Aw, I missed a triple? I did. I nodded off in the seventh, shortly after Jose Butto came on in relief of Paul Blackburn, the score at Coors Field knotted at two. That’ll happen with any game that starts any time after 7:10 where I sit; then stretch out; then close my eyes for just a little bit, I’m sure. Extended day, abbreviated night. But I did stir in the bottom of the ninth. Things had changed, per the SNY graphics. The Mets were up, 5-2. Wait, now it’s 5-3, but Gary Cohen didn’t seem concerned. The Mets, he said, would gladly trade a run for an out here. How many Rockies are on base, anyway? Why is Edwin Diaz giving up a run and why is this considered a fair exchange? While I was in the process of discerning there were two out, Edwin finished striking out Charlie Blackmon. “And the ballgame is over!”
I didn’t have the energy to stay awake for the postgame show, but I reached for my phone, clicked on the At Bat app, and satisfied my curiosity at how a game that had been tied for so long went the Mets’ way [1]. Francisco Alvarez [2] had tripled with one out in the top of the ninth — and I missed it. Triples are so great, yet so rare. Maybe that’s why they’re so great. And a catcher triple! Francisco has hit two this year, practically leading the team (Tyrone Taylor has three). Fralvarez, as I sometimes address him from the couch, isn’t our catcher of the present and future for his tripling. Luis Torrens is an ace backup, though he has yet to triple as a Met. Nobody really expects a triple to begin with. Other than Lance Johnson for one year and Jose Reyes for a bunch, “somebody needs to triple here” never passes through your mind. They weren’t catchers.
When I think of a catcher hitting a triple, I think of Gary Carter tripling in Game Four of the 1988 NLCS. Sixth inning. Kid’s three-bagger sends Kevin McReynolds home from second, putting the Mets further up on the Dodgers, 4-2. Nobody’s out. We’re gonna blow this game open, we’re gonna be one game from the World Series, we’re gonna have our hands full with Oakland, but I know it’s coming. Instead, Carter is left on third and another catcher for the other team hits a four-bagger. To me, our dynasty didn’t turn on Mike Scoscia’s home run. It withered when the Mets didn’t take advantage of a catcher triple. (And I stopped making World Series plans in advance of pennant-clinchings.)
Yet I still relish a catcher triple like few other hits by few other players. Jerry Grote tripled nineteen times as a Met, which ties him for nineteenth among all Mets in triples. I wouldn’t have guessed that. John Stearns is part of a six-way tie for forty-fifth place in triples with ten. I would have figured Stearns, who could run, had more than Grote. Turns out he has as many as, among others, speedy Roger Cedeño and Wednesday night’s RBI hero Francisco Lindor. It was Lindor who delivered the key single — a common but essential form of base hit — to put the Mets ahead in the same ninth that Alvarez did three times as much as single. Fralvarez was shown mercy and to the bench after tripling. You wear the tools of ignorance for eight innings and then chug 270 feet. Harrison Bader pinch-ran. Ben Gamel (still on the team, apparently) and Tyrone Taylor walked. Then Lindor came through to make it 4-2. One out later, Jesse Winker, who to this point in his Met tenure hadn’t been any more a factor in any day’s Met offense than Ben Gamel, singled for insurance. A three-run lead while I slept. A three-run lead trimmed to two as I briefly eschewed sleep. A two-run lead to put me pleasantly back under a moment or two later.
I would have liked to have seen that triple as it happened, but getting the gist did just fine.