Webless Gem

The 1986 Mets were so good that they couldn’t be stopped by a ball landing in a glove; the ball staying in the glove; and the glove and the ball being tossed as one to record a putout against them. All of that happened when Keith Hernandez grounded a ball back to Giants pitcher Terry Mulholland. Mulholland, then a rookie, simply could not extract that little white devil from his brown leather. Thinking fast, he took the whole package and threw to it first baseman Bob Brenly. It was legal. It was effective. Hernandez was out.

Mulholland: “I tried three times to get the ball out of my glove. Finally, in desperation, I just threw it.”

Hernandez: “That was a first for me.”

Davey Johnson added that he thought about arguing the call with first base ump Ed Montague, “but I didn’t know what to argue about. I figured the play was funny enough without me arguing.”

We could laugh about it after it happened, at Shea Stadium, on September 3, 1986, because a) the Mets were already ahead of the Giants when the play took place (up 2-0 in the third); b) the Mets added a run in the very inning the play took place; c) the Mets went on to win the game by a score of 4-2; and d) the Mets were in first place by twenty games. Baseball bloopers in which your team is the one getting blooped can be amusing when they don’t hurt whatsoever.

The 2025 Mets are good enough right now that they weren’t stopped Tuesday night at Citi Field by a ball whooshing through a glove. The ball was hit by an opponent. The glove belonged to one of their own players. The slo-mo replay confirmed it was worse, or at least more embarrassing, than it appeared. It extended an inning that should have been over, led to a starting pitcher who deserved better departing before he could finish the job at hand, and set up a run that turned a Met lead into a Met-Pirate tie.

Yet it didn’t stop them from winning. Its This Week in Baseball worthiness would probably tickle our fancy if the glove had been attached to a fielder on any other team. It was less hilarious that it happened to Mark Vientos.

Ah, Vietnos. Hard as he works to tame the position made infamous by “79 Men on Third” (the count has since reached 191), he’s in there for his bat to begin with. It’s quite often a helluva bat. His defense, however, had already taken one ding in this game — his chest, specifically, when a hard grounder banged off it and into left. Hot shot, damp night, weird double; nothing is declared an error, anymore. That was in the third inning. Kodai Senga got out of it. We were up, 1-0, thanks to Juan Soto (single; steal) and Brandon Nimmo (double) in the first. It would be a bruise for Mark and hardly a black mark against anybody in the course of an evening let alone a season. Hell, he got an assist on the play that ended the inning two batters later, handling a grounder that did not assault him so much.

Vientos wouldn’t be so lucky in the sixth when he encountered something else that sizzled. This ground ball, struck by Jared Triolo, with Alexander Carnario on first and two out, was ripe for backhanding. Observed in real time, it looked like it ticked off Mark’s glove. Several balls have been ticking off several gloves in this series. Just one of those weeks, perhaps.

But, no, this was beyond an ordinary oopsie. What the ball actually did was scoot directly through the webbing of Vientos’s eyecatchingly colorful leather. Seriously, it is a very attractive piece of fielding equipment the man models, replete with robin’s egg blue base and pop-art bursts (“POW!” “BAM!”) that might have made Pittsburgh’s own Andy Warhol proud. It certainly lives up to the proprietor’s nickname inscribed on its back: Swaggy V.

Swagginess it does have. The webbing was a different story.

Yet, as slow-motion replay indicated, it had a veritable hole in it, the result of loose webbing. You can’t play third base with a glove like that on your left hand, no matter how gorgeous. You can try, but the evidence indicates it isn’t a good idea. Triolo chased Canario to third with what turned into a double.

The glove that could be seen through had done its damage. Senga should have been out of the inning, but was instead removed after 102 pitches with runners on second and third. To that juncture, the ghost-forker had nursed a 1-0 lead through 102 pitches. Two walks from his successor, Reed Garrett, proceeded to load the bases and then tie the game. The longtime baseball watcher’s inclination was empathy for the starting pitcher, but Senga’s instinct was to pat Vientos on the back as he departed the mound.

Coincidentally, David Wright, the franchise’s premier third baseman, happened to be on the premises Tuesday night, and before the game he was asked about the emerging dynamic between Vientos, who earned third base from the way he swung his stick last year, and Brett Baty, who’s earning a second look by dint of his own offensive upsurge of his late. Of course David, who has only good things to say about everybody, cheered them both on: “I know Mark’s off to kind of a slow start, but Brett’s picked him up. And if Brett gets in a little rut, Mark will be right there to pick him up.”

The Captain knows from picking up. Baty, who was playing second, batted in the seventh and made sure we could mostly forget about the adventures of the glove of Swaggy V by lining an opposite-field homer to torpedo Pirate starter Mitch Keller. It clanged off the iron fence that fronts the party area, ensuring the rainy night wouldn’t feel remotely funereal. The game ended with Baty moved over to third, Luisangel Acuña (who’s recently dipped his toe into the ever-roiling waters of third base) at second, and Vientos on the bench. Mark’s glove’s webbing had been tightened by clubhouse personnel following the sixth, but now it and he were left to watch Acuña make a nifty play on the final ground ball Edwin Diaz threw to ensure a 2-1 win, exemplary defense sealing all leaks and forgiving all residual sins.

After Brett exploded at the plate over the weekend, Mark — whose own power exploits from last October remain fresh in the mind’s eye — was asked if he’d be willing to become more of a designated hitter if it meant inserting Baty’s hot bat in the lineup. Baty’s an adequate second baseman, but third was always what he was supposed to play. And Acuña’s clearly a superb second baseman on the rise, somebody whose glove you really want to see out there most innings. Mark’s answer was succinct.

“Absolutely.”

That subject matter will likely intensify as conversational fodder after Baty’s long and timely hit became the main focus of cheerful postgame chatter Tuesday night. Carlos Mendoza saw a former prospect who had teetered on the edge of Met extinction becoming a potential fixture in Flushing. “Every player’s different,” the manager observed. “For Baty, I’m just finally glad that he’s settling in.” Senga, through his interpreter, expressed delight at what he saw after exiting, especially since Brett is on his side: “If he was an opposing hitter, I think any pitcher would not like to face him at this point.” Brett himself didn’t want to delve too deeply into his hot streak. “I’ve always thought I’m capable of doing whatever I want to accomplish in this game,” the slugger of the moment philosophized. “I’m just having some success right now, and it’s nice.”

Within the realm of the Bill Gallo cartoon universe, we had ourselves a hero and didn’t need to fit any first-place Met for goat horns. Still, it was difficult to forget the image of the ball that zipped through Vientos’s glove. From his vantage point, Mendoza said, “it happened so fast, I didn’t know what happened. Somebody told me it went through the webbing, and I was like, ‘Man, tough break there.’”

Make sure the webbing’s good and fixed, and maybe we can laugh about it in, say, six months.