Last place was theirs for the first time this season on Sunday, but the Mets finally showed up against their chief NL East tormentor and promptly relinquished it.

The embarrassment stopped, at least for a day. 

The Mets received a solid pitching performance from Kodai Senga and  in a flashback to last season grinded at-bats in a fruitful sixth inning that sparked a 7-6 victory over the Braves at Citi Field.

In losing the first three games of this series the Mets had been outscored 34-3, but on this night contributions throughout the lineup —  No. 9 hitter Rafael Ortega went 3-for-4 with two RBIs — added even the smallest semblance of decency to the weekend; the Braves had never swept a four-game series in Queens.

The Mets (53-65) were a percentage point below the Nationals for last place in the NL East as the night began, but clawed back to fourth. 

The team’s mission for the final 44 games of their season might be summed up as such: find rest for the veterans, get experience for the rookies and avoid the NL East cellar.

A recent study conducted by the Philadelphia Inquirer showed that the artificial turf at Veterans Stadium, the longtime former home of Major League Baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies and the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles, had cancerous chemicals, which may have been the cause of several former Phillies players’ deaths.

The Inquirer launched its investigation into the Vet’s turf after relief pitcher David West became the sixth former Phillies player to have died from glioblastoma, a rare, aggressive form of brain cancer, following Tug McGraw, John Vukovich, Ken Brett, Dan Quisenberry and Johnny Oates, all of whom died before the age of 60. The study found that the turf, which was produced by Monsanto and used at the stadium from 1977 to 2001, had dangerous “forever chemicals.”

The Phillies had previously sold pieces of the turf sealed in 4-by-4 inch bags in 1982 and four were purchased by the Inquirer on eBay as part of its investigation in 2022. The samples were analyzed by two separate labs and found to contain 16 different “forever chemicals” that fail to break down and remain in the human body for years.

The chemicals are connected to several forms of cancer, including brain cancer, which claimed the lives of six of the 532 former Phillies players who played at the Vet from 1971 to 2003, more than triple the average rate of adult men.

Veterans Stadium was demolished in 2004 with the Phillies moving to Citizens Bank Park and the Eagles moving to Lincoln Financial Field that same year.