FEAR AND LOATHING AT CITI FIELD: A SAVAGE JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA’S PASTIME

The game twisted and writhed like a fever dream in Queens. I watched as Pedro Pagés, sweet jesus, ripped one through the right side in the 4th – a brutal declaration of intent that drew first blood for the Cardinals. The New York crowd stirred uneasily in their seats, sensing the violence to come.

Then Walker – that beautiful bastard – followed with his own savage assault in the 5th, another screaming shot that ricocheted off Alonso’s mitt like a pinball in some cosmic game. 2-0 Cardinals, and the tension was building like a thunderhead over Flushing.

But you can’t keep the Mets caged forever. Taylor unleashed holy hell with a triple that nearly tore Walker’s arm off in right, and Soto – that magnificent specimen – knotted things up with a laser beam that made strong men weep. We were watching poetry in cleats, raw and unfiltered.

The savagery continued unabated: Arenado struck like a cobra in the 6th, but Vientos answered with an orbital launch that NASA probably tracked. When Torrens doubled home the go-ahead run, you could feel the electricity crackling through the stadium like some kind of baseball voodoo.

Then came Donovan, that magnificent bastard, launching a shot that seemed to hang in the twilight forever before crash-landing somewhere in the right field seats. Tie game. Pure gonzo baseball at its finest.

But in the end, it was Lindor – Puerto Rican royalty in cleats – who delivered the killing blow. His walk-off shot disappeared into the night like a bottle rocket, and the crowd went absolutely primal. No amount of mescaline could have produced a more surreal ending to this beautiful nightmare of a baseball game.

Final score: Mets 5, Cardinals 4. And somewhere, the baseball gods were laughing their cosmic asses off.