July 4’s delightful defeat in Atlanta [1] had me drawing up a declaration of independence from the remainder of my team’s 2026 contests, so I didn’t particularly mind when the Mets and Braves started off late because of rain down in Georgia — hell, it can rain out the rest of this dreary year for all I care.
But when I did report for duty (on time, I’ll have you know), I was baffled by the question of what Peacock was and if I had access to it. Turns out I did, but I didn’t have whatever premium tier was needed to watch the Mets. That was an easy one: The 2026 Mets are not in any way a premium-tier team, so off I went to find Keith Raad and Pat McCarthy on the radio.
Raad and McCarthy have evolved into a pretty good duo, with a nice rhythm of their own. But they had no good news to report early: The Mets staked Nolan McLean [2] to a 1-0 lead in the top of the first against a wild Martin Perez [3], only to have McLean turn in a rocky bottom of the first, complete with more lousy Mets defense, that made it 3-1 Braves.
I nearly took my leave then and there, but inertia kept me listening for another inning, if only to fume at my team and demonstrate how thoroughly deserved my disdain was. Except Perez wasn’t any better than he’d been in the first and all of a sudden the Mets led 5-3.
Keith and Pat were pretty sure that this one was headed to stratospheric bad-baseball line score, which seemed like a good bet. But then McLean settled down and so did Perez (at least until Juan Soto [4] hit him in the pitching arm with a line drive) and the game ground along for a long middle chapter without further scoring, a good chunk of which burbled out of my iPhone while I slumbered next to it with a book tented on my chest.
I woke up and it was still 5-3, but all hell was about to break loose. Brooks Raley [5] and Luke Weaver [6] (continuing his sublime run of relief work) kept the Mets out of trouble in the seventh and eighth, and in the top of the ninth the Mets ambushed Old Friend Carlos Carrasco [7]: Tyrone Taylor [8] home run, Bo Bichette [9] two-run double, Jared Young [10] two-run single.
The Mets led by seven and Devin Williams [11] sat down. I imagined Andy Green [12] might call on Guillermo Zuñiga, the all-time roster bookend in waiting, but instead he opted for Huascar Brazoban [13] — who got ambushed himself.
Single, single, ball thrown down the line (10-4), single, walk, strikeout, Drake Baldwin [14] grand slam. And it was 10-8.
Exit an understandably shell-shocked Brazoban, enter Williams after all, and it was buckle-up time, because those were the Braves and this was White Flight Stadium and horrors are never far off.
Strikeout (whew it’s all going to be fiiiiine), double, wild pitch, infield single … and it was 10-9. One out to get, but the tying run was on first and the walkoff winning run was at the plate and this was no longer even faintly amusing.
Maurice Dubon single, with Dubon advancing to second and Willie Harris [15] II on third. That brought another Old Friend, rejuvenated Brave Dom Smith, to the plate, and now a single would beat the Mets. A single, or a double, or another hideous error, or any number of terrible things.
Williams went to 2-0 on Smith, but then got two strikes to even the count — and threw an airbender below the zone that Smith swung over to end the game.
At which point Raad, to my astonishment and delight, announced “and the Mets win the damn thing, 10-9.”
That, of course, was an invocation of the great Bob Murphy in late July 1990 [16], when the Mets somehow escaped a house-of-horrors contest in Philadelphia by that same score. Given that Raad was three years away from entering the world that summer night, and so rather obviously not an earwitness, I’m eager to hear exactly how the tribute came together. Raad is a student of the game and Mets tradition, so did he know of Murph’s long-ago moment and have it in his back pocket? Did (the immortal) Chris Majkowski put it in his ear? Did Howie Rose send him a text?
Whatever the case, it was pitch perfect — and I wound up happy that I’d been confronted with a Peacock broadcast and gone the cheapskate route. The Mets won the damn thing [17], 10-9, and Raad added a lovely little historical grace note as they did. Even lost seasons will bring a smile to your face every now and again.