Nick Laham/Getty Images J. A. Happ after giving up Mike Nickeas’s first major league home run in the third inning. Happ allowed six runs in four and two-thirds innings.
Jason Bay arrived at Citi Field on Thursday ready to play in his first game since July 25, but hoping he will not be the same player he was before a concussion sustained two days earlier ended his disappointing 2010 season.
That player hit .259 in 95 games with 6 home runs and 47 runs batted in.
“I feel like I’m better than that guy,” Bay said before the game with the Houston Astros. “Before the concussion I wasn’t playing all that great. Even for all the shortcomings I had, not hitting any home runs and doing the things I did, I was still able in that limited time to drive in some runs.
Nick Laham/Getty Images Mets Manager Terry Collins was ejected for the first time this season, by the home plate umpire Doug Eddings, eight pitches into the game. “I feel like somewhere last year I lost it, I lost being that guy, and I think I’ve had a lot of time to try and get it back.”
The Mets signed Bay after the 2009 season after he averaged 26 home runs and 87 R.B.I per season and hit .280.
This year Bay was just starting to feel good at the plate in the last week of spring training when he strained the intercostal muscle in his left side rib cage just two days before the end of camp. He was placed on the disabled list.
“Impeccable timing,” he called it.
He returns to a team that had the worst record in baseball at 5-13, but he said he was not there to be the savior, just an important complementary component.
“I feel like I’m a big part of this team,” Bay said. “I’ve been watching from afar and things haven’t been going great. I definitely am not trying to come here and shoulder the load. But I think there’s a few things about me being here, maybe letting some other guys fit into some roles that management thought would make us a better team and there’s a little trickle-down effect to that. But I’m not coming in to take over this team, per se, but try to help out.”
Bay will bat fifth, as designed in the off-season, and hit behind Carlos Beltran. Those two played only nine games together last year.
Angel Pagan will go back to the No. 2 hole, where the Mets want him to bat, and Ike Davis will slide back to No. 6 in the order. Josh Thole was given the night off, so Mike Nickeas was scheduled to catch and bat eighth, while Justin Turner was going to play second against the left-hander J.A. Happ and bat seventh.
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Kepner, who had covered the Yankees for The Times since 2002, is in his second year as the national baseball reporter. He joined The Times in 2000 as the Mets beat writer. A native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Vanderbilt University, Kepner has also covered the Angels for the Riverside Press-Enterprise in California and the Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. 
Ben Shpigel is in his second year as the Yankees beat writer. He had covered the Mets for The Times since 2005. Before then, he was a staff writer for the Dallas Morning News for two years. He also worked at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., and for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Shpigel received a bachelor's degree in English and journalism from Emory University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. He and his wife, Rebecca, and their daughter, live in New Jersey. 
Belson covers the business of sports after many years of writing about the business of practically everything else for the Times, Business Week, Reuters and Bloomberg. During his 12 years living in Tokyo, he wrote about baseball, kick boxing, marathon running and football in Japan. Since returning to the United States, he managed to persuade his wife, who grew up near the Yomiuri Giants' old stadium, to find it in herself to root for the Mets.
Sablich has produced news and multimedia for The New York Times since July 2006 after earning a master’s degree in new media from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He was born in Binghamton, N.Y. and resides in Queens. Sablich is still traumatized from his first trip to Yankee Stadium as a child when the Yankees starter Tim Leary was torched by the White Sox for 7 runs in one and two-thirds innings on Old-Timers' Day, July 15, 1990. 