2024 MLB Playoffs: Francisco Lindor sends the Mets to the NLCS and eliminates the Phillies with a grand slam in NLDS Game 4

NEW YORK – The man known as Mr. Smile didn't do that.

As Francisco Lindor floated toward first base in the seconds after his NLDS-winning grand slam, a madhouse of blue and orange exploding around him, the hero of the hour remained unusually calm.

His face was calm, stoic, like a calm sea. He didn't grin, clench his fist, throw a bat, or roar to the heavens and beyond. He did not turn to his dugout in celebration. He didn't show a single emotion.

“Ice cold,” Mets outfielder Jesse Winker told Yahoo Sports after New York’s decisive 4-1 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 4. “That guy? He is an assassin. It's incredible. He has no heartbeat.”

If Lindor's ticker was pounding as Citi Field roared him through the bases on Wednesday, he didn't show it. The Mets' superstar shortstop jogged down the baseline, his eyes fixed on the baseball crest that had faded out of sight, casually dropped his bat and calmly began his trot as if the stadium were completely empty.

That was not the case at all.

There is chaos around Lindor. Adults in the spell, their bodies overwhelmed by the moment, jumped uncontrollably like elementary school children. The faces of fans, coaches and players radiated joyful disbelief. In the stands a sea of ​​weapons rising merrily in the New York night. Noise filled the scene, a symphony of shouting fanatics.

“Great ballplayers do great things,” Steve Cohen, the club’s billionaire owner, gushed in the celebratory locker room after the game, his eyes obscured by giant ski goggles. “So calm. He just sat there and saw a pitch going 100 miles per hour. Gone. Spectacular.”

As Lindor walked across the plate, his expression still expressionless, he was greeted by the trio of Mets he had just driven. None of Francisco Álvarez, Tyrone Taylor or Starling Marte could stop shining. Marte was the first to receive Lindor. He wrapped his groin arms around Lindor and lifted the returning hero into the sky.

Only then did a smile creep across Lindor's face.

“He’s the damn man, man,” a grinning Marte, his mouth glistening with silver bars, told Yahoo Sports after the game.

Lindor's explosion was a fitting end to a gripping, stressful series between these two division rivals. The Phillies entered Game 4 needing a win to extend their season. The Mets certainly didn't want to return south just to get the win in Game 5.

Both clubs started skilled lefties on the mound. Neither offense gained traction until the Phillies managed a run in the fourth on an infield dribbler off the bat of Alec Bohm, which Mets third baseman Mark Vientos fumbled onto the turf. Bryce Harper managed to score the first run of the game.

It remained 1-0 until matchday six, when Lindor changed the story.

The Phillies sent back reliever Jeff Hoffman, who had come into the fifth round after warming up several times in the early going, to start the sixth. That would prove costly. The first three Mets reached with a single, a hit by pitch and a walk. Hoffman threw two wild throws; his control had left him. After the first out of the inning, a power at home that kept the bases loaded, Phillies manager Rob Thomson came in to relieve Hoffman.

Carlos Estévez took on Lindor. Estévez, a personable, easy-going Venezuelan the size of a refrigerator, was Philadelphia's most important acquisition at the trade deadline. For most of the second half, he thrived as a reliable late-inning option in Philly's bullpen. His only bugbear: a tendency to give up the odd home run.

Estévez started Lindor with three straight fastballs. Two missed the zone, one flew past the shortstop's bat and struck out. With the score at 2-1, the substitute returned to his triple-digit calorific value, almost in the same spot as the pitch where Lindor sniffed.

But that pitch captured a little too much of the record. Lindor didn’t miss this pitch.

It was the kind of swing that franchises dream of. Inside Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia is a mural of Bryce Harper's legendary home run in the 2022 NLCS. It will remain there until the stadium collapses.

Lindor's Grand Slam will rightly receive the same treatment. You will play it again and again on SNY. Pictures of it will line the halls of Citi Field. People will have shirts made. For decades, Mets fans have climbed onto bar stools, ordered a few and asked each other, “Do you remember when?”

The rest of the game wasn't just an epilogue, however. Philadelphia should have had a two-out rally in the eighth, but Alec Bohm's ball over the sack was incorrectly ruled a foul. Then, in the ninth, Edwin Díaz walked closer to the first two batters he faced and brought the game-winning run to the plate. A strikeout by Kody Clemens and a flyout by Brandon Marsh cooled the nerves.

Díaz ended proceedings with a fastball from Kyle Schwarber. The Mets stormed out of the dugout — not toward the pitcher, as teams usually do, but toward the shortstop. Lindor disappeared under a pile of blue.

“I'm enjoying the moment. I live in the moment,” he said in his post-match media conference. “A lot of people ask me why I don’t react, why I don’t react to the home runs. I react, you know. I'm celebrating inside. But at the end of the day the job isn’t done until we get 27 outs.”

After the required outs were recorded, Lindor was a ball of joy as he strolled around the field with his daughter in his arms. He took about 100 selfies with various friends and family members gathered on the turf at Citi Field.

He certainly smiled every time.