The trumpeter who scores the postgame scurry to the 7 on Mets Plaza made an interesting musical choice in the minutes following the fresh 5-1 loss the Marlins had inflicted upon the Mets inside Citi Field. He played “Auld Lang Syne,” a number usually reserved for December 31 rather than August 31. I wondered if the wistful tune struck him as appropriate as we were bidding goodbye to summer on this late Sunday afternoon, or because the Mets have been dropping the ball with such force that they might be called on to re-enact their core incompetency in Times Square come New Year’s Eve.

Or maybe the trumpeter knows only so many songs and this was one of them. What the hell, the Mets played four games versus Miami as August ended, and they won only one of them. Not Sunday’s certainly. They took on Sandy Alcantara, and Sandy Alcantara reminded us he is still Sandy Alcantara, even if Kodai Senga resembled nothing remotely akin to Kodai Senga. We have our images of previously successful starting pitchers. Senga of the second half of 2025 is not to be mistaken for the Senga of yore…and his yore wasn’t that long ago.

The Met of the game was clearly Brandon Waddell. He’s been a Met multiple times this year but wasn’t the day before. He was called up to replace Chris Devenski, who could have said the exact same thing about his perpetually slippery job status 24 hours prior. Chris did a heckuva job in reclamation relief on Saturday, just as Brandon did on Sunday. One assumes that even with roster expansion Monday, Waddell will be optioned to cool his heels and rest his arm alongside Devenski in Syracuse. One wonders why it’s inevitably the relievers who “rescue” the bullpen who are sent down rather than the imploded starters they relieve. One wonders a lot with this club and should probably assume nothing.

Despite encompassing a couple of massive milestone moments — Alonso slugging his way past Strawberry; McLean and Tong emerging in our midst— the month that just ended cannot be considered splendid. Au revoir, then, to the last wisps of summer in Flushing, and welcome to September and the clean slate it promises. Don’t muck it up with too much Augustitude, if you don’t mind, Mets. All the months of this season have blurred into a kind of high-functioning futility that somehow still has this team in pretty decent position to make the playoffs. They’re trying to fall out before fall officially hits, but they’re really not that bad. They’re really not that good, either.

They are, on a record-to-record basis through 137 games, exactly what the Mets of a year ago were: 73-64. That would be neither here nor there, except for knowing that this marks the first interval of the schedule since the 2025 Mets were 0-1 that they’ve posted exactly as many wins and losses as their immediate predecessors. And that would be no big whoop, except the 2024 Mets molded themselves into spunky upstarts who captured a playoff berth and all of our hearts, while the 2025 Mets were supposed to skip the spunk and act as juggernauts from March onward. The last edition famously started 22-33 before turning it around. It’s “famous” rather than infamous because of what happened after 22-33. The contemporary bunch infamously started 45-24 before seeking new depths. Infamy can still be chased from the 2025 narrative, but suddenly it’s September and the rewrite desk is working on a tight deadline.

At this precise juncture of 2024, the Mets had won four consecutive games and were about to win five more. If the current squad doesn’t go undefeated from today through Saturday, the 2024 Mets will pass them. I understand that’s not who the 2025 Mets are competing with in the actual standings, but it indicates something’s historically awry — perhaps that ever since our juggernaut got towed in the middle of June, we haven’t been able to free it from the impound lot for more than a spin.

I make it my business to track things like Mets’ records after 137 games of every season they’ve ever played, which made me the ideal companion Sunday for Mark Simon, with whom I take in a game annually. Mark’s something of a baseball renaissance man, with his latest credit being the profiling of the broadcasting McCarthys, Tom and Pat, for a Tri-State Area college alumni magazine. But if you want to know my super-seamhead friend for anything, know him as the reigning SABR trivia champion, a title he wrested in Texas this summer. He didn’t wear the belt to Citi Field. He didn’t have to.

Our Mets-Marlins game was different from the one with which the other 43,300 on hand were burdened. In the top of the third inning, we dug into our quizzing satchels and pulled out the questions that we would deploy to preoccupy each other until shortly before the seventh-inning stretch. The first question could have been, “What baseball game, already in progress, will require a lengthy distraction?” We would have accepted, “this one”; “the Mets-Marlins game of August 31, 2025”; or “what Mets game lately doesn’t?” That gimme aside, the object of our trivia challenge isn’t to stump one another, but tease out answers nobody should know by dropping hints that nobody should grasp.

But we do.

Here’s a highly selective partial honor roll of past Mets who came up in the course of our questioning and answering:

Dave Mlicki — but not for the first thing you think of when you think of Dave Mlicki.

Joel Youngblood — but not for the “one thing” everybody associates with Joel Youngblood.

Doc Medich — the pitcher identified via the clue that was essentially “he was a Met for no reason”.

Rick Cerone — the catcher identified via the clue that was essentially “he hit a dramatic home run once,” though the question had nothing to do with his being a catcher or hitting a home run.

Kevin Bass — the outfielder identified via the clue that was specifically “mimicry”.

Jim Hickman — who was answered by our seat neighbor who drifted into enjoying our game more than he was the one the Mets were losing to the Marlins. Maybe they should have lent us one of Alec Bohm’s parabolic mics and let more of the stadium eavesdrop.

Batista — this is a trick answer, derived from each of us having seen, in different parts of the ballpark before we met up, a guy wearing a jersey that read BATISTA 14 on the back, and as each of us knows, Miguel Batista sure as hell didn’t wear 14 when he pitched for the Mets in 2011 and 2012. We made a pact to stop Mr. BATISTA 14 if we ran into him on the way out and ask what’s up with that? (Alas, neither of us saw him again.)

Jay Bruce —my “how soon they forget” Met.

Bobby Parnell — Mark’s “how soon they forget” Met, though to be fair, Parnell isn’t quite as recent as Bruce.

Robinson Chrinos — not technically a correct answer, but his inclusion as an addendum to a series of correct answers seemed to tickle Mark more than any other name that came up all day.

We do some version of this every year, and it always tickles both of us no end. Between dealing questions, hints, and answers, we do manage to intermittently look up at the game in front of us. Its ability to tickle varies. The non-quizzing portion of Sunday’s game didn’t inspire much tickle on the current Met front. Moral of the story? Always pack your quizzing satchel, whatever the month.