NEW YORK — An hour after the “Let’s Go Mets” chants stopped ringing through the stadium concrete, Brandon Nimmo absorbed what this day — the day the New York Mets had planned for when it was never promised — had been like.
“This,” the team’s longest-tenured player said, “is what Mets fans have been waiting for.”
Behind a sparkling performance from Sean Manaea and an opportunistic offense, the Mets defeated the Phillies 7-2 to move within one victory of the National League Championship Series. They can eliminate Philadelphia and pop champagne for the third time in 10 days on Wednesday night at Citi Field.
Welcome to Baseball Wonderland, a land of make-believe and “Ya Gotta Believe” populated by a Polar Bear, a lucky pumpkin and a fast-food mascot. It’s developed its own soundtrack and its own internal dream logic, and it’s more than any Mets fan could have conjured up weeks ago, let alone months.
There’s no Queen of Hearts here — just the heart of Queens.
“What a privilege, what an honor for us to have that support from our fan base,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “They deserve this, and we will continue to believe.”
Citi Field is ROCKING ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/3uRGCZpiDV
— x – New York Mets (@Mets) October 8, 2024
That belief in these memeable, magical Mets resounded through Citi Field, where the stands were packed a half-hour before the first pitch and where the revelry extended well beyond the last out.
“It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before,” Tyrone Taylor said of the atmosphere at Citi Field. “It was epic.”
Think of all that’s transpired since the fans here gave Pete Alonso a standing ovation in what could have been his last at-bat in home pinstripes, way back on Sept. 22. In the 16 days since, the Mets had bounced between Atlanta and Milwaukee, Scylla and Charybdis.
“We had plans of this,” said Jesse Winker. “Being on the road was part of our journey. Now we’re back here and we’re loving it.”
Baseball is a long game won in the aggregate. But the memories it inspires, they’re still won in the moment. And for nine days now, Alonso and the Mets are stacking moment upon moment, a reel of reclamation aimed at joining “Five Days in Flushing” in franchise lore.
Alonso embodies that most of anyone. For 164 games and eight innings, his final season under contract had been a trying one, a season-long emotional distancing between a fan base and the one-time face of the franchise. That changed with one swing in Milwaukee, and now Alonso is on the kind of heater the Mets had been waiting for all year long.
He opened the scoring Tuesday with a laser beam home run to right off Aaron Nola — his third homer in four games, all of them the other way. It’s the sixth time he’s taken Nola deep in just over 50 career at-bats.
“He’s already changed games with one swing,” said Winker. “He did it again tonight.”
“He does things that bewilder us all the time,” Nimmo said. “He’s a different kind of strong.”
“We’ve been saying it the whole year. He can carry a team,” Mendoza said. “He can carry us.”
More than the home runs, Nimmo said, the comfortable walks Alonso is drawing point to a refined focus.
“When he’s doing that,” he said, “he’s a dangerous hitter.”
Alonso was not alone on Tuesday. In the fourth, Winker made it 2-0 with a long home run to right off Nola. He watched the ball from the comfort of the batter’s box until it descended into the second deck, dawdling so long he might as well have pulled out a phone and posted “Hang it in the Louvre.”
“I always wondered what it would be like to be a New York Met,” Winker said, perhaps with a wave. “It’s a dream come true.”
The Mets added on in the later innings, with Starling Marte and José Iglesias delivering two-run singles to extend the lead. The defense delivered, with Mark Vientos making as fine a play as he has all year to rob Alec Bohm, and Taylor bare-handing a ball off the wall and firing a strike to second to snag Bohm stretching his next time up.
It was all plenty enough for Manaea. Two years after a playoff dud against the Phillies sparked serious introspection, Manaea was masterful against them. He roared after escaping a jam in the sixth, then came back out to pitch into the eighth, the only tally against him scoring after he’d departed the game.
Alonso, in the nervous moments of that eighth inning, re-energized the crowd, lifting his glove to get it back engaged. One Ryne Stanek pitch later, the inning was over.
“It’s just fun to play in environments like that,” Stanek said. “Even if you’re gassed, even if you’re beat up, you always get that adrenaline kick. It’s such a bonus.”
That last homestand of the season, Nimmo had appealed to the fans. Attendance had been down all season, slow to react to the momentum the Mets had been building for months. The only guy on the team to experience both the 2016 and 2022 home playoff games, Nimmo wanted something even louder.
“They’ve answered in full,” Nimmo said. “It just feels different. I can tell with the way they’re cheering and they’re reacting, it just feels different to them, too.”
“This is really special stuff here,” said Alonso. “You can’t make it up.”
(Photo of Pete Alonso celebrating with Harrison Bader: Vincent Carchietta / Imagn Images)
