Game of Redemption

Ah, baseball. It’s a game of redemption, they say. The question sometimes is who gets redeemed last.

Chris Taylor, normally reliable as a Dodger, has endured a nightmarish 2024 so far, one that left him hitting .029 going into Friday night’s game against the Mets. Things didn’t get much better for Taylor in his first AB: In the third he faced Sean Manaea with the Dodgers down 4-0 and trying to get back in the game. Taylor hit into a double play.

But this was a quietly wild game best suited to playing on a seesaw. The Mets beat up Yoshinobu Yamamoto, not long ago the object of their offseason affection, but Yamamoto then harnessed his breaking stuff and was able to keep his team’s powerful lineup at least within striking distance. Manaea was good but inefficient, as Mets starters so often have been, and handed a 4-2 lead to Reed Garrett in the sixth.

Garrett, through not much fault of his own, wound up huddled beneath a caved-in roof. The fault belonged to Joey Wendle, who made a pair of dreadful errors. Garrett persevered and struck out Max Muncy with this bases loaded, which isn’t easy to do, and had a chance to get out of the inning if he could just retire Taylor and his minuscule batting average.

Game of redemption: Taylor spanked a slider that got too much plate into left field and the Dodgers had tied it.

Not ideal, but redemption would have more to say. The Dodgers made an error of their own in the top of the seventh, putting Starling Marte on base ahead of Francisco Lindor. Lindor struggled dreadfully in the beginning of the year, particularly batting from the left side, and hadn’t driven in a runner in scoring position since last season.

Facing Daniel Hudson from the left side, Lindor demolished a 3-2 slider, sending it into the pavilion. The Mets’ lead had been restored and Lindor looked jubilant but also relieved as he embraced Marte after completing his trip around the bases.

This second dose of redemption seemed to deflate the Dodgers a bit; the Mets added two more runs in the eighth and a tack-on run in the ninth, with Jake Diekman finishing up. Old friend Freddie Freeman, who normally salivates at the sight of Mets pitching, struck out three times. That undoubtedly means Freeman will do something terrible to us in the not so distant future, but it won’t be Friday night. That one’s safely in the books.

* * *

The Mets’ City Connect jerseys were unveiled Friday morning, a milestone I approached with a certain dread; this is the organization, after all, that went all in on 1999’s goofy Turn Ahead the Clock promotion and so gave us the Mercury Mets, not to mention birthing the horror that was “Our Team, Our Time.” (Somewhere there’s SNY footage of Greg and me trying to be vaguely diplomatic about the latter.) Since the first wave of City Connects arrived in 2021, I’ve been nervous — to say the least — about what my team would do when its turn came.

Now that we know, I’m in a place I didn’t expect to find myself: underwhelmed.

Now, let’s get a few things straight.

First off, the Mets got their home and road uniforms right in 1962, and it’s great that they’ve returned to them as their default look in recent years. May it always be so. But I’m not such a rock-ribbed traditionalist that any departure from the standard home and away makes me grind my teeth. I’m fine with alt uniforms, so long as there’s a logic to when they’re presented and so long as the frequency of the alts doesn’t upstage the mains. Weekends can be different; so can weekday matinees and holidays. We can make room for throwbacks and concept uniforms and one-offs and bring back old favorites. I don’t want to see the racing stripes too often (Ron Darling nailed it when he said they look like softball uniforms) but wearing them with ’86 royalty in the house makes complete sense. I’m happy to see the black late-90s unis now and again; I have no use for the blue alts but I can tolerate them on occasion. (Just keep the ice cream hats, the tail and those hideous camo tops locked up — and whoever suggesting pairing camo with pinstriped pants should be kept far away from any and all aesthetic decisions until they draw their final breath.)

Second, I like the City Connects, and I think some of the designs are keepers. The Marlins’ Sugar Kings-inspired alts are far better than their actual uniforms, and they ought to switch posthaste. The Angels should do the same: Their City Connects look like SoCal beachwear, and would give this schizophrenic franchise the visual identity it’s so often lacked. The Padres, Nationals and Rockies had fun with the concept and came up with great results. The Mariners stuck closer to tradition but emerged with a striking reinvention of their look. I like the Giants’ fog uniforms and applaud them for trying something new; the Diamondbacks finally found a color that doesn’t look ridiculous; and who would have thought the Red Sox, of all teams, would try something radical? Granted, the Dodgers look like blueberries (they’re apparently redesigning) and there are a few too many edgy black ensembles, but they can’t all be winners.

The Mets took their City Connect assignment seriously, as their careful attention to the details shows. The design aims to be resonant about New York City while also having fun, weaving in everything from the Queensborough Bridge and subway tokens and going so far as to assemble the pinstripes from the diamond and circle icons that every New Yorker knows means express and local lines. It’s not a complete departure from what we know and love: The lettering is taken from the current road uniforms, and they left the NY alone. And the promotional video is great! (Though live a little, fellas — there’s nothing wrong with pushing your pizza boundaries.)

But it feels like the designers were so focused on the details that they lost the bigger picture. Opting for purple because it’s the color of the 7 line was a fun choice, but look at the new uniform and there’s surprisingly little purple to be seen — it’s most notable as the color of the Nike swoosh. There’s a subway map on the cap liner, but it’s literally invisible. That detail about the diamonds and circles is fun, but you won’t see anything except a black stripe from the stands, or on a big OLED set.

Instead, the uniforms look like asphalt — and before one of the designers puts a hand up, I know that was the inspiration. The problem is that they just look like asphalt. They’re drab, and that’s one thing New York City isn’t. Given how much care went into this project — which, again, I applaud — that’s a strange miss.