In A Baha Men-Esque Twist, Timmy Trumpet Doesn’t Sound Tuesday For The Mets

Jose Vizcaino was the one person at Citi Field Tuesday night who could have warned the Mets what might have happened with Timmy Trumpet in the building ready to perform if closer Edwin Diaz entered the game.

Vizcaino, now a coach with the Dodgers, was an infielder with the Yankees in 2000, when they opposed the Mets in the World Series and spent a few surreal minutes prior to Game 4 at Shea Stadium watching the Baha Men perform “Who Let The Dogs Out?” — the entrance song for Mets closer Armando Benitez — in front of the home dugout.

“I was just telling one of our coaches about that,” Vizcaino said a couple hours before first pitch Tuesday. “I said when I saw him with Edwin earlier, I remembered 2000, they got the ‘Who Let The Dogs Out?’ (singers).”

Vizciano sang the title — because if you were around a radio or watching baseball in the summer of 2000, it’s physically impossible NOT to sing the words “Who Let The Dogs Out?” — before grinning.

“Then we were singing it after we won the World Series.”

The Dodgers didn’t win the World Series Tuesday night, though they’ll be the overwhelming favorites to do so once the playoffs start in early October. But they dampened the mood at Citi Field by keeping Diaz in the bullpen and edging the Mets, 4-3.

Instead of standing in front of the Mets’ dugout and performing the intro to “Narco” — the five-year-old song that’s become a smash viral hit with Diaz using it as his entrance song during a potentially record-breaking season as the Mets’ closer — as Diaz jogged in from the bullpen, Trumpet spent the seventh-inning stretch playing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” on his trumpet in front of the Dodgers’ dugout.

In retrospect, having Trumpet — who was born Timothy Smith in Australia — on deck to perform if the Mets carried a lead into the eighth or ninth inning against baseball’s most remorseless victory machine might have been a flawed idea from the start.

But at least the Mets scored in the first inning Tuesday night. Twenty-two years ago, Derek Jeter homered on Bobby Jones’ first pitch of Game 4 and the similarly unrelenting Yankees never relinquished the lead in a series-turning 3-2 win. The Yankees clinched their third straight championship the next night.

Of course, now as then, the Mets’ boldness was defensible. In 2000, if the Mets didn’t welcome the Baha Men — whose hit song was played at stadiums throughout the country that season — during the middle three games of the World Series, when would they?

And with Trumpet — whose birth name is Timothy Smith — touring the world, this series against the Dodgers fits his schedule better than the series against the last-place Rockies or Nationals that bookend the Mets’ current 10-game homestand. Trumpet just played the Tomorrowland festival in Europe and is scheduled to depart for shows in Singapore later this week.

Trumpet took to Twitter shortly after the final out Tuesday to declare he’d be at Citi Field again tonight, which is a new twist on an old cliche: If you’re going to have a musician on site ready to perform as your closer enters the game, do it on a night when Jacob deGrom is starting.

And if it doesn’t work out tonight? Trumpet said he’d be at the World Series if the Mets get that far. At least there’s no chance Vizcaino will be there for that.

“I’m really excited about tonight,” Trumpet said Tuesday. “And I can’t wait to see Diaz play this at the World Series for a victory. I’ll be there for that one.”