The day began with a promise of a lasting memory, one of those special matchups that remind you why you love baseball in the first place. It shouldn’t have taken much coaxing to see Johan Santana go one-on-one with Stephen Strasburg, but just to be sure, the Mets cut the price on some of their tickets to $2.50. You couldn’t have asked for a more generous gift in April. Trouble was, neither ace worked particularly deep into the game, which denied fans the electricity of a pitcher’s duel. There was no grace or magnificence or anything even remotely historic about the pairing of a finesse artist with one of the majors’ hardest throwers. In the end, the Mets were 4-0 losers to the Nationals — a game so dreary and poorly played Terry Collins said the Mets were \"lucky\" not to have been blown out altogether.