Fearful Symmetry

Let’s get this part out of the way: I was in the front of the Promenade a fair distance down the first-base line. So I can’t tell you jack about Max Scherzer‘s stuff or location or exactly what happened to various Met defenders or anything else that relies on the nuance of an up-close view. Being in the park isn’t about any of those things unless you’re in the really fancy seats; rather, it’s about what you can’t recreate in your living room, namely becoming a small part of a shared experience.

And hey, that part was fun, even as everything else proved frustrating. The high-water mark, of course and alas, came when Francisco Lindor drove a Seranthony Dominguez sinker to deep center with no one out in the ninth and Starling Marte on second. The ball was going to be gone for a walkoff homer, or off the wall for a walkoff single, or at least it was going to be a long fly that would move Marte to third and allow the Mets to win the game on a walkoff a batter later, and Citi Field was one gigantic jet-engine roar which you knew was only prelude to the bigger roar to come.

Well, except it never did.

Lindor’s drive was a long fly. Marte did indeed move to third. And so the ninth inning came down to Dominguez against Daniel Vogelbach, who hit the requisite fly ball to left, where someone named Matt Vierling was waiting. It wasn’t as deep as you’d like, but it would take a perfect throw to get Marte, whom Joey Cora properly sent homeward. Vierling’s throw came in hard and slightly up the first-base line, where J.T. Realmuto snapped it out of the air before flinging himself at Marte, catching him across the chest a moment before his hand slapped the plate. The Mets wouldn’t win in a walkoff, Vogelbach’s rocket ride as Citi Field cult hero wouldn’t reach new heights, and the Mets and Phillies would play on into extra innings.

Honestly, it was kind of a miracle that things got that far. Scherzer looked out of sorts in the early going, battling himself and a run of buzzard’s luck that saw plays not quite made, ducksnorts and parachutes drop onto the outfield grass, and two Met infielders exit — Eduardo Escobar with what’s billed as a side injury and Jeff McNeil with a lacerated finger suffered in an odd collision with Rhys Hoskins. But then other Mets looked out of sorts too — besides the defense being ever so slightly miscalibrated, the hitters did next to nothing against Ranger Suarez, who hung around far later than most enemy starters these days. The Phillies, meanwhile, were playing crisp defense, perhaps mindful of all the bulletin-board material Keith Hernandez recently gave them.

One team played crisp and clean and the other one looked a bit ragged, but that still meant a 1-1 tie going to the 10th.

And then, ah, the bedrock unfairness of baseball. Mychal Givens made a nifty play on a little tapper, then got a flyout and a strikeout — a blameless performance for which he was rewarded with a loss. That flyout unfolded almost as a mirror image of the play on Marte: Alec Bohm hit a fly to Marte, a bit deeper than Vogelbach’s, which Marte fired in to Tomas Nido on one hop, in plenty of time to get Bryson Stott at the plate — except that hop was a short hop, and the ball ticked off the tip of Nido’s mitt and bounded away. Could Nido have fielded it? Yes. Was it a tricky hop requiring a do-or-die snag? Also yes. Did the Mets make those kind of plays on Friday night? Not often enough.

The ball bounded away, allowing Stott to score and the Phillies to turn the ball over to David Robertson, so recently coveted as one of our bullpen additions. (That was perhaps a little extra cruel.) Robertson got Tyler Naquin looking at a cutter on the edge of the strike zone, elicting a big collective oof! from the crowd, and then coaxed a grounder from Luis Guillorme, and so the Phillies had won — a win they thoroughly earned, but one that will leave a mark anyway.