Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

As a transplanted New Yorker, it was a bittersweet weekend of baseball in light of the September 11th tributes from Citi Field, Ground Zero, and across the pond to Buckingham Palace.

Watching the subway series in the borough where I broke my baseball cherry, made me nostalgic, and neurotic – because the worst feeling for a Mets fan – is losing to the rivaled Yankees.

After blowing a two-run lead the night before, it appeared that this might have a similar ending, especially when another managerial mishap by Luis Rojas led to a two-run homer by a player who should never have seen one pitch.

In the top of the seventh Brad Hand relieved Miguel Castro, who did a bang up job getting out of the sixth with back-to-back strikeouts, after Jeurys Familia turned a 5-2 lead into 5-4 with the second swing of Geyser Torres’ bat.

Hand inherited DJ LeMahieu at first. He then erased Anthony Rizzo on eight pitches and fanned Brett Gardner looking at his 93 mph four-seam fastball.

Rojas decides the best move to make is allowing the hot slugging Giancarlo Stanton to bat when a very doable out, in the name of Joey Gallo, is on deck. Here’s where I want to ask to speak to the manager, but he IS the manager, so, I curse at him through the TV.

You know what happens next without even seeing the game because you’ve been following the Mets saga all season. Now with the score six apiece – I’m dreading a repeat of Aaron Judge’s heartbreaking second home run from Saturday night – the antithesis of Mike Piazza’s emotional post 9/11 moment, twenty years prior.

This is no comparison in importance, but it is pivotal that the Mets keep winning in order to stay afloat. Maybe this belief is just prolonging the inevitable pain that awaits – but then, Francisco Lindor launches the last of his three home runs, done from both sides of the plate, putting the Mets in the driver’s seat, 7-6, and me delusional all over again.

In the top of the ninth, with yet another precarious lead, Rojas calls upon Edwin Diaz, even though there are potential great pitchers in the stands, wearing Mets uniforms. I want to ask to speak to his supervisor, but I don’t have the dugout phone number, so I curse at the TV some more.

I’m conditioned to believe this isn’t going to fare well for Diaz, even though he strikes out the first batter. As soon as he surrenders a single and walks the next hitter, and a passed ball puts both runners in scoring position, I think, “Life couldn’t be this cruel. If he blows this save, he might not recover.”

Then in a very special Mets episode, with a little too much drama for comfort, the Puerto Rican born pitcher gets Gardner swinging on a slider, and pops up Stanton to short, keeping his ball clubs’ playoff run alive.

This is exhausting.