And in the End It All Turned Out OK

In the end it all turned out OK. But wow, what a weird way to get there.

The Mets and Tigers played a very strange ballgame on a raw, chilly Wednesday night at Citi Field — one the kid and I got to see up close. Well, not really up close — we were out by the left-field foul pole, so much of the drama was distant, performed by little antlike Mets and Tigers with the fine details invisible. At least our seatmates were an amiable, reasonably attentive gang of mixed Mets/Tigers rooters.

From our vantage point we could see enough to know that Christian Scott was dealing with a combination of lousy location and poor luck, that Framber Valdez‘s million-dollar arm was more the story than his 10-cent head, that the Mets mostly weren’t hitting again, and that home-plate ump Jordan Valentine seemed to be in a mood.

Scott wasn’t helped by a Carson Benge first-inning misplay, which led to the Mets once again falling into an early 2-0 hole. But they fought back, scratching out a run on a blown double play in the second and tying the game on a Bo Bichette single in the seventh off Kyle Finnegan. That was interesting moment: The crowd was exhorting Bichette to come through, offering our beleaguered though still-standing new acquisition support, but there was an undercurrent of exasperation to the rooting: If not now, when, exactly? As it turned out, Bichette delivered — not a homer or a liner up the gap, but a little parachute, a ducksnort over the infield that had trouble written all over its modest little arc. It dropped in, so let’s call it a line drive in the box score.

And oh my did Mark Vientos ever have an eventful night. There was yet another long drive tagged for review by the BABIP gods and transformed into a loud out, an actually nifty 3-6-3 double play, and then whatever befell Vientos in the sixth, when he wound up kinda/sorta dropping the ball onto first base, which he then fell over.

Vientos wound up sprawled in the grass outside the first-base line, which briefly led to worry that he was yet another Mets casualty, but he was actually just lying there wondering what exactly had just happened. The Mets then challenged, so poor Vientos got to watch his 100-foot-high doppleganger enduring what my kid called “maybe the least athletic baseball play I’ve ever seen.” If you’ve never heard an entire baseball stadium trying to suppress its amusement, take it from me that it’s a strange sound.

(Vientos was involved in a pickoff on the very next pitch and was fine. So, we think, was Juan Soto, who exited after fouling a ball off his ankle. X-rays were negative and Soto is — like all of humanity — day to day.)

We couldn’t see what was going on with Valentine, a home-plate ump I confess to never having heard of before. We could see that Brett Baty wasn’t happy with him — Valentine took away the Mets’ last regular-nine-innings challenge when he ruled Baty had double-tapped his helmet (he hadn’t). Dillon Dingler was equally displeased to be rung up on an inning-ending pitch-clock violation; Valentine was also unhappy with the Tigers’ on-deck circle obscuring Luke Weaver‘s view of the pitch clock.

(To be fair, being named Junior Valentine would make me a bit tetchy too. I mean, thanks Mom and Dad!)

A slow grind of a game inevitably went to extras, with fans looking nervously skyward for signs of rain.

I have little use for any of the improvements MLB has bolted onto the game of baseball in the last quarter-century or so: Bah to interleague play, wild cards, NL DHs, the three-batter rule, the pitch clock, limited disengagements, the NFLization of replay, the ban on shifts and some other indignities I’ve probably forgotten.

The automatic runner is high on my list of annoyances, but I have at least come to enjoy its rhythms and the strategic hungers it unleashes: Survive the top of the 10th unscored upon and you’re left licking your chops, well aware that a modest amount of competent execution will deliver the Manfred Man from second and ensure a win. It’s also made the sacrifice bunt an actual wise stratagem again instead of a wasted out.

Brooks Raley was the Met on the mound when the Tigers failed to score; A.J. Ewing was sent to second as the Manfred Man against Drew Anderson, with Luis Torrens trying to bunt him over. Torrens failed in this assignment, leading to muttering (it’s cold, it may rain, c’mon you damn Mets), but that did bring Benge to the plate, a revival of Casey Stengel’s Yout’ of America that I’d been eyeing for a couple of innings.

Soon enough, Ewing and Benge will be 1-2 in the batting order, and we can at least dream that those names will resonate in a way that “Dykstra-Backman” still does for me all those years later. For now, well, however they’d gotten there, there they were with the prospect of a happy ending front and center.

And after a long night Benge wasted no time: Anderson’s second pitch was a fastball up in the zone, which Benge smacked into center. Mark Vientos didn’t fall over it, Rob Manfred didn’t attach a dingbat rule to it, Framber Valdez couldn’t affect it and Junior Valentine registered no objection to it, so Ewing dashed home, Benge got showered with liquids cold and sticky and expressed his happiness to Steve Gelbs, and we were able to dash home too.

Benge driving in Ewing, Mets win. These may be gloomy days, but that came as a bit of light.