"The ball fired off his bat and rocketed into right-center at Citi Field, and before Curtis Granderson could even chase it down early Sunday night, the celebration was on and the Subway Series was over and Jason Bay had the loudest single of his life and as big a hit as the Mets have had all season.

Somebody asked Bay if this particular single - which came with the bases loaded in the 10th inning of an immensely improbable 3-2 victory - was his greatest moment as a Met.

Bay stood shirtless at his locker and smiled. Nobody needed to tell him that across a year and a half he did not have many such moments to sift through.

"I don't have a ranking system, but it feels like it right now," Bay said.

Jason Bay came into the Subway Series finale with 22 RBI in 57 games, and a .175 average with runners in scoring position, and a record of epic underachievement as a New York Met, a $66 million left fielder and alleged slugger who is earnest and hard-working, and has a total of 10 home runs in almost 650 at-bats as an Amazin'.

Five innings before he would become a hero, Bay hit into a double play and a fan down the left-field line yelled, "Give your money back, Bay. You're a bum."

He is, of course, no sort of bum. He is a man who put too much pressure on himself to live up to his contract last year, then slammed into a wall at Dodger Stadium and suffered a season-ending concussion. All year the news seemed bad for Bay, and it has mostly been that way this year, too, at least until he hit that grand slam in Detroit last week, and was the leading man in a cavalcade of Met heroes Sunday, when the Yankees and Mets played before one more nearly full house and Citi Field sounded the way it was supposed to sound during a Subway Series."