For most of my life, my relationship to needles has been a matter of bracing for the absolute worst and reacting to them as if they definitely are. Once in a while, if a medical professional is coming at my anatomy in a spot where I’m not used to it, I will still yelp and yowl in horror. The standard pokes, however, I’ve come to cope with. I think the turning point was a blood sample I had to submit to when I was in my fifties but might as well have been five. I yelped. I yowled. I said to the nurse something to the effect of, “I guess you get a lot of this.” Unamused, she retorted, “No, you’re the only one.”
These days, when they tell me, “It’ll only pinch for a second,” I believe them. I still brace. I still grimace (and not the gleefully evocative kind from 2024). I may even let out a sound roughly approximating an official scorer who’s seen too much bad fielding — “EEEEE!!!!!” — but I go into the transaction convinced I’ll survive, and I survive.
Welcome to the sensation of a walkoff loss late in a season when nothing is on the line. It only pinches a bit. Then I’m over it. So it was at Not Exactly Comiskey Park on Friday night, where the Mets were playing, for some oddball reason, the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox need every win to maintain their surprising hold on first place in a division that’s none of our business, yet we play everybody in it. The Mets should have no role in determining who wins the AL Central. Yet here we are, getting involved. We recently swept the Cleveland Guardians, you know.
The fun and frisky Mets of August have been nobody’s ideal opponent, and through the middle of the sixth inning, this game was as fun and frisky as any we’ve enjoyed of late. Ex-White Sock Marcus Semien [1] drove in a run. Ex-White Sock Luis Robert, Jr. [2], was awarded a gift double, courtesy of an heir to his center field throne, ex-Rockie Brenton Doyle, losing his fly ball in the lights, and an official scorer who apparently didn’t want to write down, “E!” Brett Baty [3] stirred with a two-run double behind Luis. Bo Bichette [4] continued to erase our memories of April and May with a home run. Sean Manaea [5] was absolutely cruising with a 4-0 lead.
Then the White Sox absolutely crushed Manaea with three consecutive longballs, the first of them with a runner on base, hence bingo-bango-bongo, it was 4-4. What an illustrative game this was being: we had seen why the Mets have been a recent revelation; we were reminded that it’s still the season in which they got themselves buried early and decisively; and we got a hint of what a contender that came out of nowhere can do. The last time the Mets visited Not Quite Comiskey, the White Sox’ primary opponent was the legacy of our 1962 club. The Original Mets lost 120 games. The 2024 White Sox were en route to losing 121 [6]. And they weren’t tons better in 2025. Now they’re leading the middle sector of the junior circuit. Kind of gives hope to last-place teams everywhere.
Our last-place team remained tied with their first-place team into the bottom of the ninth. Following effective relief outings from Nate Lavender [7] and Daniel Duarte [8], Jefry Yan [9] took the ball. Whoever was following the action could have said, “this is gonna be good” from any angle and had a chance of being right. Jefry’s tendencies are already legend. He is a pitcher who relishes the strikes he throws, perhaps because he doesn’t throw enough of them. When he gathers three in the same at-bat, he’s ecstatic. When he thinks he’s thrown the third, he’s on the Partridge Family bus, his instincts imploring him, come on, get happy.
His instincts need to clean whichever window he’s peering through, or at least meet him halfway on the highway to reality. They’re not all strikes, Jefry. They’re really not. Despite two instances of premature jocularity in celebration of pitches called balls, Yan walked leadoff batter Colson Montgomery, who was replaced on the basepaths by Braden Montgomery, the first instance I can summon of one player whose last name is a state capital being run for by another player whose last name is a state capital…though I may be forgetting that time Sammy Sacramento pinch-ran for his brother Cecil.
The second Montgomery was bunted to second base by Doyle, mastering at least one fundie for the evening after that dropped fly ball. Yan then grounded out Old Friend™ Luisangel Acuña, an old friend to us if not Yan; Met roster churn can really take a bite out of a dependable cliché. The grounder also fulfilled the “this is gonna be good” prophecy from all perspectives. For the Mets, it got them closer to escaping the ninth. For the White Sox, it pushed the winning run ninety feet closer to home, as B. Montgomery, running for C. Montgomery, moved to third.
Jake Rogers, whose name rang a vague trade deadline bell, stepped up. Oh, that’s right — the White Sox got Rogers from the Red Sox, who got him from the Orioles, who got him from the Tigers, who were selling off everybody, then hung around the Wild Card race, where they and almost everybody in the American League still lingers if they’re not already in first place. Those deals all happened over a span of about two weeks, indicating Rogers was either a hot commodity or a hot potato. It happened in the American League, so it’s really none of my business. My business was Yan getting out Rogers, who was batting .171, more potato than commodity on the hotness scale.
More like tater in the baseball lexicon, alas, as Jake lofted a very high fly ball off Jeffry. A.J. Ewing went to the wall and gave it his best jump, but the only Met capable of leaping to catch it was the pitcher who threw it. The White Sox landed hard on the Mets’ heads [10] with a walkoff home run, taking us down, 6-4, and completing the kind of comeback I was beginning to think was the sole province of my team. Who knew other people’s teams gather momentum?
This probably isn’t as rare as the pinch-running exchange between the state capital of Alabama boys (Colson was born in Indiana, Braden was born in Iowa, and they both currently pursue their profession in Illinois), but the Mets have now lost by walkoff to different opponents in the same walkable city in the same season. In April, we got nipped by the Cubs at Wrigley. Took ten innings. Extended our losing streak to eleven, deepening the already dull pain you’d go to a doctor and ask that something be done about it, even if it involves an injection that makes you yelp and yowl in horror. This one, four months later, when the season’s shortcomings seem less chronic than something maybe we’ll get over with a change of the calendar — a prescription that worked wonders for the White Sox — didn’t really hurt at all. It only pinched for a second.