It's a Thing Now

Emily and I watched the first couple of innings of Tuesday night’s Mets-Nats tilt somewhat distractedly. First we were down in Dumbo at L&B Spumoni Gardens, a satellite of the classic ur-Brooklyn Sicilian-pizza joint that’s finally open after a long permitting saga. Then we were walking up the hill for home. We’d peeked at SNY, sans sound, during dinner and then switched to Howie as we strolled through Brooklyn Heights.

Somewhere around Cranberry Street a young man turned around as he passed us and asked, “Mets?”

I nodded and he said, “2-0 Nats I think.”

“3-0 now,” I told him, for we’d just heard CJ Abrams double in a run, with the Nats giving the Mets a break by sending Jose Tena home to be thrown out by a good measure. (Off a pitcher who looked less than sharp? With James Wood coming up? Why in the world would you do that?)

“Plenty of time,” I added as our temporary neighbor took in the updated score. “We’ll get ’em.”

“Plenty of time,” he agreed.

And the funny thing is that this wasn’t fannish bravado on either of our parts. I meant it; so did he. It was 3-0, and that wasn’t ideal, but the Mets had eight frames to make up that deficit. Did I know they would do it? Of course not — baseball doesn’t work that way. But I knew they could — and with so much game left, that was sufficient.

These are strange days, when Mets fans are reflexively confident, even bordering on serene. I could get used to it.

Griffin Canning never looked particularly sharp, but he hung around into the sixth; meanwhile the Mets cut that three-run deficit to two and then one before it edged up to two again, courtesy of an Abrams homer hit too high for Brandon Nimmo to pluck from the sky. The Mets looked frustrated by MacKenzie Gore, who used a sharp curveball as a putaway pitch. But they got into the Nats bullpen while Jose Butto and Jose Castillo and newcomer Justin Garza held the fort.

In the eighth, the Nats got a little unlucky. Starling Marte doesn’t always turn in the most dogged ABs, but he refused to chase against Jose Ferrer‘s sinker and worked out a walk. Juan Soto then smoked a slider to right with a lot of English. Robert Hassell III could have played it on a hop but thought he could catch it. Instead it wound up behind him, scoring Marte and sending Soto to second. (Soto would have been on third but didn’t run hard out of the box, something I thought we’d sorted out.)

The Nats called on closer Kyle Finnegan, whose second pitch was a splitter at the bottom of the strike zone that Pete Alonso somehow sliced into left, past Wood. Soto scored; coming into second with the ball already there, Alonso tried the same switch-hands okie-doke that worked in Colorado … which actually worked again, at least until the Polar Bear came off the base and was tagged out.

Still, the Mets had tied it. Edwin Diaz worked a spotless top of the ninth, Finnegan recovered to do the same in his half-inning, and it was time for a little Manfredball.

The Nats got off on the right foot in the tenth before a ball was even put in play, as the speedy Abrams was their ghost runner. Wood moved him to third, but then Reed Garrett erased Nathaniel Lowe on three pitches and got Andres Chaparro to fly out to Nimmo.

It was the Mets’ turn, and if you came back a little late from the john you missed the whole thing: Jeff McNeil smacked the first pitch over the infield to score Luisangel Acuna, with poor Cole Henry getting the loss in appearance that maybe lasted nine seconds and McNeil grappling Steve Gelbs to ensure they both got a victory bath from the cooler.

“This is a thing now?” asked an amused-because-he-has-to-be Gelbs, with McNeil informing him that yeah, it’s a thing.

Plenty of time, we’ll get ’em.

Strange days, but maybe it’s a thing now.