Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game.It was a typical game for the swashbuckling 1986 New York Mets, a team that will celebrate its 40th anniversary in a ceremony at Citi Field on Saturday. On a warm summer night at Shea Stadium that July, the Mets trounced the Atlanta Braves by 11 runs. Gary Carter hit two home runs, Sid Fernandez tossed a shutout, and Darryl Strawberry charged the mound.Jesse Orosco, the Mets’ left-handed closer, had the night off. So did Steven McDonald, a New York City police officer, who enjoyed the game with friends.“That was the last thing,” McDonald’s son, Conor, said by phone this week. “He went to the game, got home, went to bed, woke up and went to work. And then everything changed.”The next afternoon, in Central Park, a 15-year-old boy named Shavod Jones shot McDonald three times, severing his spinal cord and paralyzing him from the neck down. McDonald was 29 years old and had been married for eight months. His wife, Patti Ann, was pregnant with Conor, who was born the next January.The Mets went on to beat the Boston Red Sox in a thrilling World Series, and when Orosco struck out Marty Barrett for the final out of Game 7, he flung his brown Rawlings glove to the sky. Soon after, he visited McDonald at Bellevue Hospital and gave him the glove.“When he was in the hospital, a bunch of athletes were there at the same time and everybody was giving gifts to him,” Orosco said this week. “So I just decided I’m gonna give the glove to him right there.“I know I’ve had people say, ‘Hey, Jesse, why’d you give up the glove?’ And I said, ‘You know, that’s not what it’s all about.’ I was happy to do that. The time was right. And I mean, it could have been any of us athletes that were there that day that could have done it.”Only Orosco, though, had an artifact so symbolic of joy. Mary Murphy, a young reporter from Queens, had been at Shea that night, reveling with her sisters in the upper loge section along the first-base line. She had no idea until years later that Orosco would be integral to a film she would make about McDonald, who died in 2017.“I wanted to show that he not only struggled, but that he found joy,” Murphy said. “And when I heard about Jesse Orosco giving him the baseball glove that he threw up after Game 7 of the World Series, I said, ‘We have to have that in this movie. We have to find a way to talk to Jesse Orosco.’”Is a fire sale on the horizon for the New York Mets?Tim Britton and Reuben PinderJay Horwitz, the longtime Mets public relations director and now the team’s historian and vice president of alumni relations, put Murphy in touch with Orosco, who lives in San Diego and spoke with Murphy there. The documentary, “Saint of the City,” is in final edits, and Murphy — who won 33 Emmys for breaking news and investigative work at PIX 11 and CBS 2 — hopes for widespread distribution soon.She held a private screening this month for donors and those who appear in the film, to coincide with the New York Police Department naming its academy for McDonald. Orosco was there and met Conor McDonald for the first time.“I just remember, as a kid, my dad always talking about Jesse Orosco,” McDonald said. “At three or four years old, before I knew what sports meant to my community and to my family, I knew that this was a special person and he really helped my dad.“He was kind of like a myth, you know? He’s a legend. And getting to talk to him and tell him how important that visit was to my dad and that gesture of giving him the glove — sometimes you don’t get a chance to thank people, because life goes in different ways, and to me it was great just to do that, 40 years later.“There was a lot of pain and a lot of suffering, and people like Jesse Orosco, just with one visit and a simple gesture, helped my dad survive. The doctors only gave my dad like three years to live, and he lived for 30 and a half years. And that gave me the ability to know my dad and help me become the husband and father I am today.”McDonald and his father bonded over New York sports, especially the Rangers, Knicks and Mets. The next time the Mets reached the World Series, they went to the final game together — a loss to the Yankees in 2000. Conor won’t be at the Mets reunion this weekend, though, because his son will be celebrating his second birthday.The boy’s name is Steven Mychal, after Conor’s father and Mychal Judge, the chaplain of the New York Fire Department. Judge, who was instrumental to Steven McDonald’s spiritual journey — which included publicly forgiving Jones and corresponding with him while he was in jail — died on Sept. 11, 2001.