Mets fans have reason to believe again and theyre savoring every exhilarating second
They didn’t want to leave.Leave? It’s going to be winter for a long time.
There will be so many days and nights without baseball in the months to come.They didn’t want to let go of the night, of this game, of each other.
There were 44,103 in the stands.There were a couple of dozen players and staffers on the field.Home?Hell, they didn’t even want to walk off the field.
Ten minutes passed.Fifteen.
The stands were still full.The field was still full.
They took a team picture.The players clapped at the fans, the fans applauded back.
Champagne awaited them in the clubhouse, but that could keep.They wanted to cling to this.
They wanted it to last a lifetime.“We keep climbing,” Francisco Lindor said.They do.They have been climbing since the depths of May, since 11 under .500.
At one point, the Mets were 17 ½ games behind the Phillies.It didn’t look like they’d even see them again after the first of June, the Phillies were so far out ahead of them.Now, remarkably, it was the Phillies going home.
The Mets? The Mets are going to California.They’re going to the National League Championship Series.
They dismissed the Phillies Wednesday, 4-1, one more time erasing a deficit, same as they have in four of their five playoff wins.“I want to enjoy this moment,” Jose Quintana said, “for as long as they’ll let me.”Quintana was one important faction in this ensemble baseball cast, throwing five gritty innings, allowing only one run.The Mets had abandoned a battalion of base runners across the first five innings, and there was uneasiness, concern they’d live to regret that.Lindor changed everything.Really, Lindor began to change everything when he agreed to be traded here, when he agreed to sign a long-term deal here, a captain in spirit if without a “C” stitched on his jersey.
It didn’t go well at first.And early in this year, lurking south of .200 as late as May 21, it seemed it might never go quite the way he or Steve Cohen had hoped....