Livan Hernandez pitched 6 1/3 innings, allowing four hits and two earned runs. His counterpart, knuckleballer R.A. Dickey – just recalled Wednesday from Triple-A Buffalo – lasted six innings with five hits allowed and two earned runs. The Nats bullpen gave up one run in 2 1/3 innings – a home run in the ninth by Fernando Tatis – with closer Matt Capps ending things in that frame for his 15th save.

The Mets took a 1-0 lead in the top of the fourth inning when Angel Pagan belted a Hernandez pitch to the deepest part of the ballpark. Center fielder Morgan tracked it near the 402-foot marker, but drifted too far to his left. The ball banged off the wall and caromed towards left field. Josh Willingham charged in to grab it, fired a relay throw to shortstop Ian Desmond, but Pagan was too quick, beating that throw home. It was his second career inside-the-park home run. Neither pitcher had allowed a hit at that point.

“I thought I had it,” Morgan said. “Looks like I over-ran it a little bit and it’s just one of those things where it took a funny hop and [Pagan] got on his horse. He really wanted that home run.”

Pagan’s blast was the first inside-the-park homer hit at Nationals Park. Austin Kearns has the only other one since the team returned to the District in 2005. His came on May 12, 2007 at RFK Stadium against the Florida Marlins

Pagan made his presence felt in the bottom half of that inning, too. With a run already in for Washington, the bases still loaded and just one out, he roared across the outfield from center to left and made a diving catch on a ball hit by Bernadina. It was still a sacrifice fly so the Nats took the lead on the play. But Pagan may have saved two more runs. Dickey escaped the inning with limited damage when Desmond flew out to Pagan.

But the 28-year-old wasn’t finished. In the bottom of the fifth he somehow tracked down a dying pop fly off the bat of Guzman. The ball looked like an easy single with runners at first and second and no one out. Both Hernandez and Morgan thought so. They took off only to watch in horror as Pagan again used his speed to make a diving catch.

“I didn’t think so. I started running because Cristian hit the ball too good,” Hernandez said. “It’s going to be a base hit. And then the guy, I don’t know, he played too [shallow]. I said ‘Wow. We in trouble.’

Pagan threw home to the catcher, Henry Blanco, who realized what was happening and fired to shortstop Jose Reyes standing on second base. He in turn flung the ball to Ike Davis at first. Umpires Tim Tschida, Bob Davidson and Alfonso Marquez consulted to make sure Pagan hadn’t trapped the ball. When Tschida got word the initial call was correct he punched all three Nats out and the Mets had turned the 10th triple play in franchise history and their first in almost exactly eight years. The last one happened in San Diego on May 17, 2002.

“One of those freaky nights, you know,” Morgan said. “We had an inside-the-park homer and we had a triple play. You don’t really see that too often.”

Those setbacks briefly sapped the energy from what had been a buzzing dugout. But rookie Drew Storen picked up Hernandez in the seventh after a leadoff single and a sacrifice bunt by New York. Two days after making his major-league debut in St. Louis, Storen induced hard grounders by Reyes and Luis Castillo to keep the game tied. That set up Kennedy’s big hit in the seventh – an at-bat he kept alive by fouling off a pitch-out attempt by New York before his sacrifice fly. For his efforts, Storen earned the silver Elvis wig awarded to the player of the game – and, of course, his first major-league win.

“It means a lot,” Storen said. “I’m glad they put me in those spots because I love that. It shows that they have some confidence in me. Hopefully I can live up to it.”

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