All of New York cheered Jacob deGrom for one night

There came the moment that Mets fans have learned to dread as much as anything in what has been an almost relentlessly dreadful season. Out of the dugout stepped Mickey Callaway, bottom of the seventh inning at Yankee Stadium. The Mets had built a four-run lead. That has never much been part of the equation.

Callaway was coming to get Jacob deGrom.

And that always seems to be the first chapter in an almost sinister tale the Mets have spun across the first 4 ½ months of this season.

Out of respect for his ace, Callaway deferred making a move until he reached the mound. He let deGrom speak first.

“I’d like to get this guy,” deGrom said, referring to Brett Gardner, the Yankees leadoff hitter.

Callaway nodded his head. He knew deGrom had thrown 114 pitches, most of them brilliant, hardly any of them squared up even as the Yankees had nicked him for three runs (two earned) across 6 ²/₃ innings. Callaway knows who Gardner is. He is a 10-pitch at-bat waiting to happen every time he digs in.

“If this guy battles you, you’re going to go well over 120 pitches,” the manager said.

DeGrom’s expression never changed, because … well, because it never changes. Surely, if Callaway could have seen the thought bubble over deGrom’s head, it would have looked like this: “This is as close to a playoff game as I’m going to get this year … I can finish this guy quickly … I’ve gotten a month’s worth of runs scored on my behalf, I want to enjoy them …”

DeGrom didn’t say any of that.

What he said was, “I’d like to get him.”

Callaway smiled. He has endured a lot in this first go-round as a major league manager, and the jury is still very much out on whether that’s his true calling in this game. But even this difficult year has only reaffirmed that he does understand pitching — and pitchers — awfully well.

“Can’t do it, Jake.” And he signaled to the bullpen. And deGrom handed his manager the ball, trundled to the dugout, hearing a most remarkable thing for a Met at Yankee Stadium: a roar of tribute. The Mets fans among the 47,233 wanted to say thanks, and the Yankees fans were probably too saddened by what they weren’t able to secure at the trade deadline (and silenced by another awful effort by their own ace) to say much of anything.

Anyway, deGrom heard that.

“That’s a nice feeling,” he said, “walking off the field that way.”

It’s a nicer feeling when your teammates do what they’ve failed to do so often this year, the offense pounding out 15 hits and eight runs in back of him, the bullpen bending but not breaking and finishing off a routine five-hit, 12-strikout gem that evened his record at 7-7.

“It’s tough not putting up runs for him,” said Michael Conforto, who had two hits including a home run. “He’s lights-out every time he goes out there.”

Said Todd Frazier, who also hit a bomb (his third against the Yankees this year): “He’s basically been an angel with all we’ve put him through.”

DeGrom isn’t the only starting pitcher who’s been taught the hard lessons of baseball in 2018. Just a night earlier, his biggest competitor for the NL’s Cy Young award, Washington’s Max Scherzer, saw seven innings of brilliant work wasted by one five-batter sequence that ended with a walk-off home run in Chicago.

It happens to the best.

It’s just happened to deGrom more than most, has happened to him so often this year — the bullpen blowing games he’s pitched, the offense blowing them off — that Mets fans always wonder if that thought bubble we talked about before didn’t include murderous thoughts about some of his teammates.

But his teammates know better. And that’s why they were so pleased to help the cause Monday night in what ultimately became an 8-5 win and a season split in the Subway Series for them.

“He makes you confident just by the way he carries himself,” said Brandon Nimmo, who also added to the onslaught with a double and a homer. “We’re all trying to be like him.”

If they were truly able to be like him, they would be the team in New York with 74 wins instead of 66 losses. For one night, though, they were. For one night, they all owned New York together.

Let's block ads! (Why?)