Just the name “America’s Pastime” implies a sport that takes itself too seriously. Baseball being so heavy on (bad) statistics and empirical evidence of players’ greatness further reinforces this pompous attitude around a game that at its core, is pretty silly.
Baseball raised me. I spent a huge chunk of the first eighteen years of my life on baseball fields and I still coach to this day. Anyone who has played or coached baseball knows how goofy the culture around it is—and even those who haven’t and have just seen Savannah Bananas highlights still get it. The dumbest conversations I have ever had in my life have all taken place in dugouts and on the back of buses driving home from baseball games. The Very Serious posture so many national media types have around baseball, reinforced by stodgy old baseball culture like how it’s normal to throw at someone for celebrating a home run too much, is just wrong. The spirit of the game is much looser and freewheeling.
In other words, much of baseball likes to look at itself through the lens of the Very Serious and facial hairless New York Yankees, when everyone knows that its true spirit lies far closer to the chaotic and psychotic energy of the New York Mets, who before this past week may have had their legacy of this season be Jomboy Media’s incredible breakdown of them consistently refusing to try to break up double plays.
Instead, the Mets now find themselves on a wild run for the ages. On Monday, they played a doubleheader delayed by Hurricane Helene where they entered the 8th inning of the first game down 3-0 to the Atlanta Braves with a playoff spot on the line. They scored six runs to take the lead, then gave it right back in the bottom of the 8th, allowing four runs to score, putting Atlanta back in front, 7-6. In the top of the 9th, MVP candidate Fransisco Lindor hit a two-run home run to retake the lead, and the Mets held on for an 8-7 win.
Last night, they played a win or go home playoff game against the Milwaukee Brewers, and just when it looked like they were deader than dead, the Mets turned the chaos meter all the way back up and demonstrated the beauty of baseball.
After New York gave up back-to-back home runs on back-to-back pitches to Jake Bauers and Sal Frelick in the bottom of the 7th, it felt like Milwaukee’s 2-0 lead might as well have been 20-0. Up to that point, the Brewers were throwing a no-hitter against Mets not named Fransico Lindor, and when that continued into the top of the 9th, the Mets funeral vibes were off the charts.
But the Mets MVP candidate helped save their season again, as Lindor’s leadoff walk in the 9th must have changed something in the energy of the universe. Other Mets hitters were allowed to get hits now, and after Brandon Nimmo ripped a line drive single off Brewers star closer Devin Williams (who as Jomboy investigated, was tipping his pitches), Pete Alonso stepped up in yet another example of how the baseball gods are cruel, but fair.
Just before this at bat, in what could have been the impending free agent’s final game in a Mets uniform, Pete Alonso dropped an easy pop-up in foul territory with runners on 2nd and 3rd that would have ended the 8th inning. Before the ball even hit the ground you could already see the clips of the Brewers’ two-RBI single coming next in your mind’s eye, dooming Alonso to Bill Bucknerville forever on his way out the door should the Mets erase the pre-error deficit in the 9th and still lose.
But Alonso’s calamitous mistake proved to not matter as Mets closer Edwin Díaz got the strikeout to end the inning. As every baseball player ever is familiar with at this point, of course Pete Alonso got an at-bat right after he royally screwed up in the field. Baseball is just funny that way. With one out in the 9th, on a 3-1 count and representing the potential go-ahead run, Alonso locked in on hitting a pitch to the opposite field–and boy howdy did he ever–ripping a legendary game-winning home run that if it were five feet to the left, may have been a game-tying double.
As noted by Opta Stats, this is the only time in MLB history that a player has hit a go-ahead home run while trailing in the 9th inning or later of a winner-take-all postseason game. This historic hit that is the dream of every kid playing in his backyard wasn’t produced by the buttoned-up Yankees and their generational hitting duo of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. No, it was accomplished by the chaotic Mets who nearly almost shot their own dick off in their other legendary comeback earlier this week. It is pretty incredible to play that wild of a game on Monday, then to bookend the week with a “call an ambulance…but not for me” shtick in what could have been their home-grown star’s last at bat in the only uniform he has ever worn. That’s just…it’s baseball, man.
Baseball is a lot of things–and Alonso extending his Mets career for at least three more games is a great example of what us weirdos mean when we say it’s romantic–but at its core, a sport centered around the randomness of wood bats hitting balls made of cork and rubber produces a lot of goofy and unexplainable outcomes, like the New York Mets. I cannot wait to see what wacky things they get into next in what I’m sure will be a super normal series against a rival that is no stranger to chaos themselves, the Philadelphia Phillies.
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