Here’s an unforgivable fan sin: “I don’t want them to clinch tonight because I have tickets for tomorrow and want to see it myself.”
I’ve heard that a time or two, and it’s all I can do to limit myself to pointed disagreement instead of reacting in a way that would get me taken away in a cop car. Because no. No with a side of “Are you fucking insane?”
This is a roundabout way of saying that Emily and I had sprung for tickets to Wednesday’s game, and I would have been immensely happy if it hadn’t been played because the Mets had already beaten the Phillies, drenched each other in alcohol and started making plans to head for California.
But it was going to be played, so we donned our orange 7 Line gear (with the Mookie shirt I’ve decided is lucky beneath mine) and got on the subway at the uncharacteristic hour demanded by a 5:08 pm start. Mets fans started appearing in ones and twos as the 2 headed north through lower Manhattan, and at Times Square we descended to the 7 platform and soon found ourselves tick-tick-ticking above Queens on a subway car jammed with Mets fans and non-baseball-affiliated Queensfolk who looked even more affronted than usual by this surge of orange and blue rooters.
Our 7 train was decorated with Grimaces. (Grimaci?) I decided that was a good omen.
A look at the lines outside the rotuna sent us around to the bullpen gate (which I highly, highly recommend if you’re going to Citi Field this postseason), and from there it was a brisk walk across the Shea Bridge to the 7 Line’s domain, with the Home Run Apple’s housing hulking to our right.
Weirdly, I’d never been to a game with the 7 Line, though I’ve had tickets for a few. Emily has gone multiple times, sometimes with our kid and/or her dad, but my outings have all fallen victim to illness or scotched plans or some other mischance. Honestly, this was the perfect time for my debut: I was nervous as a cat, and given my anxiety there was no better place to be than surrounded by other anxious, all-in Mets fans. I could look right and see a guy hoisting a YA GOTTA BELIEVE sign, look left and see a woman pumping a Francisco Lindor [1] fathead in the air, and look down toward the field and see an OMG sign, one big enough to need handles to get it from place to place. And unlike my typical Citi Field experience, 99% of our neighbors were laser-focused on the game, radiating bravado or dismay or bouncing madly between them.
Oh, and the guy in the aisle when we arrived? It was Cow-Bell Man, who’s been part of my Mets fan experience since Shea. I fist-bumped him extra-happily, convinced that was a good omen too.
None of this camaraderie settled my nerves — the world can’t make an OMG sign that big — but being surrounded by others’ jangled nerves made the fractured state of my own easier to bear. We were in this together, ticketed for jubilation or despair, and there was a comfort in it.
As for the game, though … it was a long way away, and watched through the mildly cracked prism of a friendly Met-fan soccer riot. Balls and strikes? No real idea. Anything down the right-field line was a mystery, solved only by watching whether the batter ended up standing on a base, returned to the plate, or trudged back to the dugout. (Alec Bohm [2]‘s foul ball that should have been a double was particularly confounding.) You knew what had happened primarily because 40,000-other fans reacted one way or another.
Which made the Mets’ Sisyphean struggles to score even one lousy run feel even more out of kilter. They’d load the bases against Ranger Suarez [3], or put two runners on, or do something worthy of praise, and then batters we could kind of see would hack at balls we couldn’t see and a strike would go up and I’d turn to look at the big video board and it would always say the same fucking thing: CURVEBALL.
(Analysis exclusively by inference: Suarez had a really good curveball.)
Suarez Houdini’ed his way out of threat after threat before departing in the fifth, with our section believing, moaning and griping, and then putting aside our pique and believing again, lather rinse repeat. (CURVEBALL.) Fortunately, Jose Quintana [4] was doing some Houdini work of his own: The Phillies pushed a run across in the fourth when Mark Vientos [5] bobbled a throw home (which probably wouldn’t have gotten Bryce Harper [6] anyway), a carbon copy of his misplay in Philadelphia. But Quintana kept Nick Castellanos [7] pinned at third to limit the damage. Then, in the top of the sixth, Quintana allowed a leadoff double to Harper before departing, but Reed Garrett [8] sandwiched two strikeouts around a walk and David Peterson [9] got the final out.
One-nothing, but it was only the sixth. Things hadn’t gone our way yet, but surely a lousy skinny run wasn’t going to be enough to send the series back to Philadelphia.
Still, enough doubt had crept in that when the Mets started the sixth with a single, HBP and a walk off Jeff Hoffman [10], we were less ready to exult than we were braced for impact. With the bases loaded and nobody out, Francisco Alvarez [11] tapped a ball to Trea Turner [12] at short, Turner came home for the force, and it was like the same stale air was farting and whistling out of the same sad slackening balloon: not this, not again.
Hoffman departed in favor of Carlos Estevez [13], who’d face Lindor. Their confrontation unfolded far away. All fastballs, I could see that much. Lindor ignored the first one, swung over the second one, and jerked back from the third one.
The fourth one, though, was belted, struck on a line to our left. Brandon Marsh [14] turned and ran after it, not the lope of an outfielder who has time but the gallop of one who fears he doesn’t. I could tell the ball wasn’t going to be caught but could judge nothing else. Then I lost track of the ball and our section becoming a cauldron of screaming and leaping told me the rest: It was a grand slam, and the Mets’ one-run deficit had turned into a three-run lead.
[15]There we are, just to the left of Francisco’s head. (Thanks to my pal Tom Weber!)
(By the way, before we got home two different friends had sent along screenshots of me and Emily losing our minds in the crowd. I’m only starting to realize how cool it is that I have years in which I’ll be able to look up during a classic Mets clip and say, “there we are right there — oh my was that something to see.”)
The Mets led, but it was time for my new parlor games. The first was to beseech the Mets for nine or 10 more runs, which they stubbornly refused to supply despite being handed more opportunities. The second was to ask where we were going to get X more outs and request that the reliever of the moment not fuck it up.
So. Where were we going to get nine outs? Peterson didn’t fuck up and so reduced the tally to six. The Mets refused to convert first and second and nobody out into so much as a tack-on run, let alone the desired nine or 10. But Peterson again didn’t fuck up and the outs to be sought shrank to three.
If you’d polled our section before the top of the ninth, at least 90% of us would have opted to send Peterson back out having thrown just 23 pitches. But one of this season’s most eventful storylines — which you can sense has twists and turns left — has been Carlos Mendoza [16] and his faith in Edwin Diaz [17]. However we felt about it out by the Home Run Apple, the stadium lights dimmed, “Narco” started up, and on came Diaz.
On came Diaz, and it was obvious even from 450 feet away that he was a mess. A five-pitch walk to J.T. Realmuto started the muttering; a five-pitch walk to Bryson Stott [18] inspired full-on mutiny. Two on, nobody out and at best Diaz was going to have to face three hitters representing the tying run. And at worst? My mind shrank from that one like I’d almost put my hand on a cherry-red burner atop the stove.
Jeremy Hefner [19] came out and then it was time for Diaz to deal with Knapsack Clemens. I’ll tell you this: If Kneecap had hit a game-tying home run off Diaz you wouldn’t be reading this recap, because I would have torn off my gear, walked out of Citi Field and become a monk. Baseball can’t be that cruel, I tried to tell myself, knowing perfectly that in fact it is that cruel all the time.
Diaz, still not looking anywhere near sharp, fell behind Clemens 2-1, then struck him out on a pair of fastballs. I’d say whew, but it felt like the thumb screws getting twisted a little tighter. Up came Marsh, who got under a four-seamer and hit a can of corn to Harrison Bader [20]. But there was still one out to get, and Diaz was going to have to wring it out of Kyle Schwarber [21], who on the one hand had literally never done anything against Diaz but on the other hand was Kyle Schwarber.
Remember, we were far away. What happened was a distant pantomime, mostly of things not happening. Strike, ball, drive to right that was long but clearly foul, and then … a little flurry of motion at home plate, a jet-engine roar from the crowd, and pandemonium.
The Mets had won [22], clinching something for the first time at Citi Field. In section 141 we had our own little V-J Day: Don’t know you but here’s a high-five and a hug for good measure. The weather report: jubilant, with scattered beer showers. And then back onto the 7 (no express, because I guess the MTA wasn’t given a playoff schedule) and into Donovan’s at Woodside to be greeted like conquering heroes in the bar and then home at last, equal parts exhausted and exhilarated.
Exhausted and exhilarated, and wanting more. But there will be time for that. For now, here we are. And what an amazing place it is.