It is only April, and all that, but there was already a Bay Watch circling around Curtis Granderson.
A Jason Bay Watch.
He was 0-for-6 on Sunday and mired in an 0-for-16 slump, he had gone 44 at-bats since his last and only home run as a Met, he had struck out 20 times, and he is currently batting .127.
And the boo birds had begun to savage Curtis Granderson.
“You can’t help but hear ’em,” Granderson said afterward. “Understand I haven’t given ’em much to cheer about.”
All of it meant there was a Did Curtis Get A Hit (@CurtisGetAHit) account up and running on Twitter. A sampling of Sunday’s tweets, from early to late: “The Real Question Is Will Curtis Ever Get A Hit?” … “Nope” … “Here We Go Everyone Curtis Is Up I Think We Know How This One Goes” … “Not Today” … “Of course Not”.
And then, finally: “No He Did Not But He Won The Game!!!!!!!! Let’s Go Mets”.
Granderson is as good a guy as there is in baseball, and as bad a guy as there was on the baseball field as the Braves and Mets played on into the 14th inning and Easter dinner.
“All you can do is root for him,” manager Terry Collins said.
And so maybe even the baseball gods relented in the end, freeing Granderson from a stranglehold only Bay could comprehend.
Finally, it was Gus Schlosser vs. Granderson, first and second, one out, after Eric Young Jr. had been walked intentionally.
The scoreboard taunted and mocked Granderson: .127.
A wild pitch moved the runners to second and third.
Granderson dug in and looked for a pitch he could elevate and keep the Braves from a three-game sweep.
“Especially with a guy that throws such a consistent ball down in the zone, you got to try to get something up, and finally got one,” Granderson said.
Fly ball, left field. Deep enough. Throw home.
Safe.
Mets 4, Braves 3.
Everybody rushed out to mob the walk-off sac fly hero.
“You hope this is something he can build on,” Collins said.
Catcher Anthony Recker lifted Granderson by the first base bag, a reverse Don Larsen-Yogi Berra.
“I don’t think it has quite the significance as that game,” Recker said smiling, “but I’ll take it, I’ll take it. And that was the opposite too, I believe Yogi jumped into Larsen’s arms.”
It was a grand feeling.
“I needed something positive,” Granderson said. “Keep trying different things out there, and continue to keep working, and things will turn. I understand that, and I’ve done this before, it’s just a matter of time.”
Granderson had inched closer to pariah status when his relay throw home on an RBI double inside first base by Jason Heyward was so off mark it rolled into the Braves dugout, igniting the three-run fifth against an unnerved Zack Wheeler.
“I just lost it,” Granderson said. “First time I’ve ever done anything like that, just one of those weird things that just ended up happening.”
In his previous at-bat, he had dribbled one down the first-base line with the bases loaded to end the threat.
As the Mets’ prized offseason signing, Granderson gets no slack for flashing that $60 million smile through his trials and tribulations.
Collins had moved Granderson out of the cleanup spot to second in the order, replaced him with Daniel Murphy instead of Lucas Duda, on a day when Kyle Farnsworth replaced Jose Valverde as closer.
“Relief I’m not sure is the word,” Granderson said, “but a sign of things can change in a matter of a second, and a matter of a swing.”
Mets fans can only hope and pray that The Grandy Man can.