Sunny Sunday, slight chill, right field corner, Citi Field. It’s September with a lead over our more or less blood rival in the Wild Card race, and I’m just waiting for the Mets to do something. Do something, do anything? No, I’m being vaguely specific in my desires. I’m waiting for the Mets to do that thing they do. In polite company, I’m cheering a little here and groaning a little there. In my head, I’m practically screaming at them to be what they’ve been for nine consecutive games dating back to Resurrection Thursday [1] in Arizona. Make with the timely hitting and the clutch relieving and then wave the OMG sign around once you win your tenth in a row, because I’ve heard yours is a ballclub that never loses. C’mon, be the Mets I’ve been watching on TV, except do it in front of me!
The Mets, alas, turned into Michigan J. Frog [2] as soon as I got close to them. No singing. No dancing. Not nearly enough hitting, save for one measly inning. Plenty of pitching, except at the end, when we really could have used more. All in all, it was just…ribet.
Goodbye, ma baby
Goodbye, ma honey
Goodbye, ma ragtime gal
For one day, anyway.
If I had told you in late May that we’d get to September, and a 3-1 loss to the Reds [3] would land like a fastball to the ribs because it allowed the Braves to drift back into a tie with us for the final playoff spot, you’d likely think (after insisting I submit to a breathalyzer test) that the season had turned around dramatically since bottoming out [4] so thuddingly. You’d be absolutely right and probably plenty pleased. Except we never fast-forward to the present and this isn’t quite the right time for “if I had told you” hosannas. We live in a present every day en route to the current present and we adjust our relationship to the standings accordingly. The standings of late May said we were dead. The standings of late August suggested death’s doorstep [5] was nigh. The standings at the dawn of the second week of September say we’re dead even with the presumed invincible Braves. The moving of mountains and traversing of oceans to get here has constituted an epic journey, yet it is immaterial to our mood the morning after our first loss in a week-and-a-half.
We know we were thisclose to staying a game, maybe moving two games ahead of Atlanta. Except we lost in the ninth to the Reds, and the Braves beat the Blue Jays in eleven. It’s the time of the season when every opportunity is golden, and we just witnessed a pair sail agonizingly slightly to the wrong side of a surprisingly short foul pole. Thus I groaned a little louder than I cheered on Sunday. Mostly I thought, from a dark place the sun didn’t reach, COME ON ALREADY, YOU STUPID TEAM!
Oh, you’re not stupid. I’m sorry for screaming, albeit in my head. If it were a September Sunday without significant stakes, what a lovely September Sunday it would have been simply for baseball’s sake. The sun, the chill, my old pal Ken with whom I’d somehow never seen a game live and in person until this one. Ken activated a lovely Ken-nection and got us seated in that right field corner, where we watched Luis Severino do all he could do for six-and-two-thirds innings of one-run ball — with acrobatic infield defense playing its usual essential role — but otherwise breathed in the frustration of the Mets not stringing together hits for the sake of a run more than once. In the bottom of the sixth, when it had been nothing-nothing all afternoon, a facsimile of a rally occurred: a one-out walk; a two-out infield hit; then Starling Marte lining a single into center to bring home Pete Alonso. There — 1-0. Surely the floodgates were open.
That next sound you heard was the floodgates being fastened. The Mets, a little less deep without the services of Jeff McNeil, scored no more. Not even Francisco Lindor could get on base. Severino, whose only blemish erupted on a dying quail of an RBI single on his last pitch, was succeeded by Reed Garrett, who prevented further Cincinnati trips to home plate as he closed out the seventh. Garrett locked down the eighth as well, but then Phil Maton cracked. Phil Maton had done almost nothing wrong since relocating to the Met bullpen from Tampa Bay’s right before the All-Star break. Yet like the Mets losing at last after winning so much, Maton grew fallible all at once.
He hits a guy. He gives up a grounder that required so much effort on the corralling that nobody could be thrown out anywhere. He allows a double that there’s no need to examine more closely on a day when video replay was called into action repeatedly. It’s clearly a no-doubt double that scores the two decisive ninth-inning runs that are about to seal our Sunday fate. You want to believe the Mets can come up in the bottom of the ninth and pull off in miniature what they’ve been pulling off writ large for more than three months, but then you see them mostly flailing at Alexis Diaz, not exactly the Reds’ answer to his brother Edwin, but close enough. “I’m six-three, I throw ninety-seven miles per hour, and there’s two of me [6].” The wrong Diaz got the save.
What a friend recently convinced me had been the Tom Seaver Redemption Tour [7], wherein we sweep every team The Franchise never should have been loaned out to, came up a veritable Jimmy Qualls shy of perfection. Three out of three from the White Sox. Three out of three from the Red Sox. Two out of three from the Reds. Next for us are the Blue Jays, the team that signed Dennis Lamp in January 1984, enabling the White Sox to choose a player from the short-lived, ill-conceived compensation pool where Tom was left to float while Frank Cashen abandoned his lifeguard chair for five minutes. On Sunday, we rooted against the Reds in our game and for the Blue Jays in the Braves’ game, with neither result working out to our satisfaction. Tonight, we root against the Blue Jays in our game and for the Reds in the Braves’ game. It’s September, you’re either with us or against us or both.
We as fans are always with us, even when we’re silently screaming at us.