Strike 3 was a 93 mph slider, the kind of pitch that would have made even Rogers Hornsby ponder life on the farm. Gleyber Torres had no chance, the way so many others have had no chance when standing 60 feet, six inches away from Edwin Diaz this year.
The orange-and-blue faction of Citi Field exploded. The pinstriped bloc started the long, bitter walk to the parking lot and subway platform. The Mets had beaten the Yankees 6-3, first game of what may well have been the most anticipated Subway Series regular-season game since the first one 25 years ago.
“We’ve played a lot of emotional games here already, any time you play in New York in front of our fans there’s a real engagement of it; you can understand why it’s a little different level tonight,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said.
“And rightfully so. Pressure is what you make of it. It’s a privilege to play in this environment, have fun, draw something from it, reach back for it as we go forward and hopefully be able to use it if we do what we’re trying to do.”
Said Yankees manager Aaron Boone, whose team is engaged in its first difficult patch of the season (10-11 in July): “It wasn’t going to be perfect all year. Tonight we weren’t able to cash in enough.”
It was one game in the middle of what has been one of the most satisfying baseball summers in years, a couple of first-place teams engaged in an old-fashioned intramural tilt. For a night, Mets fans could ignore the Braves on the out-of-town scoreboard. For a night, Yankees fans could stop fretting about the Astros.
For a night, this was all about us.
All about New York, New York.
It wasn’t a beautiful game, by any stretch. Both teams kicked the ball around a bit. The Mets drove Jordan Montgomery out of the game after 2 ¹/₃ innings by driving up his pitch count. Taijuan Walker looked on the verge of calamity across just about every pitch of his six-inning, three-run worknight.
“If you pitch in 30 games, you’re going to have five stinkers,” Montgomery reasoned.
But we don’t judge these games on style points. We grade on a different curve when it comes to the Subway Series. So in the first inning alone there were multiple occasions for both sides to scream themselves hoarse. When Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo connected for homers on consecutive pitches in the top of the first you could — if you closed your eyes — envision that everyone was actually on the other side of the RFK Bridge.
By the bottom half, the Mets had pounded Montgomery for four runs, two of them on home runs by Starling Marte and Eduardo Escobar. You could hear the 7 Line’s roar all the way up in the Catskills. It was the same ear-splitting thunder that greeted Diaz’ 93 mph slider — sheer, unmitigated filth — about three hours later.
“You know,” Showalter said, “that they’re going to be a lot of ebbs and flows in this game.”
Get all the latest live and local coverage from the New York Post as the Yankees and Mets face off for Game 1 of the 2022 Subway Series.
Showalter may well have an opportunity in front of him, should the rest of the year and the rest of his contract play out as the first 97 games have, for it is almost certain that he is bound for a unique place in New York’s baseball pantheon: among the most significant figures to represent both organizations.
(One man’s Top 5: 1. Johnny Murphy, All-Star pitcher for the Yanks in the ‘30s and ‘40s, GM and architect of the ’69 Mets; 2. Casey Stengel (his number IS retired by both teams, after all); Yogi Berra (led both teams to Game 7 of the World Series; 4. Willie Randolph (played on two Yankees champs and coached five, severely underrated as a manager with the Mets, guiding them to one of only six first-place finishes in their history; 5. Gus Mauch, trainer for 10 Yankees championships and the ’69 Mets).
That’s another subject for another day.
For this day, the Mets will savor a full ballpark and the feel-good vibes of winning the first of four tests for bragging rights this year. The Yankees were left to ponder Wednesday’s Max Scherzer-Domingo German matchup, and Boone spent a few minutes on the postgame griddle (rightfully so) for sending up pinch-hitter Joey Gallo (who has struck out 38 percent of his at-bats) to face Edwin Diaz, who has struck out 52 percent of the hitters he’s faced.
Free pie if you can guess what happened next.
Wednesday is a fresh canvas, a fresh start, and another splendid slice of a summer that has rekindled New York’s ever-simmering love affair with baseball. Two first-place teams. All about us. All about New York, New York.
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