WASHINGTON — T.J. Rivera took his usual pathway through the visitor’s clubhouse at Nationals Park Tuesday, just past 2 o’clock. Before he dumped his stuff in his corner stall, he sought out the blue slice of paper taped on the opposite wall. He does this every day. Most days, his name is absent.
This day, it told him he was playing second base for the Mets, batting sixth, his right-handed bat a buffer between lefties Jay Bruce and James Loney.
“All of us come to the park ready to play,” Rivera would say hours later. “And when you see your name, that’s when it’s time to get to work.”
So that’s how Rivera’s day started.
Jerry Blevins’ day began the way it generally does, tracking the key left-handers in the opposing team’s lineup. When that opponent happens to be the Nationals, it means figuring out how long it will be until Daniel Murphy and Bryce Harper come to bat. And Tuesday, it meant realizing he could well be needed to lock down the most recent most critical game of the Mets’ season.
“That’s the fun part,” Blevins would say. “That’s baseball. If you don’t get excited about moments like that, you’re in the wrong sport.”
The odds of Rivera and Blevins joining forces to deliver the Mets to this vital 4-3 victory were off the board most of the night, as the Mets enjoyed a Noah Syndergaard gem and a 3-1 lead through eight. And they were positively invisible when the Nats rallied to tie the game off Jeurys Familia, sending the Mets to the brink of what would have been a bone-shattering loss.
And yet there they were afterward, the 27-year-old rookie infielder and the 33-year-old veteran reliever, the two of them mobbed by teammates afterward, squished by celebratory whipped-cream pies, a pair of unlikely protagonists pulling one out of the fire for the Mets.
“Sometimes,” Terry Collins said, “guys surprise you.”
The first shocker was Rivera, out of The Bronx and Lehman High, with all of 41 at-bats as a big-leaguer before Tuesday — and all of 35 home runs in a six-year professional career that dates to 2011.
Rivera’s presence in the lineup against righty A.J. Cole instead of lefty Kelly Johnson was a pure Collins hunch and it had already paid off with an RBI single and a sac fly for two of the Mets runs.
Now here he was, top of the 10th, one out, facing an 0-2 count against the Nats’ closer, Mark Melancon, who had been brilliant since arriving from Pittsburgh at the trade deadline and hadn’t yet allowed a home run as a National.
“I’m not thinking home run,” Rivera said, laughing.
He hit a home run, of course. It was a cutter, and it seemed to track straight to the barrel of Rivera’s bat, and it landed amid silence in the stands and bedlam in the Mets’ dugout. Most guys hit their first big-league homer, they return to an empty dugout and silent treatment. Not this time.
“I think the guys forgot about that,” Rivera said, laughing, the ball safely tucked on the second shelf of his locker.
As Rivera stood in against Melancon, Blevins had been talking to fellow reliever Jim Henderson in the bullpen, the two of them discussing how big a test this at-bat was for Rivera, then marveling at what they saw him do.
“That,” Blevins said, “can be the difference between a Triple-A player and a major leaguer.”
And he knew what this meant for him: if the Nationals got a runner on in the bottom of the 10th, he would get the ball. Naturally, Jayson Werth reached on a two-out flare.
Naturally, that meant old friend Daniel Murphy would get a turn as the potential winning run, Blevins expecting that all along.
“There are times,” he said, “when you just have to stand up.”
He got two quick strikes. Murphy battled his way back into the count, which was soon full. Nationals fans were on their feet. Mets fans were on the verge of passing out. Blevins has gotten a lot of outs with his fastball this year. He wasn’t throwing his fastball here.
“I’m here,” he said, “because of the curve.”
Murphy swung. Murphy missed. The Mets’ dugout erupted, and there was a throaty celebration on the field. In a season that is now 19 days worth of survive-and-advance, they’d somehow kept their cling on the second spot in the wild-card race.
“Did I act like I’d been there before?” Rivera asked, of the cool way he had circled the bases. He had; the Mets, not so much. And you know what? That’s fine. You don’t get excited about moments like that, you’re in the wrong sport.