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15년 만에 월드 시리즈 진출한 뉴욕 메츠.


The Mets after their sweep of the Cubs in the National League Championship Series. Game 1 of the World Series is Tuesday.


 The baseball globe spins differently now. It obeys the whims of a blue-and-orange team with a hapless history marked by spikes of the amazing. This is the latest, and it is overwhelming in its totality.

On Wednesday night, the Mets reached their fifth World Series, completing a four-game sweep of the National League Championship Series with an 8-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. The Mets, who never trailed in the series, will visit the Kansas City Royals or the Toronto Blue Jays for Game 1 on Tuesday.

They will hope that their sudden star, Daniel Murphy, brings his gilded bat. Murphy, the most valuable player of the series, homered for the sixth game in a row, a slugging streak that set a major league postseason record. He had four hits in Game 4 and torched the Cubs for four home runs and a .529 average.

The Mets, who also got a homer and five runs batted in from the struggling Lucas Duda, won their first N.L. pennant since 2000, when they lost a five-game World Series to the Yankees. This will be their first World Series at Citi Field, which opened in 2009 — the first of six losing seasons in a row for the Mets, who slashed payroll, groomed prospects and preached patience to their fans.

Lucas Duda hit a three-run homer as the Mets pounded the Cubs, 8-3, and won the National League pennant. 

Their victory was tinged with a bit of worry. Yoenis Cespedes, the star outfielder acquired in a late July trade, left in the second inning with a sore left shoulder. Now, at least, Cespedes and the Mets will have five days to rest before facing the Royals or the Blue Jays, who play Game 6 of the American League series on Friday with Kansas City leading, three games to two.

“Let’s get this over now,” Mets Manager Terry Collins had said before the game. “Let’s go out there and play our game and let’s go home.”

So that is what they did, punishing the Cubs in the Mets’ new style — a complete, quick-strike offense that would have seemed so unlike them just three months ago. Then, the Mets’ threadbare lineup gasped for runs, threatening to waste all their dominant pitching. Healthy and fortified now, the hitters can practically do no wrong.

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The Mets are at their best in the first inning, often because that is when Murphy bats. They scored in the first inning of every game of this N.L.C.S. — nine runs in all, an advantage that helped them make history.

An ultimate sweep — in which the losing team never leads, even for a moment — is rare for a best-of-seven series. It has happened only five other times in major league history, and never before in a best-of-seven N.L.C.S.

The Cubs’ hopes of holding a lead, let alone winning a game, died early. Curtis Granderson wore down starter Jason Hammel, slapping his seventh pitch to left for a single. With two outs, he stole second, continuing to exploit an edge the Mets uncovered in their advance scouting.

Cespedes walked and Duda came to bat, lugging a .125 postseason average with no extra-base hits. He took a close pitch on 2-2 that showed, if nothing else, that Duda could control his plate discipline, a tenet of the Mets’ hitting philosophy. His reward came on Hammel’s next pitch: a fastball down the middle that Duda obliterated.

The ball took flight, whistling as it rose over the infield and crashing into the center-field seats, a few rows up, just to the left of the hitter’s backdrop. Soon it was rolling back along the outfield grass — discarded, per Wrigley tradition. If only the fans could have evicted the Mets’ players as easily.

The next hitter, Travis d’Arnaud, sent another screamer into the right-field seats: 4-0, Mets, after just six batters. Hammel was gone after 11, in the second, when Duda drove in two more by doubling off another 3-2, two-out fastball, this time from Travis Wood.

To lose the pennant now, the Mets would have to squander a six-run lead. The Cubs did not come close. Steven Matz, the rookie left-hander, held them hitless for three innings, and when the Cubs loaded the bases with no outs in the fourth, they scored just once.


The Mets' Travis d’Arnaud followed a three-run homer by Lucas Duda with a home run of his own in the first inning. 



The Mets got lucky then; third baseman David Wright leapt to snare a screaming liner by Starlin Castro for the first out, and shortstop Wilmer Flores dodged bullpen traffic to catch the inning-ending pop foul.

It was like this all series. The Mets made the sharp plays and clutch pitches, while the Cubs’ outfielders — for the two games here, anyway — flopped around the Wrigley grass, and a parade of pitchers trotted onto and off the mound.

Matz lasted into the fifth, when Bartolo Colon replaced him after consecutive two-out singles. Colon, 42, faced Kris Bryant, 23, and preyed on the young slugger’s aggressiveness. With a full count, he struck him out swinging on a low two-seam fastball, well off the plate.

That preserved a 6-1 lead, bringing the Cubs and their famous alumni and fans ever closer to winter. Rick Sutcliffe, a star of their 1984 playoff team, tossed the ceremonial first pitch. The Hall of Famers Andre Dawson and Billy Williams watched from the stands and suites. For Chicago, though, the party was soon over: 70 seasons without an N.L. pennant, 107 without a World Series crown. The Mets’ bruising treatment of their pitchers may have surprised some casual Cubs fans. After July 25, the Mets led the N.L. in runs, homers and slugging percentage, but all of it came after they last played the Cubs, who swept the regular-season series.

In theory, the Cubs could have matched the Mets’ power. They clobbered 12 homers in their five playoff games before this series, eliminating Pittsburgh and St. Louis, who combined for 198 wins this season.

But the Cubs’ hitters also led the majors in strikeouts, and the Mets kept them off balance with a game plan executed to precision: plenty of off-speed pitches mixed in with their usual heat. The Cubs’ offense led the majors in pitches per plate appearance yet could not wear down the Mets, who managed their starters’ innings during the season and unleashed fresh arms in the playoffs.

“I’m looking at guys here in the month of October — which none of these guys had ever performed in — still throwing the ball 98 miles an hour,” Collins said. “And that tells me we did all the right things leading up to this.”

The Mets, doing all the right things? It is a new world, indeed, and the Mets are on top of it — at least, the National League side of it. They will soon have their chance to stand alone.