Good Company

Emily and I were up in Massachusetts for our high-school reunion and so missed both the good vibes of Friday night’s game and the disappointment of Saturday’s clunker. Plus we drove up Thursday night, which was an off-day, spent by the Mets in their usual posture of wandering the West Coast.

Even in a season that’s been lousy and threatens to become lost, I don’t like missing the Mets. And I never like a long car ride without a ballgame for company. Baseball is lots of things – a welcome diversion, a sporting event, an art form, a metaphor for far too many things – but perhaps above all other things, it’s good company.

So Sunday was a relief on multiple levels: The finale in San Diego (and the Mets’ last West Coast game of the season, though I suppose let’s add a “regular” qualifier there out of loyalty) began with us in the car making our way toward the city, along with what felt like the population of a fair-sized province in China. Which was OK, because there were the Mets, right where we’d left them.

Even better, there were the Mets doing things one actually wanted to witness. They got off to an early 1-0 lead. They escaped an early jam. They got another home run from Marcus Semien, who seems to quietly have had surgery to remove the large fork from his back that had hampered his early-season play. They got good bulk work from Sean Manaea, who’s little by little regaining the velocity and bite on his pitches. And they kept after it – after newly minted Padres annoyance Freddy Fermin cut the lead in half with a two-run homer, the Mets coolly riposted with solo shots from MJ Melendez and Carson Benge. In the end, they walked away with a fairly sweat-free 7-3 win.

Benge was all over this game: 5 for 5, missing only the double for a cycle. Benge was utterly lost in April, looking saucer-eyed and overmatched at the plate. Only injuries kept him from a demotion to the minors, and that didn’t feel like a kindness with the rest of the team at sea. There are tough lessons one has to learn to survive in the big leagues; there’s also being left to drown, and for a while it sure felt like Benge had been abandoned to that fate, with potentially dire effects on his development.

But at least on this score, the Mets knew what they were doing. Benge kept saying the right things and kept working and kept learning, and all of a sudden the kid who was drowning is hitting a very much above-water .265 and you can’t imagine the lineup without him. The same goes for the outfield, where he’s become a capable wingman to A.J. Ewing – another young player who’s quietly gone about his business and moved from question-mark prospect to lineup mainstay. Ewing was notable on Sunday too, streaking into deep left-center to pocket a drive ticketed for the alley and turn it into just another out.

Apologies to Tug McGraw, but I have trouble believing this Mets team will force me to keep my October calendar open – too many injuries, too many misfit mercenaries, too many misalignments and misfortunes. But I am thoroughly enjoying watching Benge and Ewing grow into themselves. Their tomorrows look bright – it’s easier and easier to imagine them as Mets mainstays – but their todays are enjoyable too. You can dream on what they’ll become, but they’re already good company.