The Stuff of Legend

It had rained for forty consecutive nights. The Mets had lost their previous fifty games. They had been no-hit for sixty innings in a row. Their most storied slugger was so desperate to effect change that he swung at a pitch seventy feet below sea level.

With one crack of the bat, the earth shook (eventually) and reality set in (immediately). It had been only two rainy nights, a five-game losing streak to start the season, and thirteen straight innings without a hit (and that little drought was snapped an entire inning earlier). Pete Alonso did swing at a pitch relatively close to the ground, but definitely above the dirt, and he made essential contact with it, driving it up in the air and over the fence in the ninth inning of a game the Mets were losing, in that way the Mets had been losing every game: hopelessly, lifelessly, chancelessly.

Now, however, the Mets had hope, had life, had a chance. They were tied with the Tigers, one apiece, in the bottom of the ninth at frigid, unpopulated Citi Field. Someday, perhaps, 500 people will claim they were there. After Alonso resuscitated the Mets’ DOA 2024 season with his second home run of the year and the 500th RBI of his career, actual baseball things began to happen for his baseball club…besides it finding a way to lose again. Brett Baty worked a walk. Starling Marte put the Mets’ new bunting craze to good use and moved Baty to second. And Tyrone Taylor — whose two prior base hits on the season placed him ahead of three bona fide Met regulars — lashed a low, outside slider well above the third baseman’s head and down the left field line, far enough to easily score Baty with what archaeologists classified the winning run.

Experts on ancient artifacts had to be called in for clarification, as nothing like it had been found on these premises in ages.

Alonso went down and got his pitch. Taylor went down and got his pitch. These Mets really did have to dig deep to excavate a single win on Thursday, a day they played twice and, until the ninth inning of the second game, produced little, except doubts. There was splendid home team starting pitching during the makeup doubleheader — five one-run innings from Adrian Houser in the opener and six from Jose Butto in the nightcap — but all that admirable hurling only seemed to accentuate how wretched the hitting had become. The Mets actually held a 3-0 lead in the first game, an advantage the Mets ceded slowly (single Tiger tallies in the sixth, seventh and eighth), before surrendering the contest all at once (luckless Michael Tonkin bending, then breaking in the eleventh). The meltdown portion en route to the 6-3 defeat was best captured by a text I received from Chuck, my best friend these last four decades:

Dude, seriously, I don’t know how u hang in there year in and year out. I am exhausted and it is only April 4.

It remained April 4 for the second game, but it might as well have been September 29, the scheduled date of the last game of this season, should the Mets endure as a going concern that long. The year was five games old and already felt over, no matter how repeatedly one muttered to oneself, “It’s still early.” The first eight innings of the nightcap — featuring a lone Met hit, from Harrison Bader — did nothing to disrupt the gloom.

Then Pete got ahold of one for one run, and the other fellows did what they did to build the other run, and the efforts of Butto and Reed Garrett in mostly shutting down the Tigers proved not in vain. The Mets, ahead 2-1 with an ‘F’ that could be repeated in polite company next to the score, came charging out of the dugout to heartily congratulate one another on finally winning something before retreating inside to fete Carlos Mendoza, a.k.a. Mendy, who now rates his clubhouse nickname, because a manager who has at last managed a win suddenly radiates humanity.

Watching the onrush of Mets in the wake of their walkoff, I took in what amounted to the first unposed team picture of 2024. 21? 13? 44? 75? I’m aware of which players wear which numbers, but in context, I was jolted into “who the hell are these guys?” mode. Right, right, they’re Mets I am depending on for brightening my outlook intermittently, blended in with 20 and 6 and 12 and 9 and 1 and 4 and 22, the guys whose identities I don’t have to question, except to wonder why 12 and 9 and 1 are 3-for-60 combined and what the hell ever happened to Lindor and Nimmo and McNeil.

Despite improving to 1-5 instead of declining to 0-6, Mendy and his Metted Men have a mountain to scale, and the Marlins (0-8) to thank for keeping them clear of the cellar. The starting pitching has been more than competent, but its depth is shallow enough to have created a need for Julio Teheran, a Met-killer of long ago, currently an arm whose most attractive aspect is availability. The relief pitching, Garrett’s scoreless three frames notwithstanding, tends to turn spotty at the worst moments. The fielding hasn’t done enough to keep bad innings from getting worse. And did we mention all that not getting a hit? Friday morning’s Metropolitan Area tremor surely wasn’t an aftershock from a torrent of Met offense.

Yet it’s still early. And we’ve got a win. That’s the truth.