Jose Reyes woke up yesterday at 6:30 a.m. and looked at his watch in 15-minute intervals until he and his tamed thyroid arrived at Citi Field by 8:30.
As fidgety as he was, an announced crowd of 33,000 that had suffered tremors at the sight of Ramon Martinez, palpitations at the plight of Angel Berroa and general irritability with the limitations of Anderson Hernandez, filed in several hours later even more anxious to have fun again.
Eyes can’t get more sore than those who went 326 days without seeing Jose Reyes at shortstop for the Mets. This includes even the eyes of Francisco Rodriguez when they turned a highly-contagious pink during spring training, seemingly completing the set of afflictions that could jeopardize a Mets season.
Through all that pain, however, it’s doubtful whether anything hurt more than Reyes’s soul did unclothed in a baseball uniform, unless it was the soul of fans denied the joy with which he plays.
Let’s put it this way: Since Reyes disappeared on May 20, 2009, time didn’t exactly fly like he does rounding second. The Mets were 51-75 in his absence.
So what’s a little rust in the big picture? Reyes put his glove head-high on Ian Desmond’s sixth-inning liner and caught only air, double-clutched on Desmond’s fourth-inning roller and threw the ball across the diamond in the dirt. For seven innings, his reward for his 11-month wait for a game that counts was to get plunked on the forearm by a John Lannan breaking ball.
“It’s the first game in a long time, it’s going to be a little rough,” Reyes said. “I swung at a lot of bad pitches.”
Then, in the ninth, he barehanded an over-the-hill bouncer and threw out the speedy Nyjer Morgan. And, as so often seemingly happens when a player makes a superior fielding play following an absence of 326 days, an 0-for-3 Reyes led off the bottom by lining a 1-2 Matt Capps fastball into center to put the tying run on.
Reyes was halfway down the third-base line, ready in his words, “to jump,” when old Mets killer Willie Harris dived to catch Rod Barajas’s bases-loaded, two-out screamer. The Nationals hung on, 4-3. The Mets settled for knowing they don’t have to hang on without their sparkplug any longer.
“He’s electric,” said David Wright. And not since 1977 has this city suffered a blackout like the Mets have endured since Reyes’ hamstring rehab turned into surgery before turning into a health issue a lot more common in the populace than his talent.
“To finally get him out there was good for him and obviously good for the team,” said manager Jerry Manuel.
It’s better for the team if Reyes soon hits, if the repaired hammy holds up, if the thyroid meds work for a lifestyle that includes sliding head-first into third. As long as it takes for someone as fast as Reyes to get up to speed, the Mets still will seem more whole in the meantime, holes in the rotation notwithstanding.
“There was a lot of nervous energy,” Manuel said. “No question, he’ll get into the flow.
“I think you can begin to see the adjustments even as that game progressed, that’s just how athletic he is. To make that play, to lead off the ninth with a hit after the [other] at-bats he had?
“He’ll catch up to the game. And then the game will have to catch up to him.”
While waiting, Mets fans have suffered fatigue with losing, increased sweating in late innings, difficulty concentrating on a bleak big picture. This doesn’t cure everything, but it helps.
jay.greenberg@nypost.com