Perhaps this day may have ended without the teams languishing in last place. But there will be other days ahead. Plenty of other days.
For 5 hours and 13 minutes, as Sunday afternoon segued toward Sunday evening, we were a city with two last-place baseball teams thanks to a couple of miraculous ninth innings that took place 1,050 miles away from each other and five minutes removed from each other.
First, at 4:44 p.m., a Washington National named Jeter Downs blooped one just beyond the reach of the infielders at Nationals Park, scoring old friend Dominic Smith and capping a six-run ninth inning that helped the Nats rally to an 8-7 win over the Athletics. That ensured that the Nats would crawl into a virtual tie with the Mets at the bottom of the NL East, actually a few percentage points ahead of them.
So at 4:44 the Mets officially became a last-place team.
And Sunday was simply the coup de grace, a chance to take a series against a winning team for the first time since June blowing up like a quick-wick M80 on the Fourth of July, pushing them five games out in the wild-card chase and — more pertinent to this subject — two full games behind the Red Sox in the AL East basement with three games against the pinball-machine offense of the Braves looming before the Sox come to town next week in a heated battle for fourth place.
In case you were wondering about the state of The Rivalry, let’s hear it from “Mad Men” character Pete Campbell: “Not great, Bob!!) That applies to the city’s dragging nines and flagging baseball season, too. Perhaps this day may have ended without the teams languishing in last place. But there will be other days ahead.
Norge Siste Nytt, Norge Overskrifter
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