Moments for Mets

The Mets won again, once again by not scoring a bunch of runs but getting remarkable pitching. Remarkable pitching … and having every key moment go their way. Which, granted, is often two different ways of saying the same thing.

I started off listening to Howie and Keith in my backyard and then moved to watching the FOX nincompoops in my living room (not a great choice), and throughout the game I was keenly aware of events teetering on a knife’s edge, and how just a couple of changes can send a game off the axis you’d prefer it stick to.

More on that in a moment, though here’s one reason to have watched on TV: You could admire the Cardinals’ road uniforms. I complain about uniforms a lot, vociferously in the case of the Mets’ baffling decision to replace their iconic road togs with shoddy knockoffs. So let me state for the record that the Cards’ road powder blues are sublime, down to the red piping, the proper use of ST. LOUIS instead of CARDINALS, and the chef’s kiss finishing touch of the S wrapping around the bat. Perfection!

Anyway, let’s talk moments. In the second, Kodai Senga was looking at second and third and one out and a 2-0 count against Nolan Gorman. Three ghost forks later, Gorman was gone; Senga then coaxed a harmless fly ball from Yohel Pozo to keep the game scoreless. The Mets grabbed a 2-0 lead on Luisangel Acuna and Pete Alonso doubles sandwiched around a Juan Soto single; the Cardinals threatened to cut into that lead in the fifth, but Brett Baty threw home unerringly from deep at third to cut down Thomas Saggese at the plate.

But all that was the rising action. The first real tipping point came in the sixth, when Senga walked Lars Nootbaar and gave up a single to Willson Contreras. Up came Brendan Donovan, who at that moment was a) the leading hitter in the National League; b) a solid hitter you can see ascending to the next level before your eyes; and c) a guy in danger of seeing a 14-game hitting streak go by the boards. His showdown with Senga was marvelous theater: Down 1-2 in the count, Donovan bore down, spoiling ghost forks looking for purchase at the bottom of the zone and shaking off Senga’s attempt to change his eye line. Five balls fouled off, and finally Senga tried a slider. Donovan hit it hard — but Acuna scooped it up to start a double play.

Another tipping point arrived in the eighth, when A.J. Minter walked the bases loaded and faced Alec Burleson with two out. Burleson smacked a grounder to the right of second, not hit all that hard but perilously placed — a long run for Acuna and the wrong side of the bag for Lindor.

If this had been Soilmaster Stadium against the fucking Marlins, the ball would have ticked off the end of Acuna’s glove with just enough kinetic energy to spring off the top of Lindor’s, spinning out into the left-field grass as a hideous carousel of enemy baserunners sprang into motion and various horror-stricken Mets tried to reverse field. What happened instead looked on TV like three-card monte: The ball vanished not into Acuna’s glove but behind it, untouched, and wound up in the grasp of Lindor, who had just enough time to spin on the grass, lock in on Alonso’s glove and end the inning.

In the bottom of the eighth … nope, no near thing or knife edge involved, just Alonso hitting a ball to Mars and the chance to throw your arms skyward and say happy silly things. That blast (443 feet!) gave the Mets a three-run lead, which they handed to Edwin Diaz.

Diaz did throw three straight balls to Saggese, which didn’t seem like an ideal start, but this time he locked in a little earlier than he has recently: Three pitches later Saggese had been fanned. Gorman gave Diaz a good battle (how many lineups feature two Nolans, BTW?) but went down on a slider, and Pozo rolled harmlessly to Lindor.

There will be games when those key moments fall the other way and we wind up fuming. Hell, that just happened in Minnesota. But this game wasn’t one of them; everything went right and the outcome was a Mets win and a Saturday afternoon satisfyingly spent.