Please, call it a comeback

Baseball brings us myriad joys, but perhaps none is greater than the comeback. The specter of losing looms, making everyone involved, from the players to the fans, feel uneasy. Even though it’s one game out of 162, even though there’s another to play tomorrow, losing sucks. And so when the comeback occurs, we are overcome with elation. In that way, the eighth inning of yesterday’s Mets-Brewers game might have been the greatest of the season. It contained two come-from-behind efforts and led to another, although related, joy: the walk-off.

The Mets and their fans felt it first. They came into the eighth inning having done little on offense to that point, but still trailing by a 2-1 score. Their lone run came on a balk in the fourth, but after that they managed just one more base runner. Kameron Loe, who had recorded the final out of the seventh, came back out for the eighth, but that almost didn’t happen. His spot was due up next in the order when Mark Kotsay flied out to end the previous inning. That worked for the Brewers, though, who have relied heavily on Loe this season.

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