It was just before 9:30 on the evening of July 29 when a most extraordinary thing appeared on television screens across New York City. The Mets had been playing just well enough — and their daily travails were just interesting enough — that SNY’s ratings had experienced a strong surge most of the summer.
So more folks were watching the Mets play the Padres than would have been watching in 2014, or 2012, or 2010, even though San Diego led the game, 7-2. And so more folks than you’d imagine were treated to one of the most surreal sights of the sporting year.
The camera focused on Wilmer Flores, stepping to the plate in the bottom of the seventh inning. At that moment, Flores was hitting .249 for the season. At that moment, it was also assumed that Flores was a member-in-waiting of the Brewers, as a half-hour before it had been reported the Mets had swapped Flores and Zack Wheeler for Carlos Gomez in what looked like their deadline-deal extravaganza.
At Citi Field, 24,804 people rose to give Flores a standing ovation.
On SNY, Gary Cohen said, “Most of these fans know Wilmer’s about to be traded.” And then, a few beats later: “It’s a little odd that Wilmer’s still in the game.”
It seemed just another weird chapter in what was rapidly becoming a strange, surreal script of a season for the Mets. Flores grounded out to shortstop. The crowd gave him one last cheer, then looked at each other in disbelief when he went back out to the field in the top of the eighth.
On TV, there was an added bonus.
Flores was crying.
“I’m not one to provide a towel and cry on one’s shoulder,” Keith Hernandez told his stunned audience. “But I feel for Wilmer.”
Did you feel it then? Was it even remotely possible to feel it then?
When the Mets lost 7-3 to the Padres, they were two games behind the Nationals in the NL East. Reporters were greeted by a grim-faced Sandy Alderson, who had a stunning piece of news: “There is no trade,” the GM said.
“This,” Mets manager Terry Collins said a few moments later, “is the craziest thing I have ever seen in a baseball game.” At that moment, Collins had only been in professional baseball for 44 years.
Did you feel it then? Was it even remotely possible to feel it then? What is a turning point supposed to feel like, anyway? It’s supposed to be something that you can only identify in retrospect.
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Yet ask a Mets fan: Beginning on Friday, July 24 — the day Sandy Alderson acquired Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson from the Braves and promoted Michael Conforto from Double-A Binghamton — and extending for two full weeks, something odd, something unique, something unprecedented was brewing around the Mets. You saw it. You sensed it.
You felt it.
A turning point in real time. How very 2015.
“It did seem that we finished playing one season,” Collins would say weeks later, when the extended turning point yielded the franchise’s first division title in nine years. “And we started playing a whole different one.”
There would be intermediate changes in course and direction, of course. It wouldn’t be an unfettered ride to the stars.
It was hard to think about turning points the day after Flores’ public tears, after all. Folks at Citi arrived for the noontime busman’s special still buzzing about that and the Mets jumped to a 7-1 lead, saw it sliced to 7-5, but were still two strikes away from a victory — two outs, none on, top nine — when the rains came.
Actually, “rain” is too limiting. The field went from dry to Central Park Reservoir in about 11 seconds. The umpires did something they almost never do: They called the players off the field. They pulled the tarp on. Two strikes away. The rain stopped and what happened next seemed like slow motion: a bloop by Derek Norris. A bleeder by Matt Kemp.
And a rocket blast over the right-center field wall by Justin Upton.
An ashen Collins asked: “Did that really just happen?”
Did you feel it then?
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The Nats arrived three games up and eager to put the Mets in their rearview mirror. Maybe they’d heard the news reports inside the visitors’ clubhouse at Citi as they prepared for the game of July 31, a Friday night, while 36,164 fans filed in, wondering if they weren’t about to see one of the last spasms of competitiveness out of the home team.
But just before 4 o’clock, the trade deadline’s zero hour, it became official: The Mets had acquired Yoenis Cespedes from the Tigers for two minor-league pitchers, notably righty Michael Fulmer. Rarely has a trade been greeted by a fan base with so many divergent emotions: excitement, intrigue, hope — and, yes, more than a little bit of surprise.
Alderson had stubbornly insisted that if the right deal presented itself, he would pounce.
“You probably don’t believe me,” he’d said, and he was right, there was heavy skepticism, especially as the GM allowed the Mets’ offense to wither and die for most of May, June and July. He’d started the caravan earlier in the week, trading for Tyler Clippard, adding to the haul that had imported Conforto, Uribe and Johnson.
The latter two had immediately announced their presence, Johnson hitting a home run in his first game as a Met in a blowout win over the Dodgers, Uribe hitting a double off the wall the next day as the Mets walked-off LA, then declaring, “I knew the Nats had lost, and this would give us a chance to gain ground,” which was the first actual declaration by any Met that they were stalking the Nats in the East.
Those were excellent additions.
This was a game-changer.
And it’s funny: While we know what Cespedes did later on, how he almost single-handedly carried the Mets during the huge Labor Day Week sweep of the Nats in DC, there is very little to reflect his impact in this Two-Week Turning Point. He wouldn’t hit his first homer as a Met until his 11th game.
But just by showing up …
“Just by showing up,” David Wright would say weeks later, “he made our offense whole. A lot of guys helped lengthen it. But when we went out and got him, all of a sudden you look at our batting order and you say, ‘Hmmm. OK.’”
We know now that the three games against the Nats were the teeth of the Turning Point, both from a practical standpoint (when you’re chasing a team, it’s a good idea to slice all three games from their lead in three days) but also from a statement perspective.
The Mets’ three big pitching guns — Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard — all had huge games. The Saturday-night comeback fueled by Lucas Duda’s two homers and three RBIs sent the sellout crowd of 42,996 into what was easily the most rabid atmosphere in Citi Field’s history.
But, of course, it was Friday night — 1-1 in the 12th, Wilmer Flores leading off against Felipe Rivero, Flores sending one high and deep and into some dude’s hat — honestly, he caught it with his hat — in the Party Deck beyond left field. Flores pumped a fist rounding first, then grabbed the “Mets” on the front of his jersey just as he crossed home plate.
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“I’m still here,” said Flores, who has been a Met since he was 16 and was absolutely genuine in his sadness when he thought he had been exiled. “And here is where I want to be.”
Here is where it’s important to add more days to the Turning Point: the way the Mets behaved after the season-shaking series with the Nats. How many times have they failed to build on prosperity in recent years — especially in Miami, home of the Marlins, authors of so many awful plot twists through the years? Not this time. The Mets swept — 12-1, 5-1, 8-6 — and by the time they arrived across the state in Tampa, they were alone in first place.
The Rays took three different leads against deGrom and the Mets that night, and led 3-2 entering the ninth. But the kid, Conforto, tied the game with an opposite-field double and — who else? — Flores dunked in a single to bring around the game-winner, and the Mets had their seventh straight win.
(And, not incidentally, at almost the exact same time the Mets were coming back in Tampa, in Washington Drew Storen was surrendering an eighth-inning grand slam to Colorado’s Carlos Gonzalez, turning a 4-1 Nats lead into a 5-4 loss, a stunning juxtaposition that not only foretold things to come but meant that in the space of eight days, the Mets had picked up 5½ games.)
The Mets were up by 2½ games. There were still 53 games to play. But the Two-Week Turning Point had come, gone, and left the Mets in control of their own destiny. And, it turns out, they knew exactly what to do with it.