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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 29 September 2023 4:24 am I’ve never felt more like Jack Buck after returning home from a ballgame, for “I don’t believe that I don’t know what I just saw!”
Did I see the Mets play the Marlins? Pretty sure I did. That was important to me, as, entering Thursday, I had not seen the Mets play the Marlins in person yet in 2023, and I’ve seen the Mets play the Marlins in person at least once (usually too much) in every non-pandemic season since 1997. I can confidently write “Miami” in The Log after having personally observed them in action versus the Mets.
Did I see the Mets beat the Marlins? I don’t think I did. True, the Mets led the Marlins, 1-0, at the end of the eighth, the last completed inning of the evening before a downpour made the field unplayable during the top of the ninth. With all those qualifiers, and knowing what we know about an official game, it kind of reads like a Mets win. But I was there, watching through the press box window, and I’d have to swear on a stack of media guides that I did not witness a winning effort on the part of the home team. For a few minutes, I thought it might be. I thought it might be rued in Marlin lore as The Rafael Ortega Game once the little-used outfielder, subbing for Brandon Nimmo once Nimmo left with an injury, drove in, after seven-and-a-half scoreless innings, the game’s only run. What lovely reprisal for not only [your choice of crime inflicted upon Metsdom by the Teal Menace], but Jesus Luzardo’s ten strikeouts across seven-and-a-third innings.
 The Citi Field tarp is perpetrating a coverup, preventing us from finding out whether the Mets won, lost, tied or even played Thursday night. Did I see the Marlins beat the Mets? We were likely getting close to that eventuality, what with the Marlins usurping that thin 1-0 lead of the Mets and transforming it into a 2-1 edge of their own in the top of the ninth off noted closers Grant Hartwig and Anthony Kay. Hey, it’s only a game with an impact on the entire postseason picture. Might as well try whoever you have out in the pen to finish off a contender. Ah, what’s a closer but a label? Neither Hartwig (who did put up a zero in the eighth) nor Kay lived up to the example set by David Peterson, who not only shut out the Marlins for seven innings (with 8 Ks and a touch of help from a six-minute two-team video review challenge that correctly removed a Marlin run from the scoreboard), but has never given up a run the three times I’ve attended starts of his: 19 IP, 0 R. How am I not on Peterson’s pass list? Reed Garrett became the third pitcher of the ninth just in time to give up a hit and then be overtaken by a tarp that was about as welcome in the ninth inning as a skunk at a picnic…or the Marlins anywhere.
Did I see the Mets-Marlins game suspended? Not until after I bolted the hermetically sealed comfort of the press box to take on the rain, the rails and the ride home. Good call, I have to say. When I exited Citi Field, the rain delay was about 50 minutes old. When I walked into my living room and flipped on SNY, the delay was well past the two-hour mark, and an impromptu Amazin’ Finishes marathon was in progress, punctuated by live shots of the tarp sitting on the infield, nudged off the infield, and returned to the infield — with Skip Schumaker registering his displeasure with Mother Nature’s timing and nerve. Altogether, it took three hours and seventeen minutes of steady precipitation for the powers that be to decide no more baseball would be attempted in Flushing this early Friday morning. What could have been The Rafael Ortega Game devolved into that night we kind of inconvenienced the Marlins.
Did anybody see or hear anything definitively conclusive about concluding the Mets-Marlins game? MLB, in whose hands this rests, basically replaced that batter in its logo with a shrug emoji. Late-breaking consensus, however, has formed around the Marlins having to fly back to New York from Pittsburgh to finish the game Monday if necessary to determine Wild Card clinching…or maybe just in general. Baseball likes its games completed, though if Miami already has a playoff spot in the bag (they’ve got a half-game lead on the Cubs plus a tiebreaker), one isn’t sure why the hell they’d wing their way to Gotham to secure what I hate to call a meaningless win, because we see meaning in everything in baseball, but c’mon. If there’s no berth and no seeding at stake, what lures the Marlins for an inning-and-a-third rendezvous with density?
Yet if the game isn’t over — and it’s not — and they don’t pick it up, what exactly happened Thursday night?
The ol’ “in the event of rain, the score reverts back to the last complete inning” rule that would effectively erase the two runs Hartwig and Kay gave up doesn’t exist any longer, so there’s no slipping this one into the win column for the Mets on a technicality, but you really can’t say the visitors have prevailed if the home team isn’t granted last licks.
I’d get a kick out saying I saw the first Mets tie in 42 years, but it wasn’t tied when the tarp came out to halt play.
The Marlins could forfeit on the grounds that by Monday, if they’ve clinched, they’ll have better things to do, like prepare for the playoffs ASAP, but Schumaker doesn’t appear to be of a mind to give the Mets anything other than another piece of his mind.
The game could magically disappear from the team’s respective won-lost records, sort of a virtual tie, with all player stats standings, but what’s the basis for that, exactly? MLB has been suspending and resuming otherwise obvious rainouts for a few years now, sometimes insipidly, but to date, a suspended game with real ramifications and little time to tighten its loose ends hasn’t had to absolutely, positively be finished. Finishing it with the Marlins’ and the Cubs’ and maybe the Reds’ playoff fates in the balance would be one thing (even if it’s for four outs and would be a nuisance to every Met whose U-Haul will be double-parked on Seaver Way), but to finish it because every team is required to file in its ledger 162 indisputable results?
I live for the bookkeeping of baseball, but even I think there ought to be a classy way out of finishing this game if there are no serious implications on the table. Yet I did go to this game, and my Log wants to know what I just saw. As of this moment, I can’t write it down as a loss, I can’t write it down as a win and I can’t write it down as a tie. I can’t even pencil it in as a suspended game if I don’t know for sure that it will be rescued from suspended animation. I’ve already written down that I saw the Marlins, as I have in every non-pandemic season since 1997, and I’ve already written down that I saw Peterson, who clearly loves to pitch in front of me. But I can’t write down what “my” record is against the Marlins at Citi Field (it was 22-13 coming in); or “my” lifetime record at Citi Field (currently 179-132 with one dangling “?”); or the W/L aspect of the game; or its final score. I’ll need a dab more information to finish this entry, thank you very much.
Come in from out of the rain and listen to a new episode of National League Town.
by Jason Fry on 28 September 2023 12:32 am It wasn’t raining Tuesday night. The problem was one of tenses — not what was happening weather-wise but what had happened. It wasn’t raining, but it had rained. Considerably. Considerably as in “enough that they give the concentration of rain a proper name and track it over the ocean like it’s an invasion fleet.”
An amount of rain, in other words, that might make you cover an infield.
The grass-mowing, sod-tending members of the Mets didn’t do that while the bat-swinging, error-making members of the Mets were losing games in Philadelphia. Why? Beats me. The reason hasn’t been made clear, perhaps because it can’t be made clear. I’m neither a meteorologist nor a groundskeeper, but it seems to me that the presence of a tropical storm suggests a tarp be deployed.
No rain Tuesday, no game Tuesday. The field was unplayable, the Marlins’ reaction was unprintable, and I can’t say I blame them. If Francisco Lindor had offered the Marlins a jaunty “let’s play two” on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, one of them might have punched him in the face, and I wouldn’t really have been able to say I blamed them for that either. The Marlins are scratching and clawing for a postseason berth; any scratching and clawing done by the Mets makes you back away worrying about fleas.
Despite their wrath, the Marlins didn’t exactly come blazing out of the gate Wednesday afternoon. Pete Alonso homered and Lindor homered and Mark Vientos homered and Joey Lucchesi motored through the Miami lineup. You could see when the Marlins quit in that first game — Jorge Soler showed no particular interest in participating while in right field, which means the Little League remedy for such aptitude was already unavailable — and I wondered if they’d bring anything to the fight in the nightcap.
But they did: The Mets bent Johnny Cueto, as Lindor hit his third home run of the day and joined the 30-30 club, but couldn’t break him. Meanwhile, Kodai Senga struck out his 200th guy in his season finale, but also gave up a pair of homers, resulting in a stalemate.
The second game looked like it was going to turn when Jake Burger was at the plate with the bases loaded, two out and the score tied 2-2 in the top of the seventh, facing a rather shaky looking Phil Bickford. But Burger had to deal not only with Bickford but also with home-plate umpire Ramon De Jesus, whose strike zone was the kind of abstract art that makes you sniff that “my kid could do that.” (And if you’re right in that appraisal, please discourage your kid from both art school and umpire school.) De Jesus punched Burger out on a pitch that was clearly outside, then ejected Burger when he slammed down his helmet in thoroughly understandable disgust, tossing Skip Schumaker for good measure when the Marlins skipper came out to remind De Jesus that no one came to Citi Field to watch him.
That substitution looked fateful two innings later, when Adam Ottavino loaded the bases with nobody out (sigh) and found himself facing not Burger but Yuli Gurriel. (If I weren’t too tired, I’d try for a Hamburger Helper joke here. Let’s just pretend I did and it was funny.) Gurriel smacked an Ottavino sweeper right at Brett Baty, and all Baty had to do next was throw the ball home and watch Omar Narvaez step on the plate and then watch him heave the ball to Alonso at first, which would turn the inning around, and then…
…except Baty did what I just did. He tried to make the throw before he caught the ball and … oof. It’s been that kind of year for the kid.
Baty turned two outs into none, it was quickly 4-2 in favor of the finny visitors, and soon after that the Mets were done and the Marlins had not only survived but also pulled into a tie for the last wild-card spot. A split — which, if you think about it, wasn’t bad for a day’s work, as it required beating the Mets (well, once at least), the Mets’ groundskeepers, bad umpiring, a tropical storm and some measure of unkind fate.
You could almost admire it … well, if it weren’t the Marlins we’re talking about.
by Greg Prince on 25 September 2023 12:44 am • The Mets lost, 5-2, at Citizens Bank Park on Sunday night, completing a weekend in which there was a definitive milestone of futility planted every step along the way. Sunday’s wasn’t as momentous as clinching a losing record (Thursday), being mathematically eliminated from postseason contention (Friday) or assuring the 2023 Mets would drop further from their previous year’s record than any Mets team before them (Saturday), but by losing, the Mets did fall to 14 games under .500 for the first time this season. There are always new depths to plumb with this team.
• The Mets were swept four by the Phillies, who had plenty to play for and played like it. So much for the spoiler role fitting this team like one of Francisco Lindor’s designer gloves.
• Impromptu Sunday Night Baseball — a 6:05 PM start was set Saturday night when the Phillies realized the scheduled one o’clock first pitch did not mesh with the ominous forecast — isn’t such a bad proposition when ESPN isn’t involved. Good advance contingency thinking rather than telling the fans to come to the ballpark and wait and wait for a window.
• The Mets lost on Fox/Channel 9 Thursday night, Apple TV+ Friday night, SNY Saturday evening and PIX11 on Sunday night. Four consecutive losses in the same series on four different frequencies must be some kind of record, unless you listened on the radio, in which case it was a lot of same spit, different day.
• Ronny Mauricio left the One Met Homer Only club, which is a fine club to join, but not so great a club to linger within. Mauricio exited by swatting for his second home run a Cristopher Sanchez pitch that was a little more than a foot off the ground when Ronny connected with it. It came down over the left field wall, 389 feet from home plate, having departed the young man’s lumber at a velocity of 112.9 MPH (which experts say is quite the thwack). A runner was on base at the time, the time being the top of the sixth inning. Up to that point, the Mets trailed, 5-0, indicating Mauricio was responsible for the entirety of his club’s offense.
• Sanchez went untouched by the Mets, except for that home run ball (which would have been a scorekeeping ball had Mauricio declined to swing, because it was barely off the ground). The Phillie starter lasted through seven, striking out ten, allowing only three hits and one walk. Jose Butto, on the other hand, took a step back from the progress he’d shown in recent outings. Only four innings for Jose, with four runs and four hits. Fours were not lucky in this case.
• Butto’s presence on the CBP mound had me thinking back to 2022, which is a dangerous exercise for anybody who’s been watching the Mets throughout 2023. Butto, called up to make his big league debut in Philly, started The Mark Canha Game, which became The Mark Canha Game (also The Nate Fisher Game) after Butto dug the Mets a relatively deep hole that cloudy Sunday, leaving the Mets down, 7-4 after four. Four wasn’t altogether unlucky in that case, as the Mets came back to win, 10-9. The 2022 Mets would forge that kind of comeback now and then. Those were the Damn Thing days, my friend…we thought they’d never end. Or at least go on for another year.
• Hello to Long Island’s Own Anthony Kay, the 1,218th Met overall and a fellow who can be said to have waited longer than most Mets to become Mets. We drafted him in 2013 (didn’t sign). We drafted him anew in 2016 (he did sign). We traded him in 2019 (for Marcus Stroman, who had one of those eventful Met tenures that a couple of years later doesn’t seem like it actually happened). We grabbed LIOAK back on waivers recently and called him up to fortify the bullpen from the left side, which he did with a scoreless inning-and-a-third Sunday. Who says you can’t go home again for the first time?
• So long to Peyton Battenfield, who was called up Friday to replace Jeff Brigham, yet was not afforded the opportunity to tell his friends and family that he was the 1,218th Met Overall. Buck Showalter, apparently, was not lovin’ a Battenfield. Peyton sat for two games and was optioned to Syracuse to make room for Kay. Given that the Triple-A season is over, that’s a pretty cold place to send somebody. And Syracuse gets pretty cold as is.
• Hi from across the field to brand new major leaguer Orion Kerkering, hot Phillies prospect who came into pitch the eighth and made three Mets batters appear totally ineffectual. I mean more than usual for this weekend. I wouldn’t normally get caught up in any opponent’s success at the expense of the Mets, especially not one who could be haunting us in the division for years to come, but a) Kerkering’s dad was caught on camera in absolute tears at the sight of his son’s debut; and b) Orion Kerkering is a USF Bull. Or was until he was drafted by the Phillies in 2022. I, too, was/am a USF Bull, albeit of a much earlier vintage. For one eighth inning on one Sunday night when the Mets were sleeping through their classes, I’ll give a Horns Up to the kid.
• Congratulations to my and Orion Kerkering’s USF Bulls for beating the Rice Owls, 42-29 in Saturday’s college gridiron action. Our USF Bulls haven’t made a habit of winning at football lately. Given that the Mets couldn’t take even one of four games from the Phillies; and that neither the Giants nor Jets could succeed between Thursday night and Sunday afternoon; and that even the formidable ladies of the Liberty were pretty much trounced in their WNBA semifinal playoff game, I need to bask in whatever victory I can find. Orion Kerkering and I are thus stoked about our Bulls boiling Rice.
• Happy Elimination Day, which arrived a couple of hours before Kol Nidre services, to all who observe. Like the Mets’ lack of postseason plans, the Yankees’ absence from October had been a virtually sure thing for months, but why let a festive annual occasion, however low-key it may feel this fall, pass without acknowledging its blessed nature? Good luck to every remaining American League Wild Card contender. Each of you is a winner in my eyes.
• Back on our going-nowhere end of town, six games remain, all at home. That’s 54 innings of Mets baseball, give or take, until there are none. I’ll probably need another week to get altogether melancholic about that. Spoilerwise, the Mets can still debone the Marlins a bit. The Phillies should have the NL’s four-seed locked down by next weekend. Honestly, the implications are light. Barring rain that can’t be worked around, the 2023 Mets can win as many as 77 games once over is over, or lose as many as 91. There is no good won-lost record at the end of this rainbow. There will be goodbye, though. Some years, that is for the best.
by Greg Prince on 24 September 2023 12:55 pm The Mets haven’t been on the wrong end of any lopsided beatdowns this depressing weekend in Philadelphia, so we haven’t heard any wizened press box wag offer in a Burgess Meredith rasp the old chestnut that if this were a fight, somebody woulda stopped it by now. If these games were fights, at least the Mets might win a few rounds on points. They do look good in select half-innings. It’s a shame that only counts toward the cumulative score of a ballgame and doesn’t mean much on its own.
With the Statistical Triptych of Despair achieved with Rufless efficiency — losing record clinched Thursday night; mathematical elimination official Friday night; the worst year-over-year dropoff as measured by won-lost record confirmed Saturday afternoon — all that is left to watch for when the Mets play a contender, besides the possibility of a little spoiling (not happening since we left Miami), are those little spikes in the EKG that indicate we haven’t altogether flatlined. A few of them give us something to process as progress or at least convince us we aren’t beset by an onslaught of some of the worst innings of our lives.
I know, I know: we’ve seen some very bad innings in our lives, much worse than these. Yet allow me my hyperbole.
The top of the second had everything a Mets fan could want from a game against the Phillies, short of Chase Utley being catapulted from home plate out toward the general direction of Center City. DJ Stewart leads off with a walk against an uncomfortable Zack Wheeler. Ronny Mauricio singles into right. Brett Baty grounds a double play ball to Trea Turner. Turner opts to backhand it. The ball opts not to be backhanded and scoots instead into left, scoring Stewart. As the same uncooperative ball is jogged after and lobbed back into the infield by Kyle Schwarber, and Turner receives it with his mind clearly on his backhand gone awry, Mauricio takes in the tableau of nonchalance and distraction and races for home. It’s one of those decisions where, if it backfires, it’s a young player being a little too overeager and not aware of game situations and he’s got to learn. But it’s an outstanding decision, as Turner is caught flatfooted and throws to the plate a tad too late to stop Ronny in his aggressive tracks.
The Mets are ahead, 2-0, and they win the round. Or the half-round, because in the bottom of the second, Jose Quintana gives up a leadoff home run to Bryce Harper, and a couple of defensive miscues lead to another run, and it’s tied at two, so if we’re going with the boxing scoring system business, I suppose the entirety of the second is a draw. But, man, the top of the second felt really good.
So did the top of the seventh. Wheeler, lack of comfort on a chilly, windy, misty day notwithstanding, is still out there, outlasting Quintana, who went a yeoman six without having his craftiest stuff (Jose did strike out ten, but two of those were Schwarber, and that seems baked into any total of Ks before any game against the Phillies begins). Baty and Mark Vientos each singled to get the seventh going. Omar Narváez lifted a mighty fly ball to center that had no impact on the action except to record an out, but I really think one of these days, maybe under better climate conditions, Omar, sitting on one home run for the year, is gonna hit another ball out of another ballpark somewhere. It may not be this year, it may not be for the Mets, but I have faith in the guy.
Brandon Nimmo sends another fly ball to center. It doesn’t seem to carry the potential Narváez’s had, but Phillies center fielder Johan Rojas, a reputed stud with the glove, is playing too far in and doesn’t realize it for a few agonizing/energizing ticks, depending on your bias in this bout. The ball lands well over Rojas’s head, assuring Baty and Vientos of respective trips home and Nimmo of his sixth triple of the season. The Mets hadn’t been winning too many rounds or half-rounds since the top of the second and had been trailing, 6-2, via too many Philadelphia-beneficial plays I’m in no mood to detail. Yet for as gloomy a game as the Mets had been playing, they had suddenly cut their deficit to 6-4, a surmountable state of affairs if you’re thinking of averting another episode of statistical despair.
Then, to really make the top of the seventh sing, Francisco Lindor angles a foul fly ball to medium left in such a spot, near the railing, that once Schwarber catches it, Nimmo can confidently bolt for home. It’s no sure thing that he’ll score, and he oughta be subject to the same caveats rookie Mauricio would be for taking a risk if it doesn’t work out, but he is veteran Brandon Nimmo, and he knows how to slide and touch a plate and avoid a tag all at the same time. When Brandon has accomplished this multitasking, the Mets are behind a mere 6-5, one run from a full comeback. Given how this buoyed my spirits — and despite J.T. Realmuto making up for not tagging out Nimmo by driving in an insurance run off Reed Garrett in the bottom of the seventh — I’m totally giving the seventh to the Mets.
If it were a fight, we would have lost it on points by a lot, because, honestly, I don’t have any more to give the Mets from their 7-5 defeat. But we weren’t knocked out! Nobody had to stop the fight! We went the distance with the champs! Lest you forget, in the aftermath of the Mets-Braves duel for the division and each team exiting October ASAP, the Philadelphia Phillies did win the National League pennant last year, and their defense of their title is winding its way through another Wild Card berth that is almost entirely in the bag. All weekend, we’ve gone eye to eye and toe to toe against our ancient blood rivals/intermittently irritating neighbors, losing by only one run, one run and two runs.
Wow, even I don’t believe any of that’s particularly impressive from a Mets standpoint, but you know Bob Murphy would have sold it so sincerely…
Oh, the Mets have come so close this weekend in Philadelphia, falling short only by a base hit here or an unmade out there. You know, with a couple of breaks, Buck Showalter’s troops could have taken all three of these games against a very tough Phillies ballclub that is heading back to the postseason for a second year in a row. They certainly have a formidable lineup and will present a real challenge to whoever they face in the playoffs. As Mets fans know first-hand, righthander Zack Wheeler is one of the most capable pitchers in the National League. Zack’s had a marvelous time of it since leaving New York. What a fine young man.
…that we would have bought it in any late 1970s or early 1980s year of our youth. Of course we were younger then. We also bought tickets to watch Rocky Balboa and never for an instant saw any reason that an aging local club fighter with zero national profile and more than twenty career losses while getting punched around town couldn’t beat heretofore untouchable Apollo Creed. Or the menacing Clubber Lang, once Rocky ran on the beach in Los Angeles alongside Apollo to rekindle essential tigerlike optical properties.
A little bit of fight will do wonders to sustain your ardor for a given franchise.
by Greg Prince on 23 September 2023 1:24 pm Anyway, it’s turned cold and rainy here lately, but I like winter.
—Maya, in her answering machine message to Miles, at the end of Sideways
Pending iffy weather, the Mets are positioned to carve a statistical triptych of despair this afternoon in Philadelphia. Thursday night, they clinched a losing record for the season. Friday night, they were mathematically eliminated from their last remaining fraction of postseason contention. Their next milestone looms as the setting of the franchise record for most precipitous plunge from one year’s won-lost record to the next. Right now, at 71-83, they have a tie locked up, assured of being 22 games worse in 2023 than they were in 2022, when, for all our complaints about them through September and into October, they accumulated a mere 61 defeats. Our loss total at the moment relative to 101-61 in ’22 matches the decline from 1976 to 1977, the long-established standard for season-to-season Met falloff, one of those internal worsts it never occurred to me to look up until a season like this came along on the heels of a season like last season.
The Mets were nothing special in 1976, finishing 86-76 (though today that absolutely gets you into the National League playoffs). In 1977, the Mets avoided special like the plague, going 64-98, accelerating their ongoing descent into the abyss by trading Tom Seaver at the deadline. Forty-six years later, perhaps some analytically inclined junior executive in Flushing posited, “If we sent away one Hall of Fame pitcher in the middle of the season and we went to hell, imagine what would happen if we send away two…”
Gonna guess hardly a Mets fan alive decades from now will identify the days Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander were instructed to pack as the moment that signaled the end of childhood, and I don’t truly believe a 1978-style 2024 is on deck. Different times, different contexts. But 22+ losses worse is 22+ losses worse, although as much as I do remember about 1977, I don’t remember when exactly the 1977 Mets were mathematically eliminated. Being mired in last place in a pre-Wild Card world will take the edge off such details.
I almost forgot mathematical elimination had just happened to the 2023 Mets when the game that did them in, their 154th of a planned 162, went final. Watching a game on a streaming service on a tablet, some strange app’s pictures synced to familiar radio sound, will knock a person off-kilter, even a person who’s spent most of his waking hours monitoring an off-kilter team for 154 games for nearly six months. When the Mets didn’t take advantage of Brett Baty’s revival from imploded prospect to rising star — game-tying homer in the top of the ninth; game-saving defense in the bottom of the ninth — by not driving home their speediest ghost runner possible, Tim Locastro, in the top of the tenth, you figured the Phillies would find a way to end the whole affair quickly if not painlessly. How much one feels the sting of another 5-4 loss, this one on Alec Bohm plopping a single into short right, ensuring Philly apparition Trea Turner would motor in with the winning run, depends on how much feeling you have left in your Met epidermis with just over a week remaining in 2023.
I suppose it always hurts to lose in extra innings. I suppose it always hurts to lose in Philadelphia. I suppose it always hurts to see gumption like Baty’s go unrewarded in the course of an evening. I suppose Tylor Megill’s almost six innings of shutout ball flying over the left field fence, courtesy of one mighty blow off the bat of J.T. Realmuto, converting a 2-0 Mets lead over Old Friend™ Taijuan Walker into a 3-2 deficit, hurt from the standpoint of rooting a young pitcher along, but I honestly don’t know about the last one. Postgame chatter about the shame of Megill putting in almost six innings of spotless ball, only to have his valiant night besmirched by Realmuto, put me in mind of the night in 2013 when Dillon Gee carried a 1-0 shutout into the ninth in Atlanta, only to have Justin Upton single with one out and Freddie Freeman launch the game-winner/game-loser one batter later. Except Gee was trying to go nine, and it’s a national holiday when Megill can go six.
You’re lucky if you can feel anything from this team after 154 games and 83 losses, but the numbness was pierced when I realized, after clicking off the Friday night stream that, oh yeah, we were eliminated, weren’t we? This September’s Met discourse wasn’t infiltrated by one of those tragic numbers a fan tracks as a quixotic lunge for a postseason berth inevitably sputters. Rob Manfred would be disappointed to learn the 2023 Mets didn’t make as much as a ghost run at the playoffs.
Yet the finality suddenly hit me. We were done with eight games to go. We were done when there were seventy, eighty, ninety games to go, really, but math has a way of sealing the deal. To the televised postgame show, I said boo. I mean actually booed the TV. I booed Gary Apple. I booed Todd Zeile. I booed whatever inanimate object I could find. The Mets were pretty inanimate most of the year.
Stephanie stuck her head out of the upstairs bathroom where she was getting ready for bed. She inadvertently had the postgame show on the radio, me having helpfully tuned it to 880 for everybody’s listening convenience. I reported, with dark irony (as if it was worthy of a bulletin from an all-news station), that we wouldn’t be going to any playoff games this October. She is aware of the state of the Mets on a conceptual level — whether they’re good or not so good — but doesn’t check the standings multiple times a day. I wanted to confirm their current status aloud for somebody who wasn’t inanimate.
“I’m sorry, baby,” my wife replied from the top of the stairs. She really meant it, too. After all these years and all these mathematical eliminations, she understands. No need to calibrate for inevitability versus devastation.
The weekend we got engaged, which was exactly 34 years ago, I decided the best way to burnish our rite of coupling passage was by going to the Mets-Phillies game that Monday night. About 18,000 people joined us at Shea Stadium. The game story in one of the papers the next day referred to the lot of us as “entertainment-deprived”. Bobby Ojeda pitched against Pat Combs, nursing a 1-0 lead into the eighth. Tommy Herr played the role of J.T. Realmuto/Freddie Freeman on that occasion, belting the two-run homer that ensured a 2-1 ending and the ouster of the Mets from what was left of their semi-serious pursuit of the 1989 NL East title. It was Game 156 that night. There was no realistic chance the Mets were going to catch the first-place Cubs by then, but still. Mathematical elimination is mathematical elimination. Last out came and I just sat, which meant we both sat, which meant we had to put on speed to make our train, which isn’t something I make my wife of now nearly 32 years do if I can help it (the lady doesn’t like to be rushed). But Stephanie respected my Shea mourning ritual for the 1989 Mets that Monday night and did the same for the version I unfurled in our living room on a Friday night in 2023.
It felt really sad to realize definitively that the defending 1988 National League East champions would not be playing beyond their 162nd game. I can’t say it feels anything like that anymore vis-à-vis what the Mets accomplished in 2022. For a while in 2023, even as realization came early that These Mets weren’t likely going anywhere, a good inning or a good game would awaken the echoes of the year before, as if this team was still, in its soul, that team. The 1989 Mets were no longer the 1988 Mets, certainly not by September 25, yet, I decided, those Mets who remained from one year to the next couldn’t have possibly forgotten altogether how to be good.
C’mon, that’s Bobby Ojeda out there! He started both Game Sixes!
But, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, the Mets of “this” year are never the Mets of “last” year. Nevertheless, that year-after sense has carried me, sometimes to my own emotional detriment, through portions of 1970 and 1974 and 1987 and 1989 and 2001 and 2007 and 2017 and 2023 (the years directly after 1999 and 2015 are excused from this recounting as they actually kind of worked out). Then whatever was mathematically obvious about the present would overtake pleasing recent precedent, and I could no longer convince myself that whatever made 1969 or 1973 or 1986 or 1988 or 2000 or 2006 or 2016 or 2022 its own brand of special automatically renewed. That’s still a playoff team, no matter that their record says otherwise was how I thought for as long as I could.
Until the next time their record says something much different from what it says now, I won’t be thinking anything like that about the Mets at all.
by Greg Prince on 22 September 2023 11:16 am Despite indications it might never happen in the course of a year that had only just begun, in their seventh game of 2023, the Mets (3-4) fell below .500 for the first time. So much for white lace and promises.
In their 61st game of 2023, the Mets (30-31) fell below .500 for what turned out to be — if you’ll excuse the expression — good. Watchin’ the signs along way told you there’d be no return above the break-even point.
In their 153rd game of 2023, in which they were defeated by the Phillies in Philadelphia, 5-4, the Mets (71-82) made it official that they’d finish with a losing record.
And yes, we’ve just continued…to lose.
Eleven times over the past fifteen years, the Mets have lost more games in a season than they’ve won. By that very specific metric, this has been the worst fifteen-year period ever in Mets baseball, an enterprise that has been around long enough to contain multiple, overlapping fifteen-year periods and legendary amounts of losing. One wouldn’t intuitively think to measure the Mets by fifteen-year periods, except here we are, having finished under .500 for the eleventh time since 2009.
Which is to say this all feels a bit too familiar.
These past fifteen seasons have included four Septembers that have been more fun than not to blog during: 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2022. Those were the four seasons when the Mets finished with a winning record. This takes into account that the Mets’ bid for a Wild Card fell short in 2019 and the division lead was slipping away as 2022 wound down. Yet in both seasons they were a winning team overall. Until you’ve continuously covered, from an advocacy perspective, a ballclub that spends its Septembers almost never in a position to win more than it loses, you come to value the Septembers when the opposite is the case. A year like 2019, with no playoffs to show for a spirited second-half sprint, and a year like 2022, when a gaudy regular-season record isn’t quite good enough to clinch a division title, are, by comparison to what has otherwise been the norm in these parts, the stuff of a golden age. When you’re dealt years like 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021 and now 2023, the pennant run of 2015 and the followup surge to one night of the postseason in 2016 shimmer as if emblematic of a mythic dynasty — particularly as one remembers the practically unyielding doldrums preceding that two-year interlude in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Still here, though.
Still mining silver linings, like thinking it was encouraging that almost if not every time they fell behind Thursday night, the Mets came back to tie the Phils.
Still getting excited over the latest prospect who shows a little pop, like Mark Vientos homering again.
Still taking solace in a veteran hitting his stride when he earlier appeared unmoored from his previous form, like 2B-LF-RF Jeff McNeil continuing to play everywhere and hit everything (single, double, triple, a couple of runs, a couple of ribbies, even a stolen base).
Still tuning in whenever the Mets play, wherever they air or stream.
Still planning another trip or two to the ballpark to soak up the last of this next-to-last-place team’s endeavors before they end.
Still reading explanations and gleaning rationalizations for what went wrong this time.
Still writing about the experience for anybody who’s still interested more days than not.
Four winning seasons in the past fifteen. Three that have included extensions of the year beyond was what initially scheduled. One that has gone as far as participation in a World Series. No world championships in any of these fifteen seasons, nor any of the fifteen seasons before these, plus none in however many preceded those until you count back to 1986, which is as close to today as 1949 was to 1986 in 1986. Thirteen winning records in the twenty-two seasons spanning 1987 to 2008. We blogged the last four of those. A couple of Septembers therein admittedly tested the concept of fun with winning records, but any way you cut or collapse it, over .500 is over .500.
In a matter of days, perhaps hours, the losing-record 2023 Mets will also be mathematically eliminated from postseason contention, another formality. At that moment, the “haven’t won since…” clock ticks forward to 38 years, and the 2024/1986 temporal relationship analogizes to 1986/1948. The Cleveland franchise won its most recent world championship in 1948. By 1986, they had waited forever. By next year, their fans will therefore have waited two forevers, meaning we’ll have one under our belt. But, after a while, unless you keep count, you lose count, because when you lose more often than you win so often, it all feels like forever. Fifteen Septembers with eleven seasons concluding on the wrong side of .500 is enough losing to last you a lifetime that you devote to a ballclub that probably doesn’t mean to devote itself to losing, yet there they are, finishing another year when they’ve done exactly that.
And here you are reminding yourself and anybody else who shares your wavelength that first pitch tonight from Citizens Bank Park is at 7:05 PM on Apple TV+.
I’m also reminding you to listen to the latest episode of National League Town, which includes a paean to dashed expectations; a milestone-anniversary remembrance of one of the losing years among the eleven referenced above; and a tribute to someone we lost too soon. Believe it or not, it’s cheerier than it sounds.
by Jason Fry on 21 September 2023 1:15 am So the Mets won two out of three — and could have swept if not for a Gott-forsaken relief appearance — to knock the Marlins off their postseason course, at least temporarily. They’ll now tangle with the Phillies, whose playoff aspirations will be somewhat harder to foil, then host the Marlins, then square off with the Phillies again and then that will be it. Remember the first couple of weeks of the season where you could instantly recall the outcome of every game? This is its mirror image: a few squares left on the calendar, a handful of blanks to be filled in.
There’s some satisfaction in beating the Marlins, of course — my feelings about them have long been clear. But I can’t summon up as much Schadenfreude as I wish I could. Part of that is that playing spoiler is a little too thin a gruel to sustain me, smacking of “if I can’t have this toy nobody can have it.” But never fear, I’m not climbing on that particular soapbox. It’s more that I’ve crossed over to acceptance, and with that has come feeling unhappy that soon enough there will be baseball without any Mets, and soon after that there will be no baseball at all.
And here, near the end, I find myself wanting more, even if it’s not exactly the conclusion to the season we envisioned back in March.
But why not want a little more?
It’s fun watching Mark Vientos absolutely crush two baseballs, on 0-2 counts no less, and wonder what might be if some hitting coach can turn that scorching hard-hit rate into reliable production.
It’s fun seeing how freaking hard Ronny Mauricio makes contact, and to see him materialize in the right spot on the infield, and think about how far he’s come and where he might be headed.
It’s fun seeing Jeff McNeil, that one-man wrecking crew of Marlins hopes, make a jaw-dropping acrobatic play in right to nail Jazz Chisholm Jr. at second base, then finish off the same inning by cutting down Jorge Soler at the plate. McNeil, briefly not displeased with the outcome of a play involving him, all but came off the field blowing smoke off his pistol fingers, and who could blame him?
It’s fun watching Brett Baty, who’s had a trying year to say the very least, connect off Johnny Cueto and remind you that there’s a reason for all the hype. And that 2024 will be a new year and a new start.
It’s fun rooting for Kodai Senga to figure it out on a night when his best stuff wasn’t there and he had to go to pitching improv. A lot went wrong in 2023; signing Senga was something that went very right.
It’s fun watching Drew Smith and Trevor Gott somehow not screw things up. OK, so maybe “fun” isn’t the word I was looking for there. I’m still glad it happened even if I’m not sure how.
When baseball is played crisply and with a little zing it’s so much fun, particularly if you win. And even if you don’t win and even if the baseball’s goopy and soggy — there’s been plenty of that variety chronicled during this season — well, it still has its pleasures. My assignment for myself, as the season’s needle swings with a sigh over to E, is to remember that and cherish what’s left.
by Greg Prince on 20 September 2023 12:29 pm In memory of the late Dennis D’Agostino and his classic book, This Date in New York Mets History, let’s remember what the Mets were up to on this date — September 20 — fifty years ago, in 1973.
It was time to carefully remove the m-word from the ark in which it had been kept undisturbed for nearly four years, for the fairly recently last-place Mets were about to perform the most sacred act their faith allowed.
It was time for a miracle.
But first, let’s have some bullet points illustrating the relatively mundane from this about-to-be extraordinary Thursday night at Shea Stadium — a game that wasn’t scheduled to be televised over Channel 9, but Mets fans clamored, and the station, along with sponsors like good old Rheingold, among other sponsors, came through. (No matter what historians might tell you, not everybody in New York was watching Billie Jean King take it to Bobby Riggs on Channel 7.)
 The people had spoken.
- Jerry Koosman pitched eight innings, struck out eight Pirates and allowed only one unearned run, which unfortunately put him behind 1-0, because Jim Rooker had held the Mets scoreless through seven.
- Jim Beauchamp, making the final regular-season appearance of his ten-year career, pinch-hit for Koosman to lead off the bottom of the eighth and singled. After he was pinch-run for by Teddy Martinez, and Martinez was bunted to second by Wayne Garrett, Felix Millan singled home the tying run.
- Harry Parker, usually a rookie revelation in Yogi Berra’s bullpen, came on to preserve the tie in the top of the ninth but couldn’t quite do the job. Two runners were on when Dave Cash doubled one of them in to return the Pirates to their lead, 2-1.
- Bob Johnson, who pitched two games for the 1969 Mets, was tabbed by Danny Murtaugh to finish off his old team. A win here would erase the Mets’ recent momentum, leaving them 2½ back with a scheduled nine to play. It wouldn’t clinch anything for the Pirates, because others were still alive and contending, but it would put a crimp in the Mets’ plans, no matter much they Believed. But Johnson allowed a leadoff pinch-single to Ken Boswell and a sacrifice bunt to Don Hahn before exiting for Ramon Hernandez.
- Hernandez struck out pinch-hitter George Theodore for the second out of the ninth, but another pinch-hitter, Duffy Dyer, delivered a double, scoring Boswell to tie the game at two.
- The two teams went to extra innings, as Yogi Berra went to veteran swingman Ray Sadecki. Sadecki gave Yogi three perfect innings. The Mets, meanwhile, failed to score against Jim McKee and Luke Walker. The game would go to a thirteenth inning, when Sadecki, with one out, would allow his first hit, a single to Richie Zisk. After he retired Manny Sanguillen for the second out of the inning, he faced September callup Dave Augustine.
This is where The Miracle occurs.
This is where it’s best left to Bob Murphy to deliver The Word:
“The two-one pitch…
“Hit in the air to left field, it’s deep…
“Back goes Jones, BY THE FENCE…
“It hits the TOP of the fence, comes back in play…
“Jones grabs it!
“The relay throw to the plate, they may get him…
“…HE’S OUT!
“He’s out at the plate!
“An INCREDIBLE play!”
If you’re scoring at home, the interpretation would be 7-6-2, Cleon Jones to Wayne Garrett to Ron Hodges, the rookie catcher who ascended to the Mets’ starting lineup for much of the summer from Double-A Memphis because of injuries. Zisk, the runner from first, tied a piano to his back when he took off around the bases. The man was slow. But The Man Upstairs was quick-thinking. He (or Something) prevented what looked like, on Channel 9, a sure home run for Augustine from landing in the left field bullpen for what would have been his first — and only — major league home run. Had the ball made it past the wall, the Mets would have been down 5-3.
But it didn’t go quite far enough, at least from a Pirate perspective. It bounced off the very top of the fence and caromed right back into Cleon’s glove. He made a strong throw to Garrett, who made a strong throw to Hodges, who made a strong stand in front of the plate, bringing down an emphatic tag on Zisk.
“The ball hit the corner and it just popped up to me,” Jones recounted. “I didn’t think he hit it high enough to go over. I knew the ball was gonna hit the fence, but it could’ve gone anywhere.”
Garrett, who had moved to shortstop from his usual third base in the tenth after Bud Harrelson had been pinch-hit for, aimed low when he made his relay throw to Hodges. “I wanted it to hit the ground,” Wayne said, and he got his wish. The ball arrived in Hodges’s mitt the same time Zisk was charging into Hodges’s body. The kid catcher held the ball and home plate ump John McSherry held his right arm upwards, signaling the lumbering Pirate runner out.
“It has to be one of the most remarkable plays I ever saw,” Garrett swore.
The Mets weren’t done being remarkable. The aptly named Walker walked his first two batters in the bottom of the thirteenth. Luke walked off the mound. Dave Giusti walked on. He got one out, but that was all. Hodges, having the night of his career, singled, scoring John Milner from second. The Mets had won 4-3 in a game that would be forever remembered for the Ball Off the Top of the Wall and how it bounced in the only direction it could.
Namely, the same direction the Mets were going in.
This third straight win over the Pirates didn’t put the Mets in first place. It didn’t even put them then at .500. But both of those events would happen the next night, when Tom Seaver would throw a five-hitter to beat the Bucs, 10-2. In a four-day span in September, an unprecedented Metamorphosis occurred. The Mets not only picked up one game per day in the standings, they picked up one place per day. From fourth and 3½ out after Monday, they climbed to first and a half-game up on Friday. It had been barely three weeks since they were in last place. Now they were in first place.
They were in first place. The Mets. The 1973 Mets.
Fifty years ago tonight: you pretty much had to Believe by then.
by Greg Prince on 20 September 2023 8:55 am He may not have had the spelling quite right 46 summers ago, but Marvin Gaye foresaw Tuesday night’s ninth inning in Miami at…I know what it’s called, but I’m not in the mood to acknowledge it Park. After struggling to convert baserunners into runs, and balls hit at them into outs, the Mets dramatically pulled into a tie with the Marlins and made a whole new ballgame of it. And then, because the Mets were engaged in a 3-3 deadlock rather than holding a lead, Buck Showalter entrusted the bottom of the ninth to Trevor Gott to make the same old ballgame of it.
 Trevor entered, the Marlins were havin’ a ball. In 1977, Marvin Gaye hit the top of the pop charts with a hypnotic dance floor groove titled “Got To Give It Up (Part 1)”. One “t” in the song’s first word notwithstanding, Marvin was right on the nose, much as a conga line of Marlins would soon be on the basepaths. Trevor’s first pitch was to the body (if not the nose) of Nick Fortes. He’d be the first Marlin on first.
You knew at that point Fortes won’t be the last. Fortes or somebody running in his stead would prevent a runner from standing on second to begin the tenth because they’re wasn’t gonna be no tenth. I’d known since the top of the third ended and I absorbed the R-H-E line score:
METS 1 5 0
MARLINS 0 0 2
We were ahead, but we were finding ways to not be ahead by the plenty more the Marlins were inviting us to be. As the evening progressed, highlighted but not limited to…
a) Joey Lucchesi fielding a bunt and throwing to third base despite third baseman Ronny Mauricio standing next to him and no Met standing at third as a runner approached from second (with Mauricio likely not providing Lucchesi any direction to throw to first as we’ve been told third basemen are supposed to, because Ronny’s a brand new major leaguer and an even less experienced third baseman);
and
b) Garrett Hampson robbing Mauricio of the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth following Brandon Nimmo’s clutch double to rescue the Mets from their own offensive frustration (with Mauricio reminding us that it will be worth enduring his growing pains, because he can really swing the bat)
…the sense crept to the fore and remained in our direct line of sight that the Mets would produce a loss no matter how reluctant the Marlins appeared to inflict one on them.
Buck told Trevor to do what Trevor does, and he responded. In retrospect, it was methodical, but in the moment, it wasn’t easy. Nothing about this game was easy. I watched it with a piercing sinus headache that didn’t get any better from the presence of Trevor Gott. My doctor probably wouldn’t have recommended it, yet there I was, watching Xavier Edwards bunt Fortes to second (with, fortunately, nobody throwing a ball to nobody); Jorge Soler receive an intentional walk (thus delaying the inevitable a couple of minutes); Joey Wendle come in to pinch-run for Fortes; Yuli Gurriel make a productive out to the right side, moving the runners from second and first to the third and short; and then, despite a couple of strikes meant to lull us into a false sense of optimism, Jake Burger line the game-winning single into center. Wendle scored, and the Marlins had themselves an important Wild Card race win, along with their 4-3 revenge on us for getting our revenge the night before on some combination — in my mind, at least — of the 1998 Marlins, the 2007 Marlins and the 2008 Marlins.
The night before, I felt like Daniel Stern as Shrevie in Diner marveling that Tim Daly’s character Billy had just punched out Willard Broxton to get even for something that had happened in a high school baseball game. Neither Shrevie nor Billy (nor Willard) had been in high school for quite a while when this punch was delivered. But Billy swore eternal vengeance after Willard and his entire team had done him wrong in the tenth grade, and he’d get all nine of them — Willard Broxton made it eight — one day, no matter how many days it took.
Beating the Marlins on Monday night in a game the Marlins really needed to have in a year when the Mets just need the year to be over didn’t change the result of that Friday night at Shea in September of 1998 (a John Franco special), or those two out of three in Septembers 2007 (double ugh) and 2008 (double ugh redux) in the same ballpark of blessed memory. In each of those playoff-free seasons, the Mets ended one win shy of where they needed to be to ensure the opportunity to play on. The Marlins were at least partially responsible for all three shortfalls. The Mets were more responsible for not winning enough games in general, yet it is the Teal Menace, with zero otherwise to play for in the waning days of campaigns, we remember as special guest culprits.
Now, FINALLY, the Marlins are in a playoff race that the Mets are not involved in — a Manfred-rigged playoff race, but a legitimate enough one in that it’s taking place over 162 rather than 60 games. The last time this happened was in 2003. The Mets were helpless and hopeless throughout that September, and all those Mets could do was literally let those Marlins punch their postseason ticket in their faces at…I’m gonna guess it was called Pro Player Stadium then. This September, as the Mets have occasionally appeared capable of competing with contenders, they’ve taken games no doubt rued as having gotten away by Mariners fans, Diamondbacks fans and Reds fans. I’ve heard the Mets referred to as spoilers. I did not come into this world with the ambition of, when nothing else of a Met nature was at stake, spoiling the hopes and dreams of fans of the Mariners or the Diamondbacks or the Reds. I enjoyed the Mets beating them, given that I maintain a pulse, but I didn’t take bonus satisfaction from the tossing of a monkey wrench into their respective ambitions.
But when we beat the Marlins on Monday night, doing it as we did on a reversed home run call that screwed them and Jeff McNeil going deep to screw them further, it was as if somebody had just socked Willard Broxton/Hanley Ramirez in the face. Yes! That makes it one!
It would have been nice to have kept up that vibe. For all the evil we attribute to the Marlins, they didn’t actually sweep us in September 1998 or September 2007 or September 2008. I realize it makes a more appealing woe-be-unto-us story to say we’ve never beaten them in a big game, but we came back on that weekend in ’98 to beat them twice, and we memorably won Saturday games from them the last two years at Shea, one pitched by John Maine (almost a no-hitter) and the other by Johan Santana (almost a miracle, as it was on one knee and with no assist, thank goodness, from the bullpen). We even managed to pluck three in a row in Miami the penultimate weekend of 2007 at…I’m gonna guess it was called Sam’s Discount Light Bulb Palace of Sparks then.
The Marlins never had to sweep us in those years. They just needed to abscond with one or two well-placed games to stab us in the heart, or apropos of how I’d been feeling since Tuesday afternoon, the left sinus. Maybe our injecting defeat into their jaws of victory Monday night will make all the difference when all is said and done for 2023. Maybe Tuesday night reset their momentum and we’ll be watching them do Fish tricks in October. Either way, to have taken the first two of this series would have been very sweet and set up the possibility of an even sweeter sweep in front of their long-suffering fan, whose name I have to apologize for not immediately recalling. Buck Showalter, however, didn’t listen to Marvin Gaye. “Got(t) to give it up,” the singer warned the manager. Gaye even helpfully added a “(Part One)” to the record’s label to emphasize to Showalter that this wasn’t going to happen just once.
Gott’s given it up multiple times. But we already knew how that number goes.
by Jason Fry on 18 September 2023 11:44 pm Marlins Nation! We need to talk! Because what just happened?
We just took it to the Atlanta Braves — the mighty Braves! — by sweeping a three-game series and outscoring Acuna and Strider and Co. by a cool 23 runs. There are less than two weeks to go in the season, and the playoffs are right there — it’s not like I need to remind you, but we started play Monday night tied for the National League’s third and final wild-card spot with the Cubs.
Tonight we got to play the Mets, and well, we all know it hasn’t been the best of seasons up in Flushing. Just like we know the Mets and their smug, know-it-all fans deserve it. They’re a gold-plated tire fire, the most expensive collection of baseball players ever assembled, except the big-ticket guys are now gone, sold off and replaced with rookies and Quad-A dudes who make you go, “Oh yeah, that guy,” only it’s entirely possible you’re confusing That Guy with Some Other Guy.
Honestly, couldn’t happen to a nicer team! Anyway, here come the Mets, with some kid named Jose Butto on the mound. This could be a good night — the Phillies are probably out of reach, but we could move a half-game up on the idle Cubs and Diamondbacks and either keep the too-close-for-comfort Reds at bay or push them back a little. All we have to do is beat the Mets, and that hasn’t exactly been a tall order in 2023.
Give this Butto kid credit: He pitches pretty well, showing no fear, and the bad guys take a 1-0 lead in the fifth when Mark Vientos knocks in Ronny Mauricio. Score one for the Baby Mets, but it’s only the halfway point of the game, and we’ve answered back against tougher teams than this one.
And indeed, what did I tell you? We get that run right back in the bottom of the fifth. And then, in the sixth, Butto allows a single to Luis Arraez and leaves a changeup middle-middle to Jorge Soler. That’s a bad idea, and Soler makes the kid pay, hammering a ball high over the left-field foul pole for a 3-1 Marlins lead.
Cue the jubilation — wait, what?
Those Mets are doing Metsy things, crabbing performatively about something or other, but the umpires seem to be listening. And now they’re getting together. No, it can’t be. Soler hit that ball halfway to Mars. Clearly a home run, right? Right?
Wrong. It’s foul. The ruling comes on the field. Skip Schumaker complains vociferously, as he damn well should, but the call for review goes nowhere. It’s foul. Longest damn foul ball in the history of baseball, but foul.
Ah well, no matter. The kid’s got to be rattled by seeing a foul ball that ought to have had a stewardess on it. Soler will straighten the next one out a little, and…
…and he strikes out. Arraez never makes it past first. The game stays tied, and then the bad vibes swim in, like vengeful ghost fish looking for the Red Grooms sculpture.
Phil Bickford — some other anonymous Met I’m not sure is an actual baseball player — can’t find the plate to start off the bottom of the eighth, except with the count 3-0 Jacob Stallings gets one of those dumb automatic strikes called against him. Bickford, given a reprieve, gets Stallings to foul out. He gets the side out in order, but at least the game’s in the hands of Tanner Scott, who’s been pretty much unhittable.
Scott’s third pitch to Jeff McNeil is a slider that McNeil hits over the right-field fence. Yes, McNeil! The one their own fans call a squirrel or something. The vaguely homeless-looking guy who’s always swearing and snarling because he thinks he should go 5-for-5 every game. And it’s pretty much the worst swing I’ve ever seen go for a homer — McNeil’s ass is basically in his own dugout when he connects. Look at the replay and you’ll see Scott can’t believe it, standing there with his mouth a shocked cartoon O as McNeil skips around the bases, probably cursing because he thought the luckest home run in history should have gone even farther.
I hate that guy! I hate all those guys! I hate that half our stadium is their fans when we play them, even in a season that’s seen their half-billion-dollar asses get spanked and end the year trying to stay ahead of the Nationals.
We still have a chance — Adam Ottavino‘s been so-so and my grandmother is about as effective holding guys on. Get a guy on and he’ll be on third for free, then bring him in to tie it up and wait for the Mets to do or not do the kind of things they’ve done or not done all year.
Except let’s not kid ourselves, we can all feel it’s not going to happen. Ottavino goes 1-2-3, ending the game by fanning Jake Burger on three freaking pitches. Oh, and the Reds won, so if the season ended tonight we’d go home.
All because of the Mets! The freaking Mets!
It makes me so mad I could knock down a big expensive sculpture.
* * *
Dear Marlins,
Well, that was heartfelt. I almost feel kind of bad for you. Now allow me a counterpoint:
HA HA HA HA HA
HO HO HO HO HO
HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE
Fuck you Wayne Huizenga, Jeff Loria, Bud Selig, Derek Jeter, Soilmaster Stadium, Luis Castillo and Miguel Cabrera and every single fucking Marlin who ever snuck a ball through an infield in the ninth inning of yet another horrible game played in front of bobbleheads and a big fucking Pachinko thing and fishtanks and a nightclub and all the other stupid shit I’ve forgotten. Fuck you teal and barfed-up neon lettering and calling your team after an entire state when you’re not the only team in that state, and fuck you for not wearing the Sugar Kings alts that are the only good thing about your franchise, and fuck you for being a horrific grift on taxpayers, and fuck you for your cynical, serial teardowns and for being the most benighted franchise in the modern game, the one that should be moved to Charlotte or Montreal or the Ross Ice Shelf or just contracted and never spoken of again except to scare children into better behavior, and fuck you for the fact that Mike Piazza‘s Hall of Fame plaque has to list your stupid misbegotten team, and fuck you for beating the Yankees that one time because I have to be kind of grateful about that, and fuck you for being the rotted-out, reeking black heart of baseball nihilism and an eternal blight on not only the game but also the very idea that anything in the cosmos could be worth preserving.
Oh, and fuck your wild-card hopes, too. At least for a night.
Sincerely,
The freaking Mets
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