I liked it better when ballplayers talked about “turning the page” on bad days. Sometime in the past decade or so, turning the page morphed into flushing, and not the charming village in Queens whose northwestern edge we know so well. “You gotta flush it” became the page-turning mantra of choice. Maybe nobody reads printed material enough to know from turning pages. Maybe Mickey Callaway irreversibly coarsened the culture. However the de rigueur phrase to articulate a wish to send the surrendering of a game-losing grand slam swirling through the municipal waste-disposal system became prevalent, the sentiment is immediately understandable in any vernacular.
“I just flush it” is indeed [1] what Edwin Diaz said he does to get past nights like Wednesday. Had he been holding a periodical, perhaps he might have invoked page-turning. Had any of us been holding anything when he threw his fateful slider to Corbin Carroll (the one that was “floating in the zone” like something you’d definitely want to flush), we likely threw it as hard as we could. It wouldn’t have traveled as far as Carroll’s 396-foot four-run homer, but we probably would have launched our object at an exit velocity greater than his dinger’s 102.5 MPH.
But that was Wednesday. Thursday came along. In The Old Ball Game, Frank Deford reminded readers a hundred years after the fact that in 1905, “days of the week in the United States were designated for the appointed household chores.” Monday, he noted, was Washing Day. We can confidently confer upon at least one Thursday in 2024 the designation of Flushing Day. If not for the sticky residue Wednesday left in the Wild Card standings — and within our collective psyche — the Mets played on Thursday afternoon as if Wednesday night’s debacle [2] had surged out to sea [3] with a million tons of raw sewage.
With the first pitch Thursday, the Diamondbacks were no longer the victors from Wednesday. They were a new day’s opponents. The Mets were no longer defeated. The score was even from the get-go. Scoring got going only when Pete Alonso declared it did, at the say-so of his bat, which swatted his 221st career home run in the second inning. With that one swing, the Mets moved one run ahead of Arizona and the Polar Bear moved one homer ahead of Mike Piazza on the franchise’s all-time list. Another swing, this one from Randal Grichuk with Geraldo Perdomo on first, changed the immediate order of things in the third: Snakes 2 Mets 1.
Lucky for us, we’ve got Francisco Lindor [4] and nobody else does. The pitching duel between David Peterson and Ryne Nelson proved unbudging until Lindor led off the top of the sixth by taking three balls, fouling off many a strike and, on the eleventh delivery he saw, smacking a home run to right, not far from the spot Carroll torpedoed his the night before, but who remembered that anymore? In the present, Lindor tied things up at two. Our season all but ended on Wednesday. On Thursday, we were right back in it.
Peterson lasted seven without giving up anything else. David and Sean Manaea are lately Koosman and Matlack for a new century, two lefties you can count on to complement a Seaver (we have a Severino if not a Seaver; you can’t have everything). Nelson was similarly impenetrable, save for the two solo homers belted by the two Met sluggers. Bullpen zeroes were swapped in the eighth, Jose Butto dealing ours, helped by Luis Torrens nailing Joc Pederson trying to steal second with two out amid a three-one count…and Joc Pederson putting his mind aside long enough to attempt such dubious thievery.
In the ninth versus Justin Martinez, Jesse Winker doubled with one out. Tyrone Taylor ran for him. J.D. Martinez shot a liner to deep right that allowed Taylor to tag and advance to third. Do you like where this is going? Jose Iglesias sure did. Iglesias sent a sizzling grounder up the middle that Lindor might have gotten to, but he plays for us, not them. They had Perdomo. If we’d learned anything in this series to this point, beyond the value of turning and flushing, it was that the best place to hit a ball if you can’t hit it over a fence is in the vicinity surrounding Perdomo. The Diamondbacks’ shortstop’s glove made a sweet clanking sound as Iglesias’s ball trickled into center, scoring Taylor with the go-ahead run.
Great, a 3-2 lead to carry into the ninth for our closer.
I said “great.”
No, really.
Our closer was back from Wednesday and ready to be somebody else on Thursday, or at least throw different pitches. Wednesday’s were sliders that didn’t go where we he or we wanted. Thursday he had fastballs. If it were as easy as changing repertoires, every Met in 2012 would have followed R.A. Dickey’s lead and thrown a high, hard knuckleball. For Diaz in 2024, a mechanical flaw was reportedly repaired between Wednesday and Thursday. Will it remain under warranty? That’s for Friday and beyond. On Thursday, Edwin Diaz didn’t generate flashing red lights, screaming sirens and the robot from Lost in Space warning of DANGER! DANGER! That’s what Wednesday felt like even before Edwin made it to the mound. On Thursday, the erstwhile All-Star struck out his first two batters and popped up the third, saving the win [5] for Butto and the season for the rest of us.
Later, the Braves lost to the Phillies, so we’re three out of the six-seed, a pursuit we are compelled to again take seriously now that Flushing Day has passed and Momentum Day has hopefully arrived.