CHICAGO — The baseball globe spins differently now. It obeys the whims of a blue-and-orange team with a hapless history marked by spikes of the amazing. This is the latest, and it is overwhelming in its totality. ADVERTISING CHICAGO —
CHICAGO — The baseball globe spins differently now. It obeys the whims of a blue-and-orange team with a hapless history marked by spikes of the amazing. This is the latest, and it is overwhelming in its totality.
On Wednesday night, the New York Mets reached their fifth World Series, completing a four-game sweep of the National League Championship Series with an 8-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. The Mets, who never trailed in the series, will visit the Kansas City Royals or the Toronto Blue Jays for Game 1 on Tuesday.
Long after Jeurys Familia struck out Dexter Fowler to clinch the pennant, the Mets returned from their clubhouse to celebrate on the field with family. The Cubs fans had cleared out by then, and a throng of Mets fans, several rows deep, crowded around the dugout to chant the players’ names and cheer.
“This is a long time coming,” said David Wright, the team captain, who signed with the Mets at age 17, in 2001. “I’m glad that I got a chance to kind of experience some of the misery with them along this road, because that Champagne tastes a lot sweeter having gone through that, let me tell you.”
The Mets will hope that their sudden star, Daniel Murphy, brings his gilded bat to the World Series. Murphy homered for the sixth game in a row, a slugging streak that set a major league postseason record. He had four hits in Game 4 on Wednesday and torched the Cubs for four home runs and a .529 average in the series.
On Wednesday, Murphy told the Mets’ hitting coach, Kevin Long, that he would look for a changeup from the Cubs’ Fernando Rodney. He got a fastball — and crushed it over the center field fence, anyway. Curtis Granderson, the Mets’ right fielder, called him Babe Ruth.
“I can’t explain it,” Murphy said. “It’s just such a blessing to be able to contribute to what we’ve been able to do.”
The Mets, who also got a homer and five runs batted in from the struggling Lucas Duda, won their first NL pennant since 2000, when they lost a five-game World Series to the New York Yankees. This will be their first World Series at Citi Field, which opened in 2009 — the first of six losing seasons in a row for the Mets, who slashed payroll, groomed prospects and preached patience to their fans.
“Watching the fans like this — this is what I’m getting the most kick out of and the most fun, watching the fans enjoy this,” said Jeff Wilpon, the chief operating officer, on the field after the game. “We got four more wins now. Four more.”
Fred Wilpon, Jeff’s father and the Mets’ owner, thanked the fans and his family in a postgame interview on TBS. He added that he had special affection for this group of players.
“I must tell you I want to thank the players,” said Wilpon, who has been with the Mets since 1980. “They have been awesome right from spring training; they knew what they wanted to do, and they went out and did it. This group of young men are of the greatest character that I’ve ever seen on a team. They play for each other, they root for each other, and I’m tremendously proud of them.”
The Mets’ victory Wednesday was tinged with a bit of worry. Yoenis Cespedes, the star center fielder acquired by general manager Sandy Alderson in a late-July trade, left in the second inning with a sore left shoulder. Now, at least, Cespedes and the Mets will have five days to rest before facing the Royals or the Blue Jays, who play Game 6 of the American League Championship Series on Friday with Kansas City leading, three games to two.
Manager Terry Collins said Cespedes’ shoulder would be fine and that Cespedes would be ready for the team’s workout Friday.
“They didn’t think there was any damage,” Collins said. “They thought an injection would calm it down in a day.”
Collins — the majors’ oldest manager, at 66 — was in a reflective mood after the game, noting that the victory took place on the 73rd anniversary of his late parents’ wedding. His mother, he said, let him stay home from fifth grade to watch the 1960 World Series, and now — in his third try as a major league manager, after never reaching the majors as a player — he is going there, too.
The Cubs’ hopes of holding a lead, let alone winning a game, died early on Wednesday. Granderson wore down starter Jason Hammel, slapping his seventh pitch to left for a single. With two outs, he stole second, continuing to exploit an edge the Mets uncovered in their advance scouting.
Cespedes walked and Duda came to bat, lugging a .125 postseason average with no extra-base hits. He took a close pitch on 2-2 that showed, if nothing else, that Duda could control his plate discipline, a tenet of the Mets’ hitting philosophy. His reward came on Hammel’s next pitch: a fastball down the middle that Duda obliterated.
The ball took flight, whistling as it rose over the infield and crashing into the center-field seats, a few rows up, just to the left of the hitter’s backdrop. Soon it was rolling back along the outfield grass — discarded, per Wrigley tradition. If only the fans could have evicted the Mets’ players as easily.
The next hitter, Travis d’Arnaud, sent another screamer into the right-field seats: 4-0, Mets, after only six batters. Hammel was gone after 11, in the second, when Duda drove in two more by doubling off another 3-2, two-out fastball, this time from Travis Wood.
To lose the pennant, the Mets would have had to squander a six-run lead. The Cubs did not come close. Steven Matz, the rookie left-hander, held them hitless for three innings, and when the Cubs loaded the bases with no outs in the fourth, they scored just once.
The Mets got lucky then; Wright, the third baseman, leapt to snare a screaming liner by Starlin Castro for the first out, and shortstop Wilmer Flores dodged bullpen traffic to catch the inning-ending pop foul.
It was like this all series. The Mets made the sharp plays and clutch pitches, while the Cubs’ outfielders — for the two games here, anyway — flopped around the Wrigley grass, and a parade of pitchers trotted onto and off the mound.
The Mets’ bruising treatment of their pitchers may have surprised some casual Cubs fans. After July 25, the Mets led the NL in runs, homers and slugging percentage, but all of it came after they last played the Cubs, who swept the regular-season series.
In theory, the Cubs could have matched the Mets’ power. They clobbered 12 homers in their five playoff games before this series, eliminating Pittsburgh and St. Louis, who combined for 198 wins this season.
But the Cubs’ hitters also led the majors in strikeouts, and the Mets kept them off-balance with a game plan executed to precision: plenty of off-speed pitches mixed in with their usual heat. The Cubs’ offense led the majors in pitches per plate appearance yet could not wear down the Mets, who managed their starters’ innings during the season and unleashed fresh arms in the playoffs.
“I’m looking at guys here in the month of October — which none of these guys had ever performed in — still throwing the ball 98 miles an hour,” Collins said. “And that tells me we did all the right things leading up to this.”
The Mets, doing all the right things? It is a new world, indeed, and the Mets are on top of it — at least, the National League side of it. They will soon have their chance to stand alone.
