This is what the Mets can still feel like here, how they can still matter, the way they have in other seasons when National League New York rose up this way. There have been other Met teams that played with this kind of toughness and flair and pure joy. Just not many. Maybe that is why this run of theirs, the comeback story they started writing at the end of May, feels so new. Like we’re meeting the Mets all over again.
The ones who were around more than 50 years ago tell you this is the way it was with the Mets of 1969, of course. That was when Tom Seaver was the star and the face of things the way a baseball point guard like Francisco Lindor is the star and face of things with these Mets now. Seaver was still a kid. Lindor is not. He just plays that way.
It doesn’t mean the Mets are going back to the World Series for the first time since 2015 because they have beaten the Brewers and Phillies the way they have. After Pete Alonso made the swing of his lifetime against the Brewers and then Lindor did the same on Wednesday with a grand slam that felt like it cleared his whole team from the bases, there was even more team-of-destiny talk around the Mets than there had been already. But to be one of those, you have to make it to the end of October, and beyond sometimes.
But these Mets, the Mets of Carlos Mendoza and Lindor and the Polar Bear and a Great Adventure of a closer in Edwin Diaz, sure have their chance now. It is right there for them, the chance to be one of Those Teams. There have been other Mets teams with a chance since the Mets last won it all in ’86, a team that owned New York as much as any baseball team ever has. But there has not been a Mets team since the 86ers that their fans have come to love quite like this. And guess what? It’s not just Met fans who are doing that right now in the big, bad city.
The Mets have always had this way of being dramatic even when they weren’t very good; when they were as much the Other Team in town as ever. Sometimes — a lot of times? — the Mets have been like a bad movie you still had to sit all the way through. But this team is different. It does play the game with toughness and flair and joy. And best kind of drama. They are a 27-out team that played the Braves all the way to the end at the end of the regular season. They played the Brewers to the end when they were two outs away from next season, and then they took out the Phillies the way they did, coming from behind again, Lindor finally making as famous a swing as any Met has ever made in any month, even at old Shea.
Now they try to play all the way to the end of October, and into November if the World Series makes it that far. They have lit up the city over the past two weeks the way the Knicks and their own point guard, Jalen Brunson, did last spring. They keep reminding everybody that no matter how many times they are called an underdog team on one of those pre-game show, they have had the best record in baseball for nearly five months. The team they just knocked out in the division round, the Phillies? The Phillies were 16 games ahead of the Mets on May 29. This is a comeback story for sure. But not an underdog story. That one pulled out of the Willets Ave. station months ago.
The Yankees might be on their way back to the World Series, too. They might have a better chance to get there than the Mets do. They’ve got Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, who have become the Mantle and Maris and Ruth and Gehrig of their own moment. But Lindor, even after a regular season when Judge hit 58 more home runs, is suddenly the biggest baseball star in New York City, the kind of dazzling presence that Jackie Robinson once was for the old Dodgers.
Lindor is the switch-hitting shortstop with speed and power. He is the team leader. He is the guy who hits the kind of home run he did against the Braves and then hits an even bigger one against the Phillies and runs around the bases with the kind of grace and the kind of calm that says, yeah, I’m acting like I’ve been here before because I have been.
And just when you wonder if Alonso — on his way to being the greatest home run hitter the Mets have ever had if he stays instead of leaves as a free agent — is ever going to hit another one over the wall, over the right field wall he goes in Milwaukee, and 2-0 for the Brewers with two outs left in the Mets season becomes 3-2, just like that. And once again this fall it was the Mets who felt like the biggest and loudest and happiest game in town.
Here is what Lindor, who takes his role as the leader of this team as seriously as Seaver once did, said after his grand slam had put the Mets back into a league championship series:
“I want to win it all. I want to win it all. And ours will be a team that will forever be remembered. This will be a team that comes every 10 years and eats for free everywhere they go. And I want to do that. I want to do that. But the job is not done.”
The job is not done. The Mets have won five playoff games so far and need eight more on top of those to make it to the Canyon of Heroes the way the Miracle Mets of ’69 did, and then the 86ers of Keith and Gary and Doc and Darryl did after that, and where no Mets team has gone since. Maybe they can do it. But even if they don’t, they are about to give their fans another ride in the National League Championship Series.
They’re having a moment, whatever happens from here. They’re making you remember what Met moments feel like around here. Meet the Mets. All over again.
Back page for Oct. 10, 2024: Lindor’s grand slam in sixth inning sends Citi Field into frenzy and Mets into NLCS. In a season filled with big moments, Francisco Lindor delivers his biggest yet, hitting a grand slam to lift the Mets past the Phillies, 4-1, and into the NLCS.
ALL ON AARON NOW FOR JETS, STANTON A REAL OCTOBER PLAYER & JAZZ THE NEW SOUND OF THE YANKEES …
Thirteen months or so the Jets won a game of Monday Night Football from the Bills without Aaron Rodgers.
That was the night when Rodgers’ season was lost and the Jets season was lost after his Achilles injury and Robert Saleh — remember him? — handed the keys to the car to Zach Wilson and, well, remember him?
Now the Jets are back at MetLife Stadium and the Bills are back and if that game in September of 2023 felt big at the time, this one tomorrow night feels a lot bigger.
Rodgers won’t be carrying a flag onto the field, just his team’s season.
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And this one isn’t on the new coach or the new play caller.
This one is on him as the Jets try to save their season and turn it around at the exact same time.
Starting against the Bills we’re going to see just how much No. 8 has left in the tank, six weeks or so from when he turns 41.
Maybe this is the night when we finally get to see Green Bay Aaron.
If that guy still exists.
By the way?
Ambassador Woody said again the other day that this is the best Jets team he’s ever had.
This long after the Jets have made the playoffs, how in the world would he know what a good team looks like?
Ask this question again, since Ambassador Woody basically says he’s been thinking about getting rid of Saleh for a couple of years:
If Greg Zuerlein makes that kick against the Broncos and Rodgers doesn’t throw a God-awful pick at the end of the Vikings game, who’s coaching the Jets Monday night?
You know who has shown up in October like the player he used to be, and the player the Yankees thought they were getting from the Marlins?
Giancarlo Stanton.
The Yankees don’t think of it as the American League Central, they think of it as the E-ZPass Division.
Can it really be possible that this is only the third time the Mets and Yankees have made the Final Four in the same season?
Won’t be the last time.
Did somebody pass a law that when interviewing the player who just got the big hit in a big game, the on-field interviewer has to ask, “What was going through your mind?”
If Daniel Jones plays against Joe Burrow and the Bengals on Sunday night the way he’s been playing the past few weeks, maybe the Giants can have a season after all.
Or maybe they’re just another NFC East team living in Jayden Daniels’ world.
I’m sure ‘Bama fans took that loss to Vandy last weekend right in stride.
Wait.
They didn’t take it right in stride?
You know who was terrific in Kansas City the other night, when the Yankees needed a win in Game 3 so they didn’t have to play for their season in Game 4?
Clarke Schmidt, is who.
Still loving the cockeyed narrative that the Jets losing to the 4-0 Vikings in front of Ambassador Woody’s old friends in London was somehow the last straw.
People now want to blame Nathaniel Hackett for everything except the Mud Bowl.
It’s still worth remembering that he didn’t hire himself.
Turns out that neither John Sterling nor my pal Michael Kay is the voice of the Yankees, because Jazz Chisholm has apparently decided he is.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/10/12/mets-francisco-lindor-playoffs-nlcs-grand-slam-lupica/