NEW YORK — The man known as Mr. Smile wasn’t.
As Francisco Lindor floated toward first base seconds after hitting the NLDS-winning grand slam and a blue-and-orange frenzy exploded around him, the hero of the moment remained unusually calm.
His face was flat, calm, and looked like a calm sea. He didn’t smile, pump his fist, flip his bat, or roar to the heavens. He was so happy that he didn’t turn towards the dugout. He showed no emotion.
Mets outfielder Jesse Winker told Yahoo Sports he was “absolutely cold” after New York’s 4-1 series-clinching victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 4. he is an assassin It’s unbelievable. He has no heartbeat. ”
If Lindor’s ticker was throbbing as Citi Field roared him around the bases on Wednesday, he didn’t show it. The Mets’ superstar shortstop trots down the baseline, his eyes glued to the now-blind baseball, casually drops the bat, and calmly trots off as if the stadium is completely empty. I started.
That rarely happened.
There is chaos around Lindor. The restrained adults were overwhelmed at that moment and jumped uncontrollably like elementary school students. The faces of the fans, coaches and players were filled with disbelief and joy. In the stands, a sea of arms floated happily into the New York night. Noise filled the scene, a symphony of fanatics’ roars.
“Great players do great things,” Steve Cohen, the club’s multibillion-dollar owner, said in the celebratory locker room after the game, his eyes hidden behind giant ski goggles. “Very calm. He just sat there and watched the 160 mph pitch go. Gone. Great.”
Lindor, still expressionless, crossed the plate to be greeted by the Mets trio who had just driven in. Francisco Alvarez, Tyrone Taylor and Starling Marte couldn’t stop smiling. Marte was the first to accept Lindor. He wrapped Sirloin’s arm around Lindor and lifted the returned hero skyward.
For the first time, a smile appeared on Lindor’s face.
“He’s an asshole,” Marte told Yahoo Sports after the game, grinning, his silver grill flashing in his mouth.
Lindor’s outburst provided a fitting end to a captivating and tense series between these two divisional rivals. The Phillies entered Game 4 needing a win to extend the season. The Mets certainly didn’t want to go back south for a winner-take-all Game 5.
Both teams had crafty left-handed pitchers on the mound. The Phillies scored an RBI run in the fourth inning on an infield dribbler off the bat of Alec Bohm, and neither offense could advance until Mets third baseman Mark Vientos scored one run on a fumble. Bryce Harper scrambled home for the first goal of the game.
It remained 1-0 until the sixth inning, until Lindor changed the story.
After warming up many times early in the game, the Phillies sent out relief pitcher Jeff Hoffman, who had been playing since the fifth inning, and started from the sixth inning. That’s going to be expensive. The Mets’ first three reached on a single, a hit by pitch, and a walk. Hoffman hit two wild pitches. His control has deserted him. After the first out of the inning, with the bases loaded at home, Phillies manager Rob Thomson appeared and fired Hoffman.
Carlos Estevez came in to face Lindor. Estevez, a bubbly, good-natured Venezuelan the size of a refrigerator, was a key acquisition for Philadelphia at the trade deadline. For most of the second half, he served as a reliable late-inning option in Philadelphia’s bullpen. His only problem is that he sometimes hits home runs.
Estevez threw three consecutive fastballs to Lindor’s starting pitcher. Two players missed the zone, and one hit a strike that grazed the shortstop’s bat. With the count 2-1, the reliever returned to the triple-digit heater in about the same spot as the ball that Lindor struck out.
However, this pitch caught the at-bat a little too much. Lindor didn’t miss this pitch.
It was the type of swing that franchises dream of. At the back of Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia is a mural of Bryce Harper’s iconic home run in the 2022 NLCS. It will be there until the stadium collapses.
Lindor’s Grand Slam will naturally receive the same treatment. They’ll play it over and over again on SNY. Those photos will be displayed on the Citi Field concourse. People will have their shirts made. For decades, Mets fans have climbed on bar stools, ordered some, and asked each other, “Do you remember when?”
But the rest of the game wasn’t just an epilogue. Philadelphia was supposed to have a two-out rally in the eighth inning, but Alec Bohm’s bounder on the bag was incorrectly ruled a foul. Then, in the ninth inning, closer Edwin Diaz walked the first two batters and tied the game. A strikeout from Cody Clemens and a flyout from Brandon Marsh eased the tension.
Diaz hit a fastball from Kyle Schwarber to end the game. The Mets jumped out of the dugout, but not toward the pitcher like normal teams, but toward the shortstop. Lindor disappeared beneath the blue crowd.
“I’m enjoying the moment. I’m living in the moment,” he said at the post-game media conference. “A lot of people ask me why I don’t react, why I don’t react to home runs. I am reacting. I’m celebrating inside. But at the end of the day, I don’t work until I play 27 outs. It never ends.”
After those necessary outs were recorded, Lindor was a bundle of joy, walking around the field with his daughter in his arms. He took about 100 selfies with various friends and family gathered on the Citi Field lawn.
He always smiled until the end.
