PHILADELPHIA — This was a reminder, at a most inopportune time: no one team corners the market on magic in October. Not even a team who regularly has “Amazin’ ” and “Miracle” as their unofficial first name. Not even when that team, the Mets, has broken out the witchcraft so regularly at so many unexpected times across the past week.
The Phillies, it turns out, still know a thing or two about the subject.
And the Phillies are still a hell of a club, and know how to put that magic to good use.
So this series will return to Queens in a flat-footed tie after this 7-6 win for the Phillies, a game in which the Mets led 3-0 and 4-3, then rallied from 6-4 down with one out in the ninth thanks to the bat of a fearless kid named Mark Vientos.
The Mets lost because for one of the few times so far in this series they decided to challenge Bryce Harper, and Harper hit it to the hedges in center field. They lost because Edwin Diaz, who wiggled out of Jose Butto’s jam in the seventh inning, couldn’t work his way out of his own bind in the eighth.
And they lost because Philly’s Nick Castellanos — booed mercilessly earlier in the game by his own fans — hooked a hanging slider from losing pitcher Tylor Megill into left field, detonating Citizens Bank Park and resuscitating the Phillies as it seemed they might be inching toward the darkness.
Instead it was their finest hour.
“An instant classic,” Brandon Nimmo called it
“It feels horrible,” Megill said. “We lost. It’s not the way you want it to go.”
Now we have a genuine happening scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at Citi Field. We have Game 3, which ought to be a three-hour study in hearing loss. We would say the Phillies have the momentum but the way this series has gone across the first 18 innings neither team probably wants it. So far, both teams are at their most dangerous when it seems like the other dugout is flooded with adrenaline.
“We came back in the ninth inning after losing the lead,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. And then the Phillies came back after Vientos pulled the plug at the Bank in the top of the ninth. If you have a dog in this hunt, you were either sick to your stomach on Saturday or on Sunday.
And if the Mets are your dog, Tuesday will be something else. Tuesday can’t come soon enough. Citi Field has gotten a couple of nice dress rehearsals this week, the faithful flocking to 41 Seaver Way for watch parties, the highlights of which have provided hours of content for X and TikTok and Instagram.
Now, finally, comes the real thing.
“I can’t wait to play in front of our fan base,” Mendoza said. “It’s been a while.”
Would it have made a difference if the Mets had swept these games in Philadelphia? Maybe. And for so long Sunday that seemed like a real possibility. Vientos hit his first homer, a two-run blast in the third. Pete Alonso added a solo shot in the sixth. It was 3-0, and the panic was real inside the Bank.
Then after 5 ²/₃ brilliant innings, Luis Severino allowed a scratch hit to Trea Turner, and then back-to-back moon shots to Harper and Castellanos. It was like applying paddles to the chest of an entire city. Nimmo hit one, to give the Mets the lead. Then Diaz couldn’t crawl out of the swamp in a ballpark where he has had so many brutal moments.
Then Vientos, again.
And Castellanos again.
This will never see the light of day on “Mets Classics” on SNY, because it violates the cardinal rule of those episodes: the wrong team won the game. But it was still a hell of a game. If the Mets win this series, you’ll be able to concede that. Until then, it may rob you of a few hours of sleep between now and Tuesday afternoon, now and Game 3.
“We have nonstop fight and confidence,” Megill said. “We get hit, we hit back, guys continuously having good at-bat after good at-bat.”
Of course, if you’d asked any of the Phillies on the other side of the yard, they’d have said the same thing, because the same thing applies. The Phillies, remember, considered themselves the home office for October magic until these Mets started to stake a claim. But no team owns all the magic. No team corners that market.
You just hope you have enough to get you to three wins, enough to make it to California to play either the Padres or the Dodgers in a week.
“It just didn’t happen today,” Mendoza said.
Tuesday is another day. It promises to be a good day, and maybe a great day.
“It feels like we’ve been on the road the last six months,” Severino said.
They come home now, and for the moment they have home-field advantage. Magic is a helpful resource. Two games at home might help even more.
