Francisco & Company

Late on a Sunday night in 1975, I’m watching Sammy & Company on Channel 4 because I’m up, it’s on, and nothing else is. The Sammy in question is Sammy Davis, Jr. He’s done it all in show business and now he’s hosting this syndicated not quite talk show, not quite variety show. It’s got Sammy and he’s got company. That’s enough in the pre-cable days to keep a 12-year-old insomniac tuned in. On this episode I’m recalling, Sammy’s doing a number from a Broadway musical he was in a dozen years earlier, a show called Golden Boy. I’d never heard of Golden Boy until the moment he told us he was about to perform a song from it. The song, “This Is The Life,” makes an impression on me because one line grabs my attention:

Polaroid pictures, stereo sets, season box to see the Mets

Twenty-five years before I began keeping a file of Met mentions in the popular culture for my own edification and thirty-seven years before the first edition of Oscar’s Caps saw light, I made a mental note of that there’s a song in a show that starred Sammy Davis and it has the Mets in it.

That information settled in the recesses of my brain, of no consequence in my life until September 1999, when, with the Mets bearing down on a playoff spot, “season box to see the Mets” bubbled to the surface of my 36-year-old consciousness, and I decided I needed to hear this song and have this song. Nascent file sharing and the application of something called MP3s surpassed my understanding. If I wanted a song, I bought the CD. I worked not far from a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, a store whose soundtrack collection brimmed with the best of Broadway going back years. Yes, Golden Boy was there. Yes, I purchased it. Yes, I played “This Is The Life” quite often in the fall of 1999, a period when anything Metsian was welcome in my ears. I don’t think I gave the rest of the album more than a perfunctory listen.

In March of 2002, City Center’s Encores! series staged a concert version of Golden Boy. Hey, I more or less said to my wife, that’s the show with “season box to see the Mets” in it. We had seen and greatly enjoyed the very first Encores! production in 1994 (Fiorello!) but let our initial subscription wane. This seemed like a good excuse to return to the grand old theater on 55th Street. Alfonso Ribiero, Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, played Davis’s role. I was delighted to hear “This Is The Life” live and became aware of the rest of the soundtrack.

A couple of weeks later, the baseball season began, a season I was more in tune with than the Broadway season. The Mets’ first tour…I mean road trip took them to Atlanta. You know, Turner Field. This was April 2002. For five seasons the Mets had been visiting this facility and leaving it to scathing reviews. Actually, I suppose the Atlanta crowd applauded the Mets taking their bows there because it usually meant showstoppers from the Braves. Ever since September 1997, the Braves had been stopping the Mets’ show, crushing their hopes autumn after autumn. The Mets had never finished ahead of the Braves since Atlanta moved to the NL East. The Mets never definitively defeated the Braves when it absolutely mattered, especially in Georgia.

But this year, I told myself at 39, was going to be different. We’d just come through the offseason of Alomar and Vaughn, the reacquisitions of Cedeño and Burnitz. We were remade to finally get over that big, bad, Brave hump. On our first trip in, we took two out of three at the Ted, including one stunner when we scored nine in the ninth to not only break but smash a tie. We won that one, 11-2. A little over a week later, the Braves were up at Shea and jumped ahead, 6-1, by the third. Yet we scored five in the bottom of the seventh, forced extra innings, and, in the twelfth, my favorite position player ever, Edgardo Alfonzo, drove in Jay Payton with the winning run. Mets 7 Braves 6 on the scoreboard. Mets two-and-a-half-games ahead of the Braves in the standings. And resonating in my head, from the song I gained a new appreciation of at City Center during Spring Training, were lyrics I was convinced spoke to the moment at hand.

Well, you had your way
No more
Well, it ain’t your day
No more
Yes, I’m standin’ up
I ain’t on the floor
I ain’t bowin’ down
No more

This was my theme song for the 2002 I envisioned taking shape that April. It went on my stereo set and on my next compilation (or mix) tape and I played it clear to…

May, I guess. By June, the shape of 2002 had sagged. The Braves did what the Braves always did. They took over first place and won the division title. They didn’t break the Mets’ heart in September or October of 2002, because the 2002 Mets had no heart left come summer’s end. They finished last, 26½ games behind Atlanta.

So much for “No More”.

The season I was 43 was the first season since the season I was 27 that the Mets finished with a better record than the Braves. When I was 27, the Braves were in another division, and by the time I was 43, the Braves had been in the same division as the Mets since the season I was 31. The season I was 43 was 2006. The Mets had finally broken through to win the division. The Braves fell apart and ceased being the Mets’ primary rival. It was a stone groove to put the finishing touches on the destruction of the remnants of their NL East dynasty, but it was a sidebar at best. We enjoyed one year of absolute dominance over everybody in our immediate realm, then got entangled with the Phillies for a while. That tended not to end great. Soon, it was the Mets who fell apart while the Braves regrouped a little. By the time we briefly got it together again, the Braves were an absolute mess. By the time we came undone again, the Braves were on the upswing. From 2018 through 2023, it may as well have been 1995 through 2005 in the NL East, with the Braves winning every single year. Only once, in 2022, were we in their faces. That also didn’t end great.

This takes us to September of 2024, the season I’m 61, still caring about the thing I was caring about in 1975, the season I was 12, when “season box to see the Mets” and Golden Boy lodged themselves in my head, leading to September of 1999 and the CD and that fabulous fall when the Mets almost but not quite toppled the Braves and I was 36, leading to April of 2002 and “No More” scoring our ascent above Atlanta, except the ascent was aborted before I turned 40. Now I’m past 60, and the one thread, however frayed, I find myself clinging to for more than two decades is my reawakened desire to raise the volume on this song at the moment it is genuinely appropriate, when they’re no longer having their way, when it ain’t their day, when we ain’t on the floor no more.

Tuesday afternoon, September 24. The Mets are starting a three-game series at Truist Park. The Mets’ magic number to clinch a playoff spot is four. Two wins at Atlanta will do it. That’s the prize that deserves the eyes, but I’m also overwhelmed in the hours before game time at the possibility of us not only beating the Braves for our own benefit, but for the thrill of knocking them out of the playoff picture altogether. I don’t just want us in. I want them done.

This, I know, is a mistake. One of the tenets of my rooting is root for, not against. There are caveats and exceptions, as with all tenets, but I try to stay nominally pro, not anti, as a fan. Root for your own joy, not others’ suffering. Should they suffer because you achieved joy, that’s collateral damage. I can’t help it if others didn’t decide to root for the Mets when they were six years old as I did and then keep at it. I may need your team to lose to advance my cause, yet I shouldn’t go out of my way to wish you ill other than on as-needed basis.

Why not? Because I’m such a good soul? No. Because it never fucking works. Karma hates it, therefore I should avoid it. That’s why I knew it was a mistake to be carried away by my disdain for the Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Braves fans and everything the Atlanta Braves have done to us since 1997, the first year we rose up to challenge for the recently implemented Wild Card, only to have the Braves smoke us that September. It happened again in September 1998, when we were closer and they annihilated us later; and in September 1999, when they grabbed back the division from us just as we were set to wrap our mitts around it and, in the process, sent us spiraling almost out of reach of the Wild Card; and in October 1999, when we forged one Amazin’ comeback after another only to have Kenny Rogers pitching to Andruw Jones with the bases loaded in the tenth inning of a game we trailed 5-0, trailed 7-3, led 8-7 and led 9-8; and in September 2000, when what I just said about the 1999 divisional title applied essentially just the same, except we had a decent Wild Card cushion (the one year we got to the World Series, St. Louis took care of Atlanta for us); and in September 2001, specifically in the second Brian Jordan Game, which assured for eternity that Mike Piazza belting that First Game in New York After 9/11 home run would be viewed as an isolated swing rather than part of a larger baseball miracle.

All of that informs why I ached to wail No More in April of 2002. All of that, along with that series sweep at the close of September and dawn of October 2022, is why I hauled my Golden Boy CD out of its drawer and added it to my iTunes (I’m not that modern) and played the relevant portion repeatedly prior to the first Mets-Braves game in Atlanta in September 2024.

And you saw how that worked. The Mets lost and looked lost. Then it rained and rained and games were postponed and it was off to Milwaukee, where the Mets continued to lose and look lost. But then they won Sunday and found themselves tied with the Braves in the standings heading into the Monday doubleheader that was tacked onto the schedule after all that rain, and both teams needed to win at least one game. Whoever won the first game in Atlanta didn’t have to worry about the second game all that much. There’d be seeding and travel and whatever, but if you won the first game, you were golden, boy.

But if we won the first game and the second game, we’d be in and we’d knock the Braves all the way out of contention once and for all, or at least once and for all in 2024, while we moved on. Ooh, I really wanted both of those situations to become reality. Folks in Arizona probably didn’t care who won what game of the doubleheader as long as nobody won both. Folks in Arizona weren’t my problem.

The folks in Braves uniforms were. One in particular.

I went to a Mets-Braves game at Citi Field in late July. Starting for the Braves was some dude I’d never heard of named Spencer Schwellenbach. My first instinct was to ask “who?” My second instinct, a product of my earliest exposure to baseball, was to think “what an odd name for a baseball player, as the best baseball players have punchy names like Willie Mays or Johnny Bench or Tom Seaver, and whoever heard of somebody named Spencer Schwellenbach being any good?” My final instinct was to conclude I had just doomed the Mets that July day, because what the fuck does somebody’s name have to do with how good he is? Final score of the game where I learned who Spencer Schwellenbach was featured several runs for the Braves and none for the Mets. A rough approximation of that score recurred in Atlanta the night after the afternoon I played “No More” with too much gusto.

Would ya look at who was pitching for the Braves against the Mets in Game 161, the one with everything on the line? Yeah, I know that name all too well, Spencer Schwellenbach. Unsurprisingly, the pitcher I implicitly mocked for not having a baseball-worthy name shoved the baseball right past Met batters from the get-go. One silly little infield hit from Tyrone Taylor was the sum total of the Met offense for three innings. For two innings, Schwellenbach was matched zero-for-zero where it counted by Tylor Megill. Tylor wasn’t nearly perfect. He rarely is. But he’s been hanging in there since the June night in 2021 when he made his Met debut and I was at a ballgame for the first time since September of 2019. My last game before the pandemic was against the Braves, so long ago now that it’s jarring to remember Jerry Blevins pitched for them. My first game after the pandemic coincided with Megill’s entry into the bigs. I knew as much about him going in to that outing as I knew about Schwellenbach in July. Megill was facing the Braves, then, too. He didn’t personally beat them but he, you know, hung in there: 92 pitches, four-and-a-third innings. The Mets won in a pre-pitch clock slog of 3:42. We’d take that as an outcome in Monday’s opener.

Except Megill hanging in there usually means Megill has to negotiate trouble, and trouble doesn’t always wish to negotiate. Sometimes trouble insists on a display of brute force. A first-inning walk was quelled. Two singles in the second were released on their own recognizance. But a hit allowed to Michael Harris II (you mean there are II of him?) was followed by Ozzie Albies lining a home run over the left field wall, and oy, it’s 2-0 Braves, with Spencer Schwellenbach on the mound, and why must every game in Atlanta be like this?

No, I tell myself, don’t be like that. Even as Matt Olson singles with one out and Ramon Laureano singles with two out and Francisco Alvarez chases a passed ball with Travis d’Arnaud up, and really? Travis d’Arnaud? What did we do to deserve this? Besides give up on Travis d’Arnaud five minutes after he recovered from surgery?

The most vengeful of all the Old Friends™ is the last Brave you want to see up right now (unless it’s Albies or Olson or the second Harris, I suppose). Before a worst-case scenario could materialize, Tylor struck out Travis.

On a team where everybody’s done something to get us to the cusp of the playoffs, sometimes it takes a Megillage.

Megill settled down in the fourth and fifth. Schwellenbach was reached for a couple of singles in the fifth, but to no avail. His sixth couldn’t have been cleaner, either: seven pitches, three outs. The bottom of the sixth saw Megill ground out Jorge Soler for the first out. The next out, however, was of the park, as in out of Truist Park and into the Battery. Maybe what Laureano hit didn’t fly that far, but it was far enough to extend Atlanta’s lead to 3-0. Megill got two more batters, one more out, and a pat on the back for hanging in there. In the middle of the season, it would be a most admirable effort. With everything on the line, it wasn’t enough.

Huascar Brazoban finished Megill’s sixth by stranding Tylor’s baserunner. The Braves had left nine runners on base to this point. They could have had a much bigger lead than they’d built, but didn’t. That’s the essence of hanging in there. Would it matter if the Mets couldn’t get to the all-too-familiar Spencer Schwellenbach? That’s one rhetorical question right there. In the top of the seventh, ol’ Spence expended himself for nine pitches resulting in another three quick outs. Three-nothing didn’t look like it was gonna need much padding. Adam Ottavino’s participation in low-leverage competition seemed to have done him some good, as he kept the Braves from doing any upholstering of their advantage in the bottom of the seventh.

The eighth began with Schwellenbach working a one-and-two count to Taylor on his 84th through 86th pitch of the day. There was no reason to believe an out wasn’t imminent and that the eighth wouldn’t roll by as swiftly as most every Met inning had. Except Tyrone made himself sticky. He stuck around the batter’s box for a spell. More than a spell. Maybe Taylor was inspired by the Truist Park organist accompanying his stroll to the plate with the theme from The Andy Griffith Show. Uh-huh, just moseying, like Sheriff Andy Taylor did through Mayberry, especially on TBS all those years following Braves baseball on the superstation. Say, isn’t that Andy and Opie heading down to the fishin’ hole?

Our Taylor wasn’t much for fishing. He took a ball, kept himself alive with a couple of fouls, took another ball, fouled off three more and, on the eleventh pitch of the only stressful at-bat of Spencer Schwellenbach’s afternoon, lined a double into the left-center field gap. Spencer’s pitch count had risen all at once to 94, which set off alarm bell back at the courthouse. Sheriff Brian Snitker believed this was the time to take action. He apprehended the baseball from the right hand of the man who’d been spinning a gem and sent him for his own stroll.

Thanks, Snit — I thought this guy would never leave, and if he never left, we’d never score and we wouldn’t win Game One, and Game Two was also scheduled to take place in Atlanta, like most every horrible September/October game has been scheduled to take place in (or near) Atlanta since 1997. While I’m not to be mistaken for the supreme Met optimist, I’m thinking this can’t be real, can it? We’re not always going to lose like this in this place like we did in the previous place? Are we? I didn’t believe that coming into this doubleheader, just as I didn’t believe it six days before, just as I deep down didn’t believe it was loss accompli in 2022 or 2001 or whenever. But the evidence was mounting as long as Spencer Schwellenbach stayed on the hill.

He was removed from it. Joe Jimenez replaced him and, two pitches in, surrendered an RBI double to Alvarez. Shutout over. Invincibility punctured. An actual competitive ballgame loomed. Starling Marte pinch-hit for the offensively stunted Harrison Bader and singled, putting runners on the corners. Francisco Lindor comes up and resumes his bid for Comeback Player of the Year Within a Year. Lindor was out of the lineup for a couple of handfuls of games, but his absence felt endless, even when the Mets were winning. He’d come back in one piece on Sunday and helped engineer Sunday’s must win in Milwaukee. He didn’t make the All-Star team. He’s not gonna get MVP. Let’s give the man something.

Instead, Francisco gave us something: a single up the middle to score the other Francisco from third, and it was 3-2. This really was a competitive ballgame, in fact as much as theory. Jimenez, mandated by Manfred to throw to three batters, had done the absolute minimum. Snitker moved on from him to Raisel Iglesias, the Braves’ dynamite closer the Mets never hit. It’s not just us. He’s very good. Except on Monday, in the eighth, it was us. It was Jose Iglesias lining home Marte to tie the game at three; and it was Mark Vientos lofting a fly to center to bring home Lindor and provide the Mets a one-run lead; and it was Iglesias stealing second; and it was Brandon Nimmo blasting to right the most dramatic home run any Met has ever struck late in a game when the Mets were on the verge of clinching a playoff berth.

As of that moment, anyway.

Oh, it was glorious. Nimmo frigging knew it was gone, and with it, the Braves’ chances were going, going…OK, everybody wants to get ahead of the Braves, but nobody wants to get ahead of themselves. Still, shouting and screaming (two distinct vocal expressions), wasn’t enough for me as the Mets led the Braves, 6-3 and Snit went to make another pitching change. Me, I dashed over to where my iPad was plugged into the wall, opened yet another new tab — I had probably 150 active — and called up the lyrics to my song. This was it. This was the day they were going to be undeniably relevant to not only our cause but the pending conclusion. We’d just hung six on the almighty Braves, we had only six outs to nail down and…I don’t know. I had to have the exact lyrics ready to copy and paste and post and tell the world, we had done it.

Then I sat back down, watched the Mets not score any further in the top of the eighth, tried not to believe I had just acted rashly by getting ahead of myself, and welcomed Phil Maton to the mound. He pitched Sunday, didn’t he? Does he usually pitch that often? Oh, he’s a pro and this, today, is what Carlos Mendoza charmingly calls big boy time. He’s gonna be fine.

He’s gonna hit Eli White, a defensive replacement to the lead off the bottom of the eighth. That’s what he’s gonna do. And after getting one out, he’s gonna give up kind of a lucky hit to d’Arnaud (lucky for d’Arnaud, unlucky for us). Here comes Mendy. Maybe it was pushing it to ask Maton to pitch a second day in a row. Good thing Carlos has a contingency plan, no doubt one of our well-rested relievers who’s gonna steer us through the eighth.

Mendoza brought in Edwin Diaz, and I believe my reaction was “NO FUCKING WAY” or words to that effect, but definitely with “FUCKING” one of the words, and definitely not said as one might say when being presented with an item one had missed and assumed gone, but NO FUCKING WAY, it’s still here, thank you so much!

No, that’s not how I meant it. I did not want to see Edwin Diaz in the eighth inning. I was ready to see Edwin Diaz in the ninth inning. That seemed like plenty. It seemed appropriate. Closer closes. I’m by no means opposed to the closer getting a jump on the ninth in the eighth when circumstances dictate or suggest it’s the right course of action. After he pitched Sunday and struggled just enough for antsiness to attain three outs with a five-run lead, I doubted it was the right course of action. Mendoza knows his Mets better than I do (I don’t actually know them personally at all), but I’ve watched too many ballgames from Atlanta to not develop an opinion the manager didn’t ask for.

Edwin Diaz’s entire Met career flashes before my eyes every time the bullpen gate swings open these days. The promise of the great Mariner closer becoming ours at a contract-controllable stage of his burgeoning career, and all we had to give up of substance was our top minor league prospect; the absolute nightmare of his volunteering to pitch Home Run Derby in 2019, and I don’t mean at the All-Star festivities; the gradual construction of trust in the succeeding two seasons; the explosion of Sugarmania in 2022, which came with his own musician; the fucking WBC in 2023; all the mishegas this year that alternated with all the returning to form he had done when he wasn’t reminding us of 2019. Edwin’s better than a mixed bag, but you might want to open it up and inspect the contents before signing for what he’s about to deliver.

Too late for instant recriminations. We could have those later.

Diaz comes on and gets his first batter for the inning’s second out. What on earth was I stressing about? Relax, relax. I see Snitker is going to his bench for a pinch-hitter. Who’s up?

Jarred Kelenic. Say, you know that top minor league prospect we gave up to get Diaz? That’s him. You knew that, but here was a reminder in the flesh. We lived for a while with the simmering anxiety that Kelenic was going to grow up and become Mike Trout. That hasn’t happened, but it would be enough at this very moment for Kelenic to pull a d’Arnaud and Old Friend™ us to death. Technically, since Kelenic never played for the Mets, he’s not eligible for the Old Friend™ designation, but he can sure as hell do something to cause us regret.

Sure enough, he lines a ball past first base. It’s ticketed to scoot down the right field line, except Pete Alonso, our homegrown star, dives and snags it. Atta Bear, Pete! That’s a big-time defensive play and an inning-saver. Yessir, all Alonso has to do now is straighten up and toss to Diaz, covering at first.

Um, where the fuck is Diaz? Not in our picture, and SNY is pretty good at showing everybody who’s in a given play. Alas, Edwin is not present. Another camera reveals Diaz is standing on the mound as Kelenic crosses first base and White zips to third and d’Arnaud himself scores to trim the Mets’ lead to 6-4. Honestly, Edwin could be out in center field picking dandelions. Error of omission, Tim McCarver was fond of calling nonmoves like this.

Let’s all settle down. Edwin is pointing to his chest, the universal symbol for “my bad”. He knows he erred. His head is still in the game (mighty nice of it to join us). There’s still two out, we’re still up by two.

That’s not going to last. Whit Merrrifield, pinch-running for Kelenic, who I didn’t know is considered slow because I never got a chance to get to know him as a Met, steals second, because Diaz apparently studied holding runners on at the feet of Ottavino. It’s second and third with Harris II up. Harris could hit one here, couldn’t he? He doesn’t. He walks. It doesn’t feel like a victory. This loads the bases for Albies. Albies unloads the bases with a double past Nimmo in left. If you’re keeping a scorecard, it’s Braves 7 Mets 6.

I should be mad at Diaz for torching the eighth. I should be mad at Mendoza for bringing him in. I’m mad at myself for calling up those lyrics to “No More” when there was still more baseball to be played. I didn’t share them with anyone, just myself. That was a bridge too far. Karma noticed my hubristic preparations and let me know about it. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but karma’s a bitch.

With Raisel Iglesias having closed himself out of closing, Snitker turns to Pierce Johnson for the three outs that will clinch the Braves a playoff spot and leave the Mets needing to not get swept in Atlanta. I know as much about Pierce Johnson as I did Spencer Schwellenbach in July, but I make no judgments about his unusual first name for a baseball player. I have no time for that. Alvarez pops out on Johnson’s second pitch, and my only recourse now is to get up, rush to the still-charging iPad and close that tab with the lyrics. It’s probably too late to undo the damage I have done, but I’ve gotta try.

Except at the very instant within Marte’s plate appearance when I have one leg in the air and the other ready to follow, Starling singles to left, and I can’t get up now. I settle into the chair because maybe, just maybe, it has base hits in it. To move from it at this juncture would be folly. Karma’s giving me a second chance. Never mind the lyrics from Golden Boy. Our golden boy is coming up next.

I’m sitting probably in a shape approximating a pretzel at this point. I don’t want to move. Or, more accurately, I don’t want to move the wrong way and therefore screw with Francisco Lindor’s chances against Pierce Johnson. My arms are sort of over my face for a moment. I realize this is no way to watch Lindor bat because it keeps me from seeing. I also realize I am 61 years old, this is a Monday afternoon, and I’m worried about how I’m sitting in front of a television for how it could affect a baseball game many hundreds of miles away.

Isn’t being a baseball fan great? I spent the entire pregame portion of the day — what regular people would call morning — utterly absorbed by what could possibly go right or wrong in Atlanta and I never stopped to question my priorities. Is there anything else out there that makes you feel like this? I mean before it happens. Before it happens, it consumes you. While it’s happening, it threatens to eat you alive. Yet you sit there in whatever shape you’ve assumed and dare it to open wide and take a bite.

Yes, being a fan is great. And awful. But great. In any event, I wasn’t going to screw with Francisco Lindor’s chances against Pierce Johnson, because Pierce Johnson had no chance against Francisco Lindor. This is Francisco Lindor we’re talking about. We have learned in 2024, particularly in the healthy-ish parts of his September, that Francisco Lindor is to be spoken of in awe and hushed tones, the way Carl Yasztremski or George Brett or (forgive me) Chipper Jones were and are for what they did for their teams down stretches in their signature Septembers, months of clutch performances that catapulted them to the Hall of Fame.

I feel quite comfortable invoking some of the all-time greats here because Francisco Lindor blasted to center the most dramatic home run any Met has ever struck late in a game when the Mets were on the verge of clinching a playoff berth.

For all time.

Braves 7 Mets 6 transformed to Mets 8 Braves 7. The screaming competed with the shouting, each of which had to withstand the hooting and the hollering. Oh My God, and you don’t abbreviate it when it comes to Francisco Lindor in the ninth inning in Atlanta with everything on the line.

Yet would have a little insurance been to much to ask for after Lindor’s two-run homer of a lifetime? I mean, c’mon, this is Atlanta (Cobb County, but still), the same city or ADI where the Mets grabbed an 8-7 lead in the sixth game of the 1999 NLCS, only to…you know, Kenny Rogers. Turns out, despite all the GEICO and Progressive and Allstate commercials to which we’re subject throughout the season, a little insurance was too much to ask for. Mendoza would be turning a tenuous one-run lead over to…

You’re kidding. Diaz is going out there for the ninth. He threw, I’m estimating, a million pitches in the eighth. His psyche has to be scarred like he just saw the ghost of Kurt Suzuki. And he didn’t get off the mound when that was paramount. Diaz? Cripes, just get Benitez loose. They showed Ryne Stanek warming up in the bullpen. I can’t say I would trust my baseball life with Ryne Stanek and a one-run lead in the ninth inning in Atlanta with everything on the line, but I can tell you I wasn’t using my one phone call to keep Edwin Diaz in the game.

Which may be why they don’t give me access to the bullpen phone.

It was ride or die with Diaz. Is that too much hyperbole or not enough? There was little opportunity to mull the question during Matt Olson’s leadoff at-bat, because it was over in one pitch — one effective pitch that Olson popped to Lindor for the first out. OK, maybe this wasn’t a disaster in the making. White singled, then stole second. OK, maybe this is a disaster in the making. Laureano, with three hits on the day, struck out. Two outs, leaving it all up to d’Arnaud.

I was 70% leaning toward doom, 30% thinking it was too obvious. And it was. The latter, that is. Old Friend™ Travis did the right neighborly thing and grounded to Lindor, who threw to Alonso for the third out, and Oh My God, the New York Mets defeated the Atlanta Braves in Atlanta in September to make the playoffs. We were in. They were not. One game remained to determine their fate. It was now their must win. We didn’t know whether they’d win it or lose it (they won it; sorry, Arizona), but on this Monday, that was bookkeeping. Let Joey Lucchesi chruve as best he could, let Pete Alonso set foot in his 162nd game, and let the Champagne chill a little longer. It would be on ice waiting for our Mets to celebrate their myriad accomplishments, right after completing the greatest 2-4 road trip in human history.

They had done what they had to do, doing it where it seemed they’d never do anything like it. The 2024 Mets, who’d been charging uphill since the end of May, now and then slipping and sliding but always persevering and never giving up, were now atop the mountain they needed to scale. They made the playoffs for the eleventh time in their history. They did so from what could have been construed as hopelessly behind twice. Down 3-0, before rallying to lead, 6-3. Down 7-6, before winning, 8-7. After starting 22-33, they finished 89-73 and shattered the notion that destiny will deny them at every turn.

They beat the fucking Braves in fucking Atlanta when it fucking mattered most. So how do I celebrate after the shouting and screaming and hooting and hollering? I pick up my iPad, I go to the tab with my lyrics, I copy them, and…

…and every one of my tabs disappears. Every newspapers.com article I’d found since June but hadn’t had a chance to make use of. Every Baseball-Reference page I cued up for the purpose of delving in further. Every site that caught my fancy between pitches or games. They all just went poof.

Served me right for having gotten ahead of myself in the eighth. Karma, I hear ya, loud and clear.

Like the Mets from June on, I did a quick restart and moved forward. They’re going to Milwaukee for the Wild Card Series. I’ll join them spiritually eventually. Hours after we clinched, I’ve had Georgia on my mind the whole night through.