ATLANTA – Two champagne celebrations were held simultaneously in the clubhouses at Truist Park on Monday, one by the New York Mets and one by the Atlanta Braves. The two managers were soaked before retreating, grinning and alone, to their respective offices, still trying to process everything that had transpired on the last day of the regular baseball season.

On one side of the building, the Braves’ Brian Snitker said he was glad his team would continue its season even as he prepared for a cross-country flight, then paused. “What a rollercoaster,” he said.

Across the way, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza struck a similar tone, shaking his head: “This (day) was just like our season. Lots of ups and downs… What a roller coaster.”

That ride continues now for both teams, with the Mets traveling to play the Milwaukee Brewers for the wild-card round, and the Braves heading to San Diego. Even in an always dramatic elimination series, it seems impossible that they could have tumbled and squirmed through the range of emotions they experienced on Monday.

For Snitker, the commotion began a little more than an hour before the first pitch, when Chris Sale — the presumptive winner of the Cy Young Award in the NL this year — came to his office to inform Snitker that his ailing back would prevent him from refrained from throwing the second game of Monday’s doubleheader, as the Braves had planned if they lost the opener.

Sale appeared to be injured in his last start, at Cincinnati, with his velocity noticeably dropping. As he was treated over the past few days, there were times when he thought he was making progress. But he knows how back problems arise: you never know. On Sunday evening, Sale’s back was seriously sore. Snitker was still hoping Sale would feel better in the morning, but the pitcher — the most unselfish star player Snitker has ever had, he said — was a no go. Snitker didn’t panic: He still hoped the Braves would win the first game of the doubleheader, eliminating the need to use Sale and perhaps even acquiring him another day to improve.

And indeed, for a while it looked like Sale’s injury wouldn’t matter. Spencer Schwellenbach dominated the Mets for seven innings, filling the strike zone with curveballs, sliders and fastballs and consistently pulling ahead in the count. The Braves had a 3-0 lead when the eighth inning of Game 1 began, with Schwellenbach at the helm.

Then Tyrone pushed Taylor Schwellenbach through an 11-pitch at bat to open the inning with a double, and Snitker pulled his starter and called reliever Joe Jimenez. Starling Marte singled; Francisco Lindor too. The Braves’ lead was suddenly reduced to one point. Snitker called up his closer, Raisel Iglesias, hoping he could get the next six outs.

Before the game, the Mets’ Iglesias – Jose Iglesias – had started his batting practice, as all hitters do, by dropping a few bunts. Iglesias was more deliberate than most in his efforts, trying to bury them along the third base line. He’s a good bunter — he’s had 24 sacrifice bunts in his career, though none since 2019. And here in the eighth inning, he knew the situation — runners on first and second base, no one out, the Mets down one run — seemed to cry out for a sacrifice.

Jose Iglesias walked up to the two baserunners, Francisco Lindor and Starling Marte, as they met their manager in front of the Mets’ dugout, an impromptu conference. Iglesias asked the manager with a silent nod: Do you want me to thrust?

“Are you seeing him well?” Mendoza asked Iglesias, referring to Raisel.

Iglesias answered yes – and he had the green light to wave.

“This is your at-bat,” Mendoza said, “and you’re going to get it done.”

“That made me so excited that he trusted me,” Iglesias said later.

Raisel Iglesias took an early lead at 0-2, but when Raisel Jose tried to finish off with a pitch down the stretch, the Met hit the ball into right field for a two-run single to tie the game. Jose Iglesias clenched his fists and punched himself in the chest on his way to first place. Previously, the Mets had lost 47 straight games when trailing by three or more runs in the eighth inning or later, a streak dating back to May 2023.

“I saw a man who wanted more than anyone else on the field,” Lindor later said of Iglesias. “That’s what I saw. A man who was not going to give in. A man who said to me: the last of every game we are going to fight like we do.”

When Brandon Nimmo followed with a home run, the Mets led 6-3. Mendoza saw an opportunity to clinch a playoff spot, and as the Braves began to rally in the bottom of the eighth, he turned to closer Edwin Diaz. With five outs to go, this was a reasonable question: Diaz had finished off the Phillies eight days earlier by throwing 100 mph fastballs over two innings.

On Monday, however, Diaz’s first fastball was 96 mph; his second was 94 mph. This wasn’t the same Diaz, in terms of speed or command. He failed to cover first base on a helicopter hit to the right side, and all Pete Alonso could do was watch as Jarred Kelenic hit him to the bag for what the official scorer said was a single. It wasn’t long before Ozzie Albies moved up in the batter’s box, closer to home plate, and ambushed one of those good-natured fastballs for a base-clearing double. The Braves were ahead again; the score was 7-6 and the teams had combined for 10 runs in the inning.

With Raisel Iglesias out of the game after just seven pitches, Snitker brought in Pierce Johnson for the final three outs. Marte singled with one out, and Lindor hit a slider high to right field.

He grimaced at first, much to the dismay of Mets fans – a player who may have been suffering from lingering back problems, or who felt like he had just missed a throw.

“I knew I had it 100%,” Lindor said.

The Mets dugout erupted again; somehow the Mets were ahead again. There were three lead changes in three half innings.

Mendoza had planned to take Diaz out of the game, but Diaz talked his way back in before the bottom of the ninth. demanded to pitch the ninth, and his manager relented to the All-Star closer. When Diaz took the final out, he turned and jabbed his glove on the mound before hugging Alvarez. Lindor wiped away tears and gave Mets owner Steve Cohen a huge hug before Lindor, Diaz and Tylor Megill spoke to the players on the catwalk behind the dugout – formal recognition that they had made the playoffs. (Major League Baseball had asked teams before the day’s action not to participate in any form of celebration involving alcohol between games of the doubleheader.)

The Braves, on the other hand, were suddenly confronted with the reality that a loss in Game 2 would knock them out and sneak into the Diamondbacks as the No. 6 seed — and within 15 minutes of the end of Game 1, word came from the Braves’ clubhouse that Sale wouldn’t be able to throw Game 2. Mendoza was walking through the clubhouse when an attendant told him.

Not even all of Sale’s Braves teammates were aware of this, although some did. Grant Holmes was told about 10 minutes into Game 1 that he would be starting the next game. Snitker, who was in the dugout before Game 2, said he wouldn’t have used Holmes in relief Sunday afternoon if he had known he would need him Monday.

But Holmes pitched well and the Mets hitters hacked aggressively in Game 2, which for a while had the feel of a spring training game, with the Braves fans quietly watching as Atlanta tried to hold on to a 1-0 lead. The Braves seemed tired, frustrated or exhausted, nearing the end of an injury-riddled season for everyone from Spencer Strider to Ronald Acuna Jr. to Austin Riley.

When Atlanta struck in the bottom of the sixth inning, Eddie Perez – a longtime member of the Braves organization – got right in front of Marcell Ozuna, Atlanta’s slumping DH, and started talking sharply to him. At one point Perez leaned right in front of him and challenged him. Ozuna was the Braves’ MVP this year, but a late-season slump diminished his numbers and he seemed sullen among his teammates Monday, a far cry from most of the year. Perez told him to stop thinking about himself and focus more on the team. “If you hit, we win,” Perez told Ozuna, who stared into space.

In his next plate appearance, Ozuna singled to center field, extending Atlanta’s lead to 3–0. Finally. The Braves could breathe. “That’s why I’m keeping Eddie Perez here, to chew his ass,” Snitker said. “And to order the wine.”

Snitker called Raisel Iglesias for a mulligan, and in this second game, Iglesias’ stuff was better – or maybe the Mets and Braves were all just tired and wanted to get the doubleheader over with, ready to drink some champagne and cigars smoking, at the end of a weird and crazy baseball day. In the Braves clubhouse, Orlando sprayed Arcia Albies and Ozuna with bottles. As the Mets celebrated, they moved from the field to the clubhouse and back.

In Snitker’s office, he was asked who he wanted to start in Game 1 of the wild-card series in San Diego on Tuesday. He replied with a sigh. “I have no idea.”