Just Mets

What a long, strange trip it’s been–and I’m only talking about the last two days.

What’s transpired for the Mets both on, off and in between the field since the start of Wednesday night’s game against the Padres had been a wild and bumpy ride, full of a spectrum of emotions for a much-bewildered fanbase.

I showed up to Citi Field about an hour before game time on Wednesday, expecting a normal evening of baseball. It wasn’t much long after that the rumors started to swirl, beginning with ESPN’s Adam Rubin tweeting that the Mets were working on a trade that would excite the fans.

Speculation ran rampant, fake reports about Yoenis Cespedes heading to Flushing were surfacing and everyone was wondering who the player was and what exactly was going on. Soon after, it became known that Brewers center fielder Carlos Gomez–the former Mets prospect–was the player they were pushing “hard” to acquire. It was in around the 4th inning when the New York Post’s Joel Sherman reported that the Mets had acquired Gomez in a trade with the Brewers for Zack Wheeler and Wilmer Flores. A “done deal,” as Sherman said.

That’s when things got weird. Really weird.

It wasn’t long after the news came out that there was a tangible buzz circulating through the stadium, even as the Mets trailed the Padres 6-1 at the time in a game that I myself nearly forgot was going on. People were talking about the trade everywhere you went, I chatted with a couple of nice fans on the Shea Bridge about it as we discussed whether or not giving up Wheeler was the right move and if Gomez would be in the lineup on Thursday or on Friday against the Nationals.

Meanwhile, Bartolo Colon was getting shelled and the Mets were well on their way to a loss against the sub-.500 Padres. But nobody cared, which seemed amazing considering winning should be the most important thing.

Suddenly it was brought to my attention that Flores, one of the two pieces in this deal that was reported as done, was still on the field. While the trade wasn’t official, it is very uncommon for a player involved in a trade to remain in the game once the deal is agreed upon, as everyone seemed to realize. The innings continue to pile up and yet here we were, heading into the 7th inning, and Flores is still in the game.

It’s at this point where I see Wilmer jogging out of the dugout for the top half of the inning; face red, wiping his eyes. Somehow, someway–whether it was the fans, a teammate or a television in the tunnel–Flores heard the news that he was going to be traded to the Brewers. This guy, just a 23-year-old kid by all means, was crying on the field.

It caught everyone by storm. The fans at the ballpark, the telecast and social media all picked up on this rather quickly. The old adage is that there’s no crying in baseball, but can you blame the guy? A member of the Mets organization since he was 16, this is all Wilmer knows. “The first trade is always the hardest,” Keith Hernandez said on the SNY telecast.

It really was heartbreaking to watch. As Flores stepped up to bat, for what we all thought may be the final time, the crowd roared, and when he grounded out later in his at-bat, the response was even louder as the Citi Field residents rose to their feet and gave Flores a standing ovation in a strange, exciting and yet somber moment at the ballpark.

With one out in the 9th inning and Flores due up, it was Ruben Tejada who batted in his place and it appeared as if, unceremoniously, that Wilmer’s Mets career had come to an end between the top and bottom halves of the inning. So I thought.

As I exited Citi Field after a 7-3 loss that few seemed to even care about at this point, chants of “Car-los Gom-ez!” rang through the Jackie Robinson Rotunda and employees at the Mets team store were telling fans that Wheeler and Flores memorabilia would go on sale the next day. It wasn’t until I was on the train where everything changed. At this point I was no longer actively looking at my phone as everything seemed to be in order, however when I did go to check the time, I saw a two word text message from one of my colleagues: “No deal.”

I quickly sprang to Twitter and what I was relayed was the word from Sandy Alderson that there was, in fact, no trade between the Mets and Brewers for Carlos Gomez, “and there isn’t going to be.”

It’s been speculated ad nauseam at this point, so whether it was the Mets that didn’t like Gomez’s medical or a potential financial issue, one thing remained clear: Carlos Gomez wasn’t coming.

Fast forward to Thursday. The Gomez-less Mets took a 7-1 lead at home to the Padres, a pending selling team that essentially won’t exist in that manner by the weekend. For anyone who thought things couldn’t get weirder after what occurred the night prior, myself included, we were wrong.

Leading 7-5, Mets shutdown closer Jeurys Familia took the mound looking for the save and series victory as the team looked forward to a big weekend showdown with the first place Nationals. After retiring the first two batters easily and getting ahead of catcher Derek Norris 0-1, Familia and the Mets were just two simple strikes away from putting away the bad feelings of Wednesday night past them.

Suddenly, though, as if it were a sign from the baseball gods, so to speak, the skies opened and the umpiring crew decided to enter a rain delay even with the given circumstances. After an approximate 45-minute delay, Familia re-took the mound, a bit surprisingly so, to try and finish off the Padres–something he was unable to accomplish. After a lengthy at-bat, Norris was able to bloop one just fair in right field for a hit, which was quickly followed by a single off the bat of Matt Kemp. In stepped Justin Upton, another potential trade target for the Mets, who on the first pitch blasted a go-ahead, three-run home run through the rain drops and over the fence in right-center, shattering the hearts of Mets fans and continuing the nightmare into a second day for this fanbase.

There was a small glimmer of hope for this team, as the game immediately went into another, even lengthier rain delay and it was revealed that the MLB rulebook states that if the game was to be rained out that the top of the 9th would not count, the score would revert to 7-5 and the Mets would come away with the victory. As everyone now knows, this is not what happened and the Mets went on to the 8-7 loss.

The bad feelings continued to grow as later on Thursday night, Carlos Gomez was once again traded–this time to the Houston Astros. This time, it actually was a done deal. For whatever reason, what the Astros doctors saw in Gomez’s medical report about his hips did not concern them as much as it did the Mets, so the trade was accepted and he is now patrolling center field in Houston.

As Thursday night came to a close, so did the two strangest days of baseball I’ve ever experienced in my life. The Mets supposedly made a trade, had a player find out, stay in the game and cry on the field; revealed after the game that said trade did not and would not occur; blew a six-run lead at home after a rain delay was called when they were an out away from victory and had the player everyone thought they acquired on Wednesday wind up with another team entirely.

As the clock ticks and time lessens before the 4:00 PM ET trade deadline, it is yet to be seen if Friday could possibly turn out to be even stranger than the previous two days. 

They’ll be hard to beat, that’s for sure.