America’s Favorite Son

Dull and dreary turned to bright and shiny in an instant — the very last instant. If you’re gonna make such a switch, latest inevitably proves better than never.

Had Brandon Nimmo not swung and connected for the walkoff two-run homer that transformed a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 victory, dull and dreary was prepared to carry the night Sunday. Dull and dreary has been this Met season’s signature, even if the signature’s i’s have been dotted and t’s have been crossed at brief intervals with improbable swings like Nimmo’s. There were Pete Alonso and Tyrone Taylor pushing the Mets into the win column for the first time all year, against the Tigers. There was Mark Vientos, just visiting from Syracuse for a weekend, taking it to the Cardinals. There was flu-ridden Francisco Lindor exposing the Cubs to whatever had been but was no longer ailing him. For a team that you’d think is always one out from being no-hit, the Mets do manage to craft some dramatic wins.

No Met in 2024, however, has executed a swing quite like the one Brandon took to redirect Sunday night’s slog toward oblivion and lead it to jubilation. No Met charged with coming to bat in a ninth inning seemed so close to physically unable to play status, like one false move and we’d next see him in July, as Brandon. Whatever happened to him Saturday looked like nothing when it happened, which is usually the most dangerous injury a Met can court. In this case, there was an at-bat that left him with intercostal irritation. Intercostal is a cousin of oblique, an anatomical element recognized by Mets fans as “I don’t know what that is, exactly, but goddamn, I don’t want to hear it mentioned in the context of any Met having one.”

So Brandon didn’t start on Sunday, but he swore he was fine, he was available. The only thing Carlos Mendoza let him do was sit on the bench and chat with the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth, which for most of us would loom as a tougher assignment than facing a lineup topped by Ronald Acuña, Jr. To stage a conversation with Karl Ravech & Co, one would have to listen to Karl Ravech. Anybody watching at home would agree that itself tempts exit velocity. ESPN’s doing the game? How fast can I get to the radio?

But Brandon’s a good egg, a good sport, a great fount of soundbites. Ask him anything, he’ll transcend cordiality. Inject a pretape of his mom Patti into the segment — it was Mother’s Day, ESPN wanted us to know — and Brandon will aw-shucks it from here to Cheyenne. On a nationally cablecast ballgame, Brandon Nimmo emerged as America’s favorite son.

Then Brandon removed his microphone and the Mets returned to mute. Luis Severino was providing his usual competent complement of innings, and his teammates were depriving him of meaningful support, as is their custom. The first Brave to score was Jarred Kelenic, who gave the Mets an eyeful of “you could had this” with a solo blast in the second. The next two Atlanta runs were carried by the feet of Zack Short, the very same Zack Short who was a Met approximately ten minutes before, and a Red Sock maybe thirty seconds after that. Short, who scored two runs in ten games as a Met, had just been grabbed by the Braves to fill the role of current L.A. Angel Luis Guillorme, whose tribute video never saw the light of CitiVision. Pretty much every Met you never thought you’d miss dating back to Charlie O’Brien, Bill Pecota and Mike Remlinger becomes a Brave, and all of them take a turn as Travis d’Arnaud.

Bryce Elder didn’t exactly stymie the Mets à la Max Fried Saturday or Charlie Morton Friday. The best strategy is often letting the Mets stymie themselves. Pete Alonso slipped through the offensive miasma to single home a run in the third and a double another in come the sixth. And both Severino, in the fifth, and Reed Garrett, in the seventh, picked off Acuña. Two pickoffs of the first-ever 40-70 man (without giving up a homer to him, either) seemed a perfect way to commemorate a jaw-dropping incident that happened at Shea Stadium exactly 54 years earlier.

On May 12, 1970, Ray Sadecki allowed three stolen bases…all at the same time. It was the second inning versus the Expos. Bob Bailey was on third, John Bateman was on second, Ron Fairly was on first. Then Sadecki went into his full windup — “all I was concentrating on was getting out the batter” — and Bailey slid home, Bateman ran to third and Fairly arrived safe at second. An honest-to-goodness triple steal, perpetrated by three baserunners who, Montreal Gazette columnist Ted Blackman observed, “couldn’t beat Jesse Owens even today”.

I learned of this episode of derring-do (and do twice more) from “John Bateman,” a Twitter/X account run by actor Ken Webster, who’s been animating the late journeyman catcher on social media for more than a decade. I wanted to “like” the post, except a Met pitcher had given up three stolen bases on one pitch and 54 years later, I found that hard to approve. I felt better about appreciating Bateman’s/Webster’s this-date-in nugget once I looked up the box score on Baseball-Reference and discovered the Mets won the game, 8-4.

I felt worse about the game of May 12, 2024, once Short scored the go-ahead run for Atlanta in the eighth inning. We won a game when we gave up a triple steal? Karma had taken its time, but had hunted us down at last. Two pickoffs of Ronald Acuña, Jr., and we were poised to lose.

Or so I was absolutely sure.

Edwin Diaz pitched the top of the ninth with the Mets behind. Perhaps because it was an ESPN game and their director isn’t as invested in spotlighting Edwin the way SNY’s John DeMarsico is, but the pouring on of Sugar in a non-save situation seemed like a non-event. Sugar’s outings have become almost exclusively non-events since his health — knock wood — became a non-issue. The Mets lack save situations. I wouldn’t reverse Kelenic-for-Diaz, even if it retroactively meant we never had to involve ourselves with Robinson Cano, but it struck me how ordinary an appearance by one of baseball’s most electrifying closers had become. Ordinary for his team had become dull and dreary. Why should Diaz be immune?

Yet let it be noted that Edwin Diaz retired the Braves in order and kept their lead to one run, setting the stage for Jeff McNeil to start the bottom of the ninth by initiating the drag bunt story hour. Well, it was a story for a second, but it shouldn’t be forgotten. The former National League champion of batting (speaking of Mets giving off fewer sparks since 2022) did what he had to do to get himself on base. He put the ball on the bat, and his bat put the ball somewhere no Brave could get it.

McNeil was batting eighth, which meant a catcher was scheduled to follow him. With Francisco Alvarez on the IL, catchers bat ninth for the Mets in 2024 like pitchers batted ninth for the Mets in 1970. Tomás Nido was up. Omar Narváez began the night in the nine-hole. Mendoza, sensing it was one of those nights, got desperate and creative every chance he got. More desperate than creative. He used Nido to pinch-hit for Narváez in the seventh in a righty-lefty exchange. Omar had made two outs already. Tomás made one in his stead.

Now, in the ninth, Mendoza relayed instructions to Nido to bunt. Not the kind of bunt McNeil manufactured, just something that would move Jeff along. It worked. Squirrel scurried to second. Nido was out. Of course he was. He’s too considerate to make Narváez feel any worse.

The most creative thing Mendoza might have done all night was constructing the very top of his lineup. Was that DJ Stewart in left? It was. Nimmo, after all, was sitting in deference to that intercostal business. Was that DJ Stewart batting leadoff? It had been, and it wasn’t a bad idea, DJ being synonymous with OBP as he is. As recently as the seventh inning, right after Nido pinch-hit and struck out, Stewart walked.

Desperate for runs, the manager asked intercostal recoveree Brandon Nimmo if he was up for pinch-running. Nimmo didn’t want to sit in the first place, so he said, one assumes, “darn’ tootin’ I am!” Brandon got as far as third base without hurting himself. Then he took over for Stewart in left and caught two balls without hurting himself. Had there been genuine concern that sending Nimmo to the plate would irritate the intercostal any further, it didn’t matter. Desperate for offense or at least the “traffic” he’s always referencing on the basepaths (where it tends to stall), Mendoza had already substituted in every non-pitcher at his disposal, which is to say Nido, Tyrone Taylor and Joey Wendle. Desperation doesn’t leave a lot of options.

So Brandon Nimmo batted with one out and a runner on second. He didn’t hurt himself. He helped the Met cause as much as any erstwhile pinch-runner ever has at the end of a game…which is to say as much as Esix Snead.

Esix Snead! If you remember Esix Snead at all, you remember Esix Snead for exactly one thing: a three-run walkoff extra-inning home run versus the Expos on September 21, 2002, ending a game that Snead entered in the eighth as a pinch-runner. Snead stuck around to play the outfield until he could take the swing that would win the game in the eleventh.

How rarely does a Met pinch-runner become a Met home run-hitter in the same game? Probably not as rarely as a successful triple steal occurs, but it’s pretty unusual. Another trip to Baseball-Reference reveals no Met had ever gone from PR to HR until Wally Backman did it in 1982. Wally’s was ITP, or inside-the-park. Three years later, Howard Johnson’s pinch-running appearance at Wrigley begot a tenth-inning home run that stood up as the game-winner. In the summer of 1986, when almost nothing went wrong, Mookie Wilson homered one inning after running for Kevin Mitchell at Olympic Stadium (built after Montreal won the rights to host the 1976 Olympiad, which was announced on the very same day the Expos pulled their triple steal), part of a seven-run uprising that guaranteed a Met win. Others on the pinch-runner home run list nobody had bothered to look up until a few minutes after Brandon Nimmo batted Sunday: Brian McRae, Eric Valent, Jason Pridie, Tommy Pham (just last year, against the Braves). But Snead’s was the only homer by a heretofore pinch-runner that served to win a game on the spot.

The spot is now shared by Brandon Nimmo. He swung. He stayed in one piece. The ball didn’t stay in the park. Once the pitch he whacked from Alan Minter, lefty triumphing over lefty, landed in the Atlanta bullpen, Brandon’s intercostal became fair game for his celebrating teammates and the electricity appeared back on at Citi Field. The light show the A/V squad usually reserves for Diaz’s entrances accented Nimmo’s trip around the bases. “What a win for the New York Mets!” Howie Rose exclaimed, and who could argue? Whether it definitively disrupts the dull and dreary nature of the season is the next game’s guess. Sunday night, it was as “what a win!” as a win could be.

When Esix Snead launched his home run in 2002, he did so in The Esix Snead Game. There was only one. It’s harder to label this most recent win The Brandon Nimmo Game because Brandon Nimmo’s put his imprint on a lot of games, and been in tons more. Intercostal willing, Nimmo will crack the franchise’s all-time Top 20 games played chart in a couple of weeks. His contract suggests he’ll rise high in those rankings, nearing Ed Kranepool territory. Nimmo’s only ever been a Met and, with any luck, will never be anything but a Met.

There’s something about a lifetime one-team player. At worst, you become what they called in The Shawshank Redemption an institutional man. When the institution’s the Mets, that can skew the player’s perspective. I noticed a difference between how Nimmo and J.D. Martinez responded to reporters’ questions following the Mets not quite getting no-hit on Saturday. Martinez, whose home run ensured the Mets would avoid that delightful slice of history, didn’t seem terribly impressed that his longball pulled the Mets from the edge of infamy. Nimmo, however, appeared at least a little grateful that his ballclub did not wind up roadkill as the Braves rushed to dogpile their several pitchers who would have thrown all those zeroes. Nimmo, who’s seen plentiful amounts of fire and rain since 2016, knows from watching the Braves hop around at the Mets’ expense. Likewise, on Sunday night, I heard Brandon acknowledge that it was of significance that the Mets didn’t get swept by the Braves. I thought about Kranepool, who’d been a Met since the first ghastly year of 1962, being a lot happier about the Mets finally reaching .500 in May of 1969 than Tom Seaver, who famously dismissed the idea that breaking even for one day should have been anybody’s goal here. Comparisons to lovable losers weren’t Tom’s bag. But Ed knew something about the institution. So does Brandon.

Not getting no-hit. Not getting swept. Not getting hurt. Not dull and dreary at every last instant. What a win for the New York Mets.