Two weeks ago, when Mets fans partied through a rollicking sweep of the Nationals, Terry Collins observed that pennant race baseball had come to Queens, and the manager could not have been more proud to be a part of it.
On Friday night, another side of pennant-race baseball came to Citi Field, and this was nothing to be celebrated, not unless the vicious booing that accompanied Bobby Parnell’s exit from the mound after the relief pitcher yielded hits to all three Pirates batters he faced in the 10th inning is music to your ears.
“I think that’s part of it all,” Collins said after his team’s 3-2 defeat, in which Pittsburgh scored twice against Parnell and then survived a mini-rally in the bottom of the inning.