Shea Bridge Sundays: One Day in September

The Mets getting eliminated from playoff contention doesn't make for celebration — but then again, it was a Mets game.

My apologies for the lateness of the hour — it’s Shea Bridge Sunday, which means we dive into the more beautiful elements of baseball. Today, we look back on a game from September 2019, when the Mets beat the Marlins, and I learned a lot about the lives of the people sitting behind me.

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Unless you’re a credentialed beat reporter or you play for the Mets — and if you’re either of those and you’re a Shea Bridge Report reader, send me an email — you haven’t been to a Mets game since September 29th, 2019, when Dom Smith came off the Injured List and sent fans home in elation. That’s an easy day to look back on, in terms of nostalgia and heartache and all that, and at this stage of the offseason, those are usually the kinds of things I’m looking for. But today, more than 15 months since we’ve been to Citi Field, I want to take you back to a few days before that. 

It was September 25th. The Mets were playing the Marlins. Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, the Brewers were playing the Reds. The Brewers were on the verge of clinching the second wildcard spot, for which the Mets had long flirted with contending.

It was a Wednesday night, and I was sitting in the second deck at Citi Field, in front of two women named Alison and Alisa. I remember my surroundings so well because as soon as I got home after a 10-3 win, I wrote about them. I wrote about them because as soon as the first inning started, they talked without stopping for — this is an estimate — nine years.

“They talked about the previous night’s game,” I wrote, “Alisa’s aging cats; Jacob deGrom’s pitch count (‘he’s thrown so many pitches! Just be done!’); the newest iPhone (‘So I told her, “I have to have this! It’s so nice! It’s lovely!”’); Alisa’s husband being nice enough to pick her up at 6:00 one morning; Mets broadcasters; Alison’s dogs (I would later learn, as far as I could tell, that she is a professional dog-walker); Alisa’s mother; Alisa’s mother’s childhood friend; an art opening down in SoHo, for either the mother or the mother’s friend; bad traffic on the Grand Central Parkway; the problems with Pete Alonso’s swing (‘He’s trying to hit home runs, that’s what’s wrong with him!’); Facebook; a four-year-old diabetic dog that Alison is taking care of; social anxiety; what exactly the newest iPhone was called (‘Tell her you want an 11, because it’s an 11’); social functions; two people named Jeff and Joanne; the ability to read faces and know whether people want to talk; a third person named Ron; the state of contemporary radio; and an article in the New York Times about books being made into movies. As they were discussing this last one, the first inning ended.”

One of them called Brandon Nimmo “Mr. Nimmtastic.” The other one let out an operatic, tortured wail when she heard that Jeff McNeil had a fracture in his hand, then announced matter-of-factly, “it’s okay, I’ll see him in the park with the dog.” Both loved the Mets and loved Jacob deGrom, and couldn’t get enough of reveling in the fact that they were out at a ballgame. Fifteen months later, it seems like maybe they knew something we didn’t.

I thought of Alisa and Alison today for a few reasons. For one, my story on the game they watched is one of my favorites, and one of the best I think I’ve done. Getting a foot in the door of the writing market isn’t easy even if you’re good, but reading through that story, I can’t help but wonder about who might want to read it. “The New Yorker would love this,” I can’t stop myself from thinking.

But it’s more about the undertones of the story. That thing reads like a goddamn Fitzgerald novel, if I do say so myself, full of subtexts and themes and imagery that enters innocently in the first act then recurs thunderously in the third. Mostly, it was about looking ahead. The Mets are getting eliminated from the playoffs tonight, the story goes, which should make for a sad occasion. But at the game, it doesn’t feel that way. It’s just another baseball game, the happiest scene a baseball fan can imagine, and there will be more next year. “If there’s one thing to celebrate,” the story ends, “it’s that baseball is permanent, and playoff elimination is only temporary.”

But now, COVID has thrown a wrench in all of that. We barely had a 2020 baseball season, and even with Francisco Lindor in the picture, we don’t know whether the 2021 season will start on time. The permanence of baseball, though the sport remains, has been shaken.

Which made me think of the other theme of the story: the timelessness. The history. The tradition. The beautiful American institution that is professional baseball.

Yes, there’s always next year, we hope. But you know what even COVID can’t take away from us? There’s always last year, and all the years before it.