They had chanted “Har-vey, Har-vey” right at the start, and they were chanting it again after he drilled Chase Utley with a diabolical fastball in the middle of his back — payback in the fifth inning for Wilmer Flores (bruised hand) and Michael Cuddyer (bruised hand) plunkings.
New York loves stars, and it loves stars who have their teammates’ backs and won’t stand by idly when the law of the baseball jungle calls for retaliatory justice.
Translation: Do not mess with Matt Harvey, or Matt Harvey’s Mets.
“I think I got a little overamped, and that one got away,” Harvey said of the pitch that drilled Utley.
The Dark Knight Rises in Flushing, even if he didn’t rise to greatness Tuesday night.
But the Dark Knight, a 6-5 winner over the Phillies on a night when the Mets lost David Wright (hamstring) indefinitely, rose to the defense of his teammates on a night when they tugged on Batman’s cape.
And he rose to the one occasion that demanded he rise to it.
Harvey had already been stripped of any aura of invincibility twice by Utley — a first-inning homer and a third-inning RBI single — and then by an opposite-field double to right by pitcher David Buchanan, of all people, leading off the fifth inning. And now the bases were loaded with Phillies because catcher’s interference on Travis d’Arnaud with Ryan Howard at the plate had been called, and the bloodthirsty 39,489 fans who came to feed off Harvey’s glowering menace and indomitable, defiant presence chanted “Ter-ry, Ter-ry,” after a livid Terry Collins had been ejected by beleaguered home-plate umpire Alfonso Marquez.
So it was Matt Harvey vs. Carlos Ruiz.
Ruiz fouled back a 95-mph fastball.
Ruiz took a 95-mph strike.
The crowd stood, and roared, and waited with great anticipation for his eighth strikeout.
Harvey tried an 82-mph curveball, and Ruiz popped out.
“I kept looking at the clock before the game, and I think it was maybe 4, and I felt like two hours had gone by and it was probably about five minutes,” Harvey said. “Getting the first one at home out of the way and also getting used to a 7 o’clock game again and the routine that you need to go through for that was a little bit off, but other than that, it was good to be back.”
It sounded more like October than a gray night in April. They wore blue Batman masks and before the first pitch were chanting “Har-vey, Har-vey.”
They were absolutely shellshocked when Utley lofted an 85-mph, 1-2 curveball into the right-field seats, because Harvey had already been exploding 98-mph fastballs into d’Arnaud’s brave glove.
Harvey, raging on the inside, resumed pumping his 97- to 98-mph gas, and every time the count reached two strikes, they stood, and Harvey obliged as Cody Asche looked at a 96-mph heater and Grady Sizemore whiffed on a 97-mph bullet.
And so Matt Harvey had five strikeouts over two innings.
Following a fruitless 3-minute, 53-second delay over a questionable Freddy Galvis hit-by pitch in the third, Harvey tried a 96-mph fastball in vain on Utley, whose opposite-field line single to left cut the Phillies’ deficit to 4-2.
“Looking back, I think that might have been the weirdest game I’ve been a part of in … maybe ever,” Harvey said. “But you have to stay focused, and maybe I didn’t do a good job of that, or whatnot.”
Asche made it 4-3 when he drove a 95-mph fastball to right in the fourth inning. Harvey immediately fanned Sizemore with some 95-mph cheddar.
“It just happened that couple of pitches I left over the middle they were able to execute,” Harvey said.
Harvey (eight Ks) was done for the night after six innings and 95 pitches. His strikeout-to-walk ratio after two starts is 17:1.
These Harvey Nights are events now for a prayerful fan base that wants him, needs him, to be its Seaver, its Gooden … its White Knight Dark Knight.
Harvey credited the offense for having his back.
“It’s not like I’m not gonna ever give up a run,” he said.
And it was only too fitting that Mets fan Kevin James (“Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2,” and the original “King Of Queens”) was in the house watching the current King Of Queens in 2015.
“It’s not just what he does, it’s when he’s performing, it’s what he does to the club,” James said. “He raises the level of everybody.”