The fiasco that was Wednesday, July 29 at Citi Field will for a long time stand as Exhibit A for a couple of truisms my wife and I share as we watch the Mets most every night from April to October (yeah, October):
One, every game features something you’ve never seen before, and two, baseball is so great because it’s a daily, unscripted soap opera.
I mean, when did you ever see a Met hit three home runs, and get no attention for it? When did you ever see a player crying a river on the field? When did you ever see a player on the field that you were told belonged to another team? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Having watched thousands of Mets games over the years, and having witnessed – or lived through – the whole uniquely bizarre evening, I was left with one impression, independent of whether you blame Joel Sherman, Sandy Alderson, Doug Melvin, the bat boy, or whoever.
Only the Mets.
Only the Mets could have been at the center of this tragicomedy, whether it was their fault or not. The infrequent highs and frequent lows for this franchise have always been so uniquely pronounced.
From the impossible World Series title in ‘69 to the impossible comeback in Game 6 of the ‘86 Series to an Agbayani-Timo-Payton outfield making it to the October Classic to the prospect of five young controllable aces in the same rotation, the mountaintop experiences have been…really high.
And we all know enough about the lows to forego cataloguing them here.
But Wednesday night added a new dimension to the 53-year old soap opera: The utterly bizarre.
Forget the emotions of Wilmer Flores for a moment. How about the unparalleled emotional rollercoaster for Mets fans? By my count, there were 15 such swings of emotion over the course of three or four hours:
Wow, fantastic, we’re getting Gomez, just what we need. Wait, we’re giving up on Wheeler, one of our budding studs? Hold on, are we gonna get burned when Flores turns into a real hitter in Milwaukee? Hey, why are Gomez’s numbers down this year? Why the hell hasn’t Collins pulled Flores out of the game?
Then, It sure looks like Flores has been crying – hey, he HAS been crying. Look, the fans are giving him a Standing O – touching. Look, Collins finally pulled Flores out of the game – the deal must be done. Wait, Flores said they told him there was no deal. I don’t believe this – Collins is swearing like a drunken sailor and saying he, the manager of the damn team, was never told what the rest of the world knew.
Then, I really don’t believe this – Alderson is now saying there is and will be no deal. It must be because the Brewers didn’t like the medicals on Wheeler and got cold feet – maybe Wheeler is in worse shape than they’re saying. Wait, they’re now saying it was actually the Mets who didn’t like the medicals on Gomez. Oh, boy, they missed a chance to get a difference maker. Oh, thank God they didn’t get damaged goods and resurrect the ghost of Victor Zambrano.
Whew! There’s only one thing I’m sure of: though this could only happen to the Mets, even they – and we – will never witness a night like that again. But keep your fingers crossed just in case.
