Survivor B's

A run was Benged in. A run was Brujáned in. Two runs were Batyed in. Another two runs were Benged in. Two more runs were Bichetted in. All of it happened in one extra inning, in which two other runs were batted in by players whose names begin with a letter that wasn’t B, which doesn’t detract from our theme, because the scoreboard will always make room for one Met R after another, regardless of whose bats they emanate from.

Still, EIGHT runs driven in any inning…by FOUR guys whose last names begin with the SAME letter…and that inning being the TWELFTH…and TEN runs scoring in all to break a tie and create the SECOND 16-7 win in New York Mets history…with the winning pitcher also going by a last name beginning with B….one is tempted to invoke Messrs. Bachman and Turner on the subject of having ain’t seen nothing yet, but b-b-b-baby? I get the feeling we’ve seen something unprecedented, something we’ll never see again.

If the Mets, who have won six of their past seven, are shifting into overdrive, well, let it ride. And if they’ve simply splashed down on the right side of fortuitous outcomes given all the extras they’ve been playing and all the coming from behind they’ve had to do, never underestimate the power of takin’ care of business every day.

Veritable tons happened across eleven innings at Nationals Park. Tons usually have to happen to get two teams to a twelfth inning in the Unearned Runner era. Games are supposed to be settled by the tenth, the eleventh at latest. Baseball is no longer designed for the anarchy an unbroken tie breeds. But the Mets and Nats exploited a glitch in the system: the use of humans rather than algorithms to reach a conclusion. The Met humans confounded the Nat humans. It was a process only a person could love.

The score was 5-5 after nine. From a Met perspective, that was both regrettable and rewarding. The Mets could have wrapped this thing up in regulation. The Mets could have been dispatched in regulation. The Mets were bolstered en route to extras by several players and a couple of pitchers. Half of the B-squad batters delivered long solo home runs, Brett Baty leading off the fourth and Bo Bichette waking up from his extra-base coma in the seventh. Luis Torrens got the Mets started with an run-scoring double in the second, and Juan Soto pushed the Mets ahead in the fifth by singling home a pair in the fifth. Austin Warren and Luke Weaver in particular picked up a so-so Christian Scott.

But that was innings one through nine. When you’ve lived through an inning like the twelfth, you’ve already forgotten what preceded it, though let’s not overlook the tenth and eleventh. Let’s not let the tenth get away without acknowledging Huascar Brazobán wriggling out of bases-loaded trouble, with a bit of help from surehanded first baseman Mark Vientos throwing home for a key forceout. And let’s not dismiss the eleventh without noting how the Mets forged a 6-5 lead. Vidal Bruján was inserted to run for Vientos, who had made the last out in the top of the tenth, an act that entitled him a place on second base to start the eleventh. Seven years into this rule, and I still don’t get how this happens, but it does.

Bruján hasn’t had much to do since rising from Triple-A, but he was born for the role of eleventh-inning pinch-runner for the free runner. I never saw one put to such optimal use. Baty got him to third with a long liner to center that was caught, and Marcus Semien brought him home with a sac fly to the deepest left field corner. One of Keith Hernandez’s truck horses could have scored from third, but Vientos probably wouldn’t have been on third the way Bruján was. In a blink, Vidal turned vital.

The bottom of the eleventh would be an adventure. Why should it have been any different from all that led to it? Brazobán remained on the mound. The Nats were granted one of those counterfeit runners on second, CJ Abrams. CJ scored almost as quickly as Bruján had. It wouldn’t have been an adventure if he hadn’t. The 6-6 game was now a matter of ensuring no other Nat followed Abrams home. Joey Wiemer was on first with one out. Jose Tena grounded to the first baseman, who was no longer surehanded Vientos, but transplanted Baty. Baty had moved from third to first; Bichette had moved from short to third; Bruján stayed at short. Scorecards grew indecipherable. Bret handled the ball he was hit, and instead of going for the safe out at first, he zipped that ball past Wiemer’s head and into Bruján’s glove for the forceout. It was a pretty and pretty gutsy play in a vacuum. It proved intrinsic to continued life once the next batter, Jorbit Vivas, doubled to center. A runner from second would have scored. Tena, running from first, got no further than third, not on Vivas’s double, not when Brazobán grounded out Drew Milas to end the eleventh.

Then came the B-barrage in the top of the twelfth. Carson Benge singles home Tyrone Taylor. Mets lead, 7-6. Bruján, with the bases loaded, doesn’t exactly drop a bunt down in front of the plate, but he guides one expertly enough to score Benge and grab his own spot on the Met merry-go-round. Mets lead, 8-6. Baty singles home two more. Mets lead, 10-6. Semien, despite a last name failing to begin with B, gets in on the RBI action with a single that makes it Mets 11 Nats 6.

At this point, the Washington Nationals wish to call it an evening, but explicitly forfeiting is frowned upon, so their skipper Drew Butera waves the next-whitest flag available and directs Vivas, one of his infielders, to the mound. At first, the umps aren’t having it, because there are rules governing the use of position players as pitchers. The rule should be that unless you are fulfilling a utilityman’s ambition of logging an inning everywhere on the diamond, it should never happen. But the rules that actually exist evaporate in extras. Butera, a pup among big league managers, knew that. The umpires didn’t. After a call to the home office in New York to confirm for the crew the distance from its asses to its elbows, Vivas was permitted to pitch.

Which was splendid, because the Mets got to pile on and hopefully not develop any overswings amid doing so. A.J. Ewing made it 12-6. Benge and Bichette, embracing the unbeatable brightness of B-ing, each knocked in another pair, and the Mets were up, 16-6. It was the most runs any National League team had scored in an extra inning since the 1919 Reds. We should be so lucky to have the World Series thrown to us the way it was to them. Perhaps it was enough to have five additional runs handed to us on a position player pitching platter.

We went to the bottom of the twelfth in search of a Unicorn Score. The Mets had never won a 16-6 game before. They still haven’t. Craig Kimbrel allowed the Nats’ farcical runner on second to come home, so we had to settle for a Uniclone Score, with the 16-7 final matching that night in August of 2015 when David Wright came off the DL to homer in Philadelphia, and seven similarly playoff-bound Mets followed him around the bases in due order. Good company to be in.

Those Mets got remade on the fly as they competed for a pennant. These Mets appear tangibly different since Ewing arrived and teamed with Benge to infuse this enterprise with a jolt of youthful energy. They’re about to be joined by others from their demographic cohort. Nick Morabito is supplanting Austin Slater. Zach Thornton is coming up to take what would have been Clay Holmes’ next start. Holmes had his fibula fractured the night the LIRR went on strike. The Mets have won three in a row since, and the railroad strike has been settled. What is it one little train engine was heard to say? “I think I can, I think I can…”

I never know what to think about the Mets, but I can enjoy this excursion for as long as it keeps chugging along.