Which made Brandon Nimmo’s game-winning home run for the Mets all the more impressive

ATLANTA – Brandon Nimmo is running. Always. Famous. His hustle has become a recognizable trait, pretty much the only baseball player to rush to first base after a walk.

That made Monday’s top pitch in the eighth inning of the opening game all the more impressive. The momentum was powerful, but so was the admiration.

Nimmo, one of the club’s leaders and one of the more backward players in the game, helped the Mets get to the postseason – with a little help in the ninth inning, as it turned out – and sent his dugout into delirium with a two-run home run in the 8-7 playoff-clinching victory over the Braves at Truist Park in the first game of the doubleheader to close the regular season.

What will be remembered most is Francisco Lindor’s go-ahead two-run home run. Edwin Diaz’s implosion in the eighth inning, the between-innings plea to manager Carlos Mendoza and survival in the ninth inning will be unforgettable. But the Mets wouldn’t have escaped and punched their ticket without the final blow at the end of the eighth quarter in which Nimmo converted.

After seven silent innings against Spencer Wechselbach, the Mets finally woke up. Tyrone Taylor’s double knocked the Braves’ starter out of the game and began a string of five consecutive hits. Francisco Alvarez’s double scored the Mets’ first run. Lindor’s single scored another. Jose Iglesias’ goal tied the game at 3-3 before Mark Vientos’ sacrifice fly gave the Mets their first lead of the game.

Nimmo then provided a cushion that would prove necessary.

The fourth pitch he saw from Raisel Iglesias was a fastball down the middle of the plate that Nimmo had been waiting for. He turned it on and watched it start. He dropped his bat. He took nine steps and walked to first base while watching the trajectory of a 405-foot bomb that reached the chop house in right field.

“This is a big moment,” Nimmo said with a smile after the Mets and Braves split the doubleheader and both teams celebrated by spraying champagne. “I knew it when I met it. I knew it was gone. No disrespect to Iglesias. Just a huge moment.”

These nine steps included a look at a shelter whose roof had been blown away.

“They were all howling and jumping past the dugout,” Nimmo said. “It was just euphoria that came over you.”

The 6-3 lead the Mets held wouldn’t last, but the image of the dugout would. Despite his bad back, Lindor jumped over the dugout railing onto the field to lead the celebration.