(WFAN) The first game Mets-Marlins on Tuesday was a resumption of the now-infamous April 11 game in which New York right-hander Marcus Stroman threw all of nine pitches, all in the pouring rain, before the game was delayed and finally postponed.
Because it had started, it went in the books as a suspended game, so the replay Tuesday was set to be nine innings while the originally scheduled game, now the nightcap, was set to be seven innings under MLB’s current doubleheader rules.
Yet, that wasn’t the weirdest thing that did or could've happened in the opener Tuesday based on the lineups and situations from the original game. You expect some names to be different after 4 1/2 months, but this game might have gone to the extreme – as it saw a player technically play two games for two different teams on the same day.
That would be Mets infielder Javier Baez, who pinch-hit for Jeff McNeil in the eighth inning with New York trailing 5-1. Baez was a Cub on April 11, when he went 1-for-4 with a solo homer in Chicago’s 7-1 loss to Pittsburgh that day. However, the record books will also show he was hit by a pitch, knocked an RBI single and scored the game-winning run for the Mets that day as well, thanks to his performance in the restarted game Tuesday in which New York rallied for a 6-5 win.
Baez's accomplishment is incredibly rare – in fact, in an actual chronological day, it has only happened twice, with three players. The first was back in 1922 when, in the middle of a doubleheader, the Cardinals and Cubs made a trade, with St. Louis sending Cliff Heathcote to Chicago for Max Flack, and the two players simply switched dugouts, each playing one game for each team.
The Mets were a part of the other instance. It was Aug. 4, 1982 when Joel Youngblood singled for the Mets against the Cubs in Chicago that afternoon, was pulled from the game and dealt to Montreal and then appeared for the Expos that night in Philadelphia, rapping a pinch-hit single against Steve Carlton. Until Tuesday, Youngblood was the only man to have a hit for two different teams in two different cities in the same day. Now Baez has joined him, according to the MLB books.
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN.