes marathon was in progress, punctuated by live shots of the tarp sitting on the infield, nudged off the infield, and returned to the infield — with Skip Schumaker registering his displeasure with Mother Nature’s timing and nerve. Altogether, it took three hours and seventeen minutes of steady precipitation for the powers that be to decide no more baseball would be attempted in Flushing this early Friday morning. What could have been The Rafael Ortega Game devolved into that night we kind of inconvenienced the Marlins.
Did anybody see or hear anything definitively conclusive about concluding the Mets-Marlins game? MLB, in whose hands this rests, basically replaced that batter in its logo with a shrug emoji. Late-breaking consensus, however, has formed around the Marlins having to fly back to New York from Pittsburgh to finish the game Monday if necessary to determine Wild Card clinching…or maybe just in general. Baseball likes its games completed, though if Miami already has a playoff spot in the bag (they’ve got a half-game lead on the Cubs plus a tiebreaker), one isn’t sure why the hell they’d wing their way to Gotham to secure what I hate to call a meaningless win, because we see meaning in everything in baseball, but c’mon. If there’s no berth and no seeding at stake, what lures the Marlins for an inning-and-a-third rendezvous with density?
Yet if the game isn’t over — and it’s not [2] — and they don’t pick it up, what exactly happened Thursday night?
The ol’ “in the event of rain, the score reverts back to the last complete inning” rule that would effectively erase the two runs Hartwig and Kay gave up doesn’t exist any longer, so there’s no slipping this one into the win column for the Mets on a technicality, but you really can’t say the visitors have prevailed if the home team isn’t granted last licks.
I’d get a kick out saying I saw the first Mets tie in 42 years, but it wasn’t tied when the tarp came out to halt play.
The Marlins could forfeit on the grounds that by Monday, if they’ve clinched, they’ll have better things to do, like prepare for the playoffs ASAP, but Schumaker doesn’t appear to be of a mind to give the Mets anything other than another piece of his mind.
The game could magically disappear from the team’s respective won-lost records, sort of a virtual tie, with all player stats standings, but what’s the basis for that, exactly? MLB has been suspending and resuming otherwise obvious rainouts for a few years now, sometimes insipidly, but to date, a suspended game with real ramifications and little time to tighten its loose ends hasn’t had to absolutely, positively be finished. Finishing it with the Marlins’ and the Cubs’ and maybe the Reds’ playoff fates in the balance would be one thing (even if it’s for four outs and would be a nuisance to every Met whose U-Haul will be double-parked on Seaver Way), but to finish it because every team is required to file in its ledger 162 indisputable results?
I live for the bookkeeping of baseball, but even I think there ought to be a classy way out of finishing this game if there are no serious implications on the table. Yet I did go to this game, and my Log wants to know what I just saw. As of this moment, I can’t write it down as a loss, I can’t write it down as a win and I can’t write it down as a tie. I can’t even pencil it in as a suspended game if I don’t know for sure that it will be rescued from suspended animation. I’ve already written down that I saw the Marlins, as I have in every non-pandemic season since 1997, and I’ve already written down that I saw Peterson, who clearly loves to pitch in front of me. But I can’t write down what “my” record is against the Marlins at Citi Field (it was 22-13 coming in); or “my” lifetime record at Citi Field (currently 179-132 with one dangling “?”); or the W/L aspect of the game; or its final score. I’ll need a dab more information to finish this entry, thank you very much.
Come in from out of the rain and listen to a new episode of National League Town [3].